Illuminating Each Other: Lessons from a decade of talent development in China

Inside China’s talent development transformation with Lumina Learning Partner, Yimin Wang

 
Ten years ago, China’s learning and development landscape looked very different. Few organisations were thinking globally, leadership was largely domestic, and the conversation around adaptability was only beginning.

Today, Chinese organisations are expanding across borders, opening global R&D centres and redefining the talent development needs of multinational organisations.

With a front row seat to this transformation, Yimin Wang, Lumina Learning’s Partner in China, has spent the past decade building a growing practitioner community dedicated to helping leaders and teams develop the behavioural agility to thrive through change.

As he prepares to celebrate 10 years of Lumina Learning in China, Yimin sat down with Dr Stewart Desson, Lumina Learning Founder and CEO, to reflect on the journey so far and explore how AI and innovation will shape the next decade of talent development.

A global approach to talent development

Looking back to when he first introduced Lumina Learning to China in 2015, Yimin has witnessed a significant change in how organisations need to approach talent development.

“Expansion overseas has been the biggest trend,” Yimin explains. “Chinese organisations are now hiring multinational talent and sending their own leaders abroad”

Organisations are now faced with hybrid teams, generational differences, and cross-border collaboration. Now more than ever, they need their leaders and teams to understand the nuance of behaviour, so they can recognise how their strengths shift in different environments and consciously adapt their behaviour to authentically connect with teammates across different cultures.

“Leaders need to be culturally savvy, and teams need to collaborate across different cultural mindsets” Yimin explains.

For Yimin and his practitioners, this approach is anything but new. Over the past decade, they have used Lumina Spark to help multinational organisations value and appreciate how their teams’ behavioural differences complement one another, bringing out the best of their collective potential across borders.
 

 

“From the start we have been helping teams and leaders understand themselves, celebrate the uniqueness of everyone and appreciate others for their differences.”

Stewart adds that supporting organisations to work globally has always been a goal for Lumina Learning. “We’ve deliberately built Lumina Spark with a global mindset so teams can cross-collaborate with a common language and framework regardless of where they’re from.”

To celebrate this achievement of empowering hundreds of teams and leaders to perform at their best by transforming organisations to value behaviour in communication and collaboration, Yimin is bringing his community of talent professionals together for an event in Shanghai.

Celebrating a decade of growth

Yimin is hosting the Future Talent Development Forum to mark 10 years of Lumina Learning in China. With the theme Illuminate Each Other, the event is more than a marker of time; it’s a recognition of the practitioners, teams and leaders who have already embraced self-awareness and behavioural growth to reshape highly effective organisational performance.

“We’ve come really far as a community,” Yimin reflects. “We need to celebrate that, but we also need to look forward to the next decade of growth.”

This event brings together thought leaders for a shared learning experience exploring the future of leadership and AI in talent development. Alongside the forum, Stewart will be delivering a ‘Masterclass on Innovation’ exploring how teams can unlock creativity by embracing paradoxes.

“To be creative, you need to see the big picture and pay attention to the details,” Stewart says. “You need to be both inspired and disciplined. Most people naturally lean one way, which is why teamwork and leadership are so critical. I want to show people how to reignite their creativity by valuing opposite ways of being and bringing them together”

 
Aiming to help leaders and teams think differently about innovation, the Train the Trainer Masterclass will build on the self-awareness from Lumina Spark with practical exercises for practitioners to bring into their development sessions.

“Our practitioners are already doing a brilliant job of using Lumina Spark to raise self-awareness and strengthen teams,” Stewart adds. “I want to put the cherry on the top by helping them go further by sparking creative thinking and bringing innovation to life.”

Shaping the future of talent development

With Lumina Learning entering its second decade in China, both Yimin and Stewart agree that the next major shift in psychometrics and talent development will be driven by digital transformation and AI.

“AI is everywhere now,” Yimin says. “Every training solution is looking to include it, but the question is, how do we use it in a way that truly helps people grow?”

With global experts sharing how to build future-ready development, a key part of the Future Talent Development Forum is keeping practitioners and talent leaders ahead of the curve by understanding how technological trends are reshaping development.

“AI is already reshaping coaching and development,” says Stewart. “But it’s only as powerful as the model behind it. When used carefully, it can help practitioners probe psychometric data for deeper insight and personalise learning in ways we’ve never seen before.”

Networking, thought leadership and upskilling for the next decade ahead

The Future Talent Development Forum in Shanghai is just the beginning of Lumina Learning China’s next chapter. The message behind the theme Illuminate Each Other reflects both the journey and the future direction.

“For the past few years, we’ve focused on self-awareness,” says Yimin. “Now it’s time to focus on each other and illuminate how we can grow together as teams and organisations.”

This 10th anniversary is not just a celebration of progress; it’s a philosophy for the decade ahead: learning together, innovating together and growing together.
 

Dr Stewart Desson

Founder & CEO, Lumina Learning
Business Psychologist, Creator of the Lumina Spark psychometric.
 
Stewart is a leading expert in psychometrics and organisational development. Through Lumina Spark, he developed an innovative way to reduce the bias often found in traditional personality models by combining rigorous data with a humanistic approach. His work focuses on helping organisations grow through improved self-awareness, communication, leadership, and team effectiveness.

Yimin Wang

Global Partner of Lumina Learning;
CEO of Lumina Learning China
 
Yimin leads Lumina Learning’s development in China, building a strong practitioner community and driving organisational transformation. He has more than 20 years experience in talent development and talent recruiting and is an adjunct professor at the SKEMA Business School. He is also the co-author of Leadership Coaching in China and Big Hunters’ Views on Executive Search (Da Lie Lun Dao).