“Transformative experiences don’t happen to us. They’re created by us, whether we realize it or not.”
"Every one can make a positive difference in this world. Often this requires us to change something about ourselves and the choices we make. This book will be especially valuable to those who are leaders, or aspiring leaders, in their field.”
DR JANE GOODALL - Conservationist, Primatologist, U.N Peace Ambassador
“We all have transformative experiences - two of the big ones are our birth and our death. One in all probability you can communicate, the other seems unlikely. In between are all our transformative experiences. Reading this book will be one.”
WILLIAM SHATNER - Actor, Author, Civilian Astronaut
“This book is an invaluable resource that empowers leaders with practical tools and strategies to challenge people’s self-views and lead to expansions in their identity. It is a guide to transformations that yields the most meaningful kinds of professional and personal growth.”
DR PAUL MARCIANO - Best-Selling Author of Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work
Three Questions That Drive Transformation
What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Who are we becoming while we do it?
A transformative experience is a learning experience that has an identity impact, changing our sense of who we are or who we aspire to become. Experience Design Leadership is a research-based approach, developed by Brad McLain, PhD, that teaches leaders to design such experiences on purpose for their teams, their organizations, and themselves.
It is built on the ELVIS Framework (Experiential Learning Variables & Indicators System), drawn from more than 25 years of research on how experiences change who we are.
What Makes an Experience Transformative?
Extraordinary experiences are memorable. Transformative experiences change who we are. Research shows they follow the same three-part sequence, known as the ELVIS Framework:
Discomfort zone experience. Transformative experiences don’t happen in our comfort zones. They involve some kind of risk or vulnerability: physical, emotional, intellectual, or social.
Narrative translation. We make sense of experiences by turning them into stories. Our most powerful experiences become our most important stories.
Identity impact. When those stories become part of how we see ourselves, the experience changes our sense of self. That is what makes it transformative.
One principle ties it all together: transformative experiences do not happen to us. They are created by us, whether we realize it or not.
Who I Work With
Corporate. I help leaders and HR teams guide AI adoption and culture change so people grow through disruption instead of disengaging from it.
Start-ups. I help founders design culture and leadership practices on purpose, before they design themselves.
Education. I help universities, schools, nonprofits, and workforce programs create learning experiences that build lasting identity, from K–12 to pathways into AI, quantum, and other emerging fields.
Organizations I’ve worked with include Apple, Google, Morgan Stanley, Qualcomm, Johnson & Johnson, Intuit, Salesforce, Microsoft, NASA, the U.S. Army, the Jane Goodall Institute, and the University of Colorado Boulder.
Here is how it works... Transformative experiences fall into different discomfort zones according to their internal and external factors. Ultimately, we translate these experiences into narratives of different kinds, something that we are naturally quite good at and that our brains are hardwired to do. Our most powerful experiences are translated into our most important narratives. If our experience narratives are important enough, they become part of our identity narratives.
Identity narratives live in that very special and carefully guarded library of volumes within our heads that contain our most personal and valuable possession: our sense-of-self. These are the stories that inform who we are, how we experience life, what we can do (and what we cannot do), and who we want to become.
When an experience alters our sense of self through this process, it becomes a transformative experience, and it has the power to change our lives from within, the lives of others, and the world beyond.
Using this framework, our programs deep-dive into the psychology of these three components as the foundation for Experience Design Leadership skill-building.
What Skills Does Experience Design Leadership Build?
Skilled Experience Design Leaders are able to shape and sequence the design elements of the ELVIS Framework into LIFE INVITATIONS for themselves and others. This is true whether in a work team or company, parenting, education, coaching, friendship, or even solitary experiences. The notion of crafting custom invitations is critical.
Experience Design Leadership is not something we do TO our experiencers; rather, it is something we do WITH them. For if transformation is to occur, it must ultimately come from inside experiencers themselves.
To engage in a transformative experience is to embark on an inward pilgrimage that can be defined as an encounter between life’s harsher horizons (invariably where discomfort, uncertainty, and vulnerability preside) and the center of your own being. The physical experience, whatever design or shape it may take, is a metaphor for this inward journey. Designers of transformative experiences must, therefore, guide experiencers through this kind of self-growth as we also help people live the outward metaphor of the journey. We do this through a series of life invitations that comprise the experience design.
Seven skill elements are important for designing transformative experiences. I refer to them as The ELVIS-7. Along with several specific design strategies, they enable Experience Design Leaders to develop, deliver, and sequence those life invitations.
ELVIS 7
Risk
What we perceive as risky for us defines our “discomfort zones.” The higher the perceived risk, the greater the challenge, the lower the sense of agency that we can succeed, and the deeper we go into our discomfort zones. This is where transformative experiences are born. And everyone is different. Experience Design Leaders become skilled at designing risk invitations that are customized for their people and their identity growth.
Control
In nearly all transformative experiences, control is shifted from external to internal sources of permission. What kinds of permission? Permission to act, to participate, to engage with others, and to “own” the experience. The task of Experience Design Leaders is to increasingly transfer command and control of the experience to the experiencers themselves throughout the design.
Immersion
The simultaneous activation of multiple brain centers is strongly linked to a heightened sense of awareness, motivation, powerful emotions, memory formation, and strong impacts on our sense-of-self. Our capacity to have transformative experiences is partially determined by our ability to engage on multiple immersive levels. In Experience Design Leadership we call this design skill, “Brain Layering,” and it involves both conscious and unconscious elements.
Social & Emotional Involvement
Highly effective experience designs include both opportunities for social group experiences as well as independent isolated experiences. This means incorporating group-based experiences of coming together, collaborating, building empathy, respect, belonging and team spirit. But research indicates it is also often critical to include solitary challenges that build personal identities and transfer control, permission and ownership to experiencers, tapping directly into those often-scary emotions of having to “go it alone.” Strong designs need both.
Intellectual Challenge
Problem solving – acquiring and applying new knowledge integrated with prior understanding to confront real-world, personally relevant problems -- have consistently emerged in research as critical components in transformative experiences. It includes elements that demand logic, cognitive flexibility, curiosity, wonder and skepticism. Experiences that lack this kind of intellectual engagement are often reported to be boring, not as relevant, or not as significant as other experiences.
Identity Integration
The challenge for Experience Design Leaders is to incorporate experience elements that are explicitly intended to expand the experiencer’s sense-of-self. This begins with understanding WHO experiencers are when going in, and then to present them with opportunities for expansion of who they can be or want to become through the experience. One-size-does-not-fit-all.
Meaning Making
This is the generation of personal narratives derived from our experiences. Recall that for experiences to be transformative, these experience narratives must in some way inform, influence, or modify our identity narratives. For Experience Design Leaders, this means incorporating multiple structured ways for people to purposively translate their experiences into self-stories, construct the meaning of those stories in relation to other aspects of their identities, and thereby become self-aware authors of their personal experiences.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a transformative experience?
A transformative experience is a learning experience that has an identity impact, changing your sense of who you are or who you aspire to become. Unlike experiences that are simply memorable, transformative experiences change how you see yourself, and their effects often deepen over time.
Can leaders design transformative experiences?
Yes. Transformative experiences follow a common pattern: a discomfort zone experience, a story we tell ourselves about it, and a change in identity. Leaders can design for each stage. Experience Design Leadership and the ELVIS Framework give them the tools to do it.
Who is Brad McLain?
Brad McLain, PhD, is a social scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies the psychology of transformative experiences, identity, and leadership. He is the author of Designing Transformative Experiences (Berrett-Koehler, 2023) and creator of the ELVIS Framework.
Aspire to inspire before you expire!
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The biggest AI challenge isn’t a skills gap. It’s an identity gap.
More than half of employees now hide their AI use at work. They aren’t short on training. They’re worried about what using AI says about them.
When the work people built their identities around starts to change, they don’t just need new skills. They need a new story about who they are.
That’s where leaders come in.
How I Help
Keynotes, workshops, and consulting that help leaders, teams, and educators design transformation on purpose.
Keynotes & Talks
Research-rich, story-driven talks that change how leaders see their role. Every one is custom-built for its audience.
Workshops
Hands-on sessions where teams practice designing experiences that build capability, confidence, and belonging.
Consulting & Advisory
A partner for designing the human side of AI adoption, culture change, and learning programs.