Wade Jackson has built a thriving career out of his creative side, and is now launching the JOLT challenge – a 9 week self-exploration journey that promotes positive change. As he said recently, “whoever you are will come across wherever you are. There is no such thing as a life/work balance – if you are having a lousy time at home it will manifest itself in some form at work.”

Since 2002 Wade has been running workshops and seminars for big corporates such as Vodafone, ANZ, Fonterra and others using improvisation as a tool for self-expression. “The aim is to get people to think differently through experiential training,” he told Business to Business.

“When I walk on stage, I have no idea what I am going to do. We don’t get people to perform as such – we get them to exercise their minds through their creative sides using the art of improvisation. The course is not an acting class, it draws heavily from the world of psychology, neuroscience, hypnotherapy and many, many other fields.”

Wade is an actor, trained hypnotherapist, NLP practitioner and black belt. For the last fifteen years he has been involved in the performing healing and martial arts, and travelled around the world to study with masters in those fields. He and business partner Steve Hill have brought together this background of complexity to create a unique combination of tools and strategies to help people transform their personal and professional lives.

“JOLT Challenge is a journey of Self Intelligence, bringing positive change in your life through developing a deeper self-awareness and providing tools for better self-management. The programme explores the awareness of your thoughts, emotions, behaviours and capabilities and in turn provides you with the ability to better manage these areas.”

“It is quite easy to develop a programme for our physical sides,” Wade said, “because after quite a short time you can see results. If you want to loss weight for example and stick to a programme of dietary control, within a short time you will see improvements. Likewise if you want to get fit! Run, swim or cycle a given length of time each day and you will improve.”

“In our former work, with Steve, ” Wade continued, “we realised that we really needed to look at every individual holistically. We have therefore developed the JOLT challenge as a way of integrating all the work we have done previously into a tool for creating positive change for people on every level. My desire is to ignite the spark in everyone and get them to fulfill their lives.”

The JOLT Challenge has recently been run at Westpac and North Shore City Council to considerable acclaim. “The strength of the programme is that it takes place over nine weeks,” he said, “and consists of four parts. At the introductory session participants receive their book and journal together with an explanation.

There are reading and exercises within that we recommend take an hour, five days a week. The next session is designed to cement the learnings of the previous week in a safe, supportive environment. This process repeats over the nine consecutive weeks, enabling people to form positive behaviour patterns and build lifelong learning habits.”

There are four opportunities to measure their progress throughout JOLT Challenge including a self-assessment four weeks after the completion of the programme. Twelve weeks after the programme, there are interviews with the participants’ manager to measure the application and business impact of JOLT Challenge.  

Wade is shortly off to Singapore, whose armed forces have expressed considerable interest in the JOLT Challenge programme. The programme has been heavily endorsed by luminaries such as John Cleese and 2004 NZ Entrepreneur of the Year, Phillip Mills.