Greater Nashua Chamber Of Commerce: High Tech Industry Day By Jason Rifkin And Jennifer Colangelo

Press release from Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce:

How Technology Changed Manufacturing and the Workplace…Forever!

On the morning of January 8, 2025, Leadership Greater Nashua set out on a journey through time, learning about how technology and the recent COVID-19 pandemic has transformed two of Nashua’s more established family-owned manufacturing companies and one global technology company over the past 30 years or so. Technology has reshaped manufacturing by evolving it from a labor-intensive industry into a highly efficient, innovative, and often digitally driven space. These changes have affected processes and workforce dynamics as well as revenue streams and the overall broader business landscape. We have also seen how the COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated this transformation and caused the workplace to go remote.

Overall, this was an extremely interesting, fun, and informative session that I know many of my cohorts thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you for reading!

Written By: Jason Rifkin

Putting Conscious Leadership Into Action

Dr. Cynthia Whitaker, Psyd. MLADC

On Campus at Rivier University, January 8, 2025

Our leadership session today began in an unexpected but powerful way – with mindfulness. As we settled into our chairs, Cynthia guided us through a breathing exercise that would set the tone for our entire afternoon. With our feet planted firmly on the floor, we each were asked to either close our eyes or find a gentle focal point on the wall. The simple act of conscious breathing, feeling its rhythm around our hearts, and reflecting on gratitude brought a deep sense of peace to the room. We slowly breathed to the count of five but were prompted to not let that counting interrupt the true purpose of this exercise. While some of the group admitted struggling to fully relax in the silence, Cynthia encouraged us to embrace these quiet moments more often in our daily lives. I absolutely loved this exercise as almost a reset and it certainly set the tone for the afternoon. I appreciated this break to reconnect with my inner self even though I was among a room of people.

We then explored Daniel Kolb’s book topics on the Experiential Learning framework, which outlines four essential phases: Experience, Reflection, Conceptualization, and Active Experimentation. Cynthia spoke about how we were going to put this into practice this afternoon by using each of these topics in our exercise.

Returning to our August worksheets with Cynthia reminded us about the two exercises we completed at the retreat. First, we revised the Micro and Macro of Conscious Leadership by a reminder of how demands sometimes can outweigh our resources which puts us into an anxious, self-doubt and reactive state. When resources exceed demands, we move into an upward stream of purpose, inspiration, and creativity. This was a great reminder for me as I remembered it from August and it spoke to me at that point. Cynthia asked the room for feedback on how we put this into practice since the August session. Some said they were unaware that they had put it into practice but after they thought about it, they knew they had made some small changes.

We spoke about vulnerability and how, as leaders, we should be embracing this to reveal our true genuine selves. It was discussed that sometimes this is difficult in a work setting but something that we need to get comfortable with if we want our team to be comfortable with it. Someone mentioned that we can’t expect our team to act in a certain way if we ourselves aren’t willing to be there as well. That really resonated with me as I have to be mindful of perceptions of my role but not who I am as a person.

We discussed Brené Brown’s Brave Leadership framework, focusing on her four key elements:

• Rumbling with our vulnerability
• Living into our values
• Braving Trust
• Learning to Rise

By using the four elements of the Brave Leadership Framework, we broke out into smaller groups of 3 or 4 people where we collaborated to identify five headlines that captured what brave leadership means to us, then illustrated these concepts. My partner and I decided on a nature drawing, focusing on a beautiful sun that depicted the beauty of being real, feeling vulnerable, and how the sun works together and shines its light on all things. I have to say I was initially concerned about how we would draw such words as vulnerability and trust. As we joked during the exercise, we both eased and felt it was a fun exercise. Each group shared their words and drawings, and we were asked to provide two positive things we liked about each presentation. This helped us feel like there were a least a few good things that people saw in our exercise.

Next, we were given envelopes by Alyssa and asked to not open them yet … once everyone received their own handwritten note; we opened them. We had written a note to ourselves in August about what we wanted to accomplish by joining LGN. I had forgotten what I wrote but when I opened it, I was reminded of the connections I wanted to make and felt that I had most certainly made headway in that area. I love these sorts of flashbacks, it reminded me of how I was feeling when I wrote that and how uneasy I was at the start of LGN. I had come a long way and my note to myself was a reminder of that.

We concluded our day by working on the LGN 25 Group Project. The Event Committee (my committee) discussed our focus events, starting from a small event and building to the final big event. We agreed to a fundraising goal of $15,000 to benefit the Nashua Soup Kitchen, planning to buy new tables, chairs, and a floor cleaner. The group will reconvene next Wednesday along with having a holiday party at a local brewery.

One big takeaway for me this session was when Cynthia said “True collaboration is recognizing you can do it better together.” This perfectly summed up our afternoon of truly collaborative work.

Written By: Jennifer Colangelo

This press release was produced by Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce. The views expressed here are the author’s own.