Joann DeLanoy, Managing Director - Toaster EMEA, shares her perspective on spirituality, business and finding inspiration in the unexpected. Also inside: key strategies for hosting your own workshops.
If you asked me 20 years ago about my perspective on spirituality and business I likely would have said do you mean churches making money?
I was raised in a religious family. We went to church every Sunday, to religion school once a week and volunteered at church camp in the summers. Tarot cards were taboo and the idea of my religion influencing my work decisions was not on the table as they were separate areas of my life; church was something my family made me do and work was something I had to do to survive.
My spiritual journey started as a teenager reading astrology predictions in magazines and is ongoing to this day. Through continued self development I started to realise the connections between what I was learning and my day-to-day workplace life.
Slips in communication and slowing down of contracts during “mercury in retrograde” became commonplace. The creative executions planted in the “new moon” showed higher success rates. My “virgo” project managers really never miss a detail. Could the esoteric knowledge I will forever be learning be applied to my day job? And if so, which ones and how?
Tarot was an easy first go because tarot works best with a question. What is the likely outcome of the workshop tomorrow? I find myself asking as i’m flipping through slides in the midnight hours.
I’m lucky and grateful to have an interesting career which takes me places like San Francisco tech HQs to live streaming Brazil Carnival to seaside Welsh towns. In this instance the workshop was a GTM planning session looking at marketing strategies per audience and moment.
The cards showed me the outcome would set us up for new business development (ace of pentacles) which might have some competition or rivalry (5 of wands) but we’d ride ahead with a clear motivational message (knight of cups).
Super I thought - we are aiming to launch a new business service and yes our creative platform messaging is emotionally driven. But what about that 5 of wands? I decided to add some planning points to discuss external competitors and check-ins with relevant internal teams. Happy to report we learned some key information we might have otherwise missed - thanks tarot cards for the reminder 🙏🙏🙏
Of course I am not saying you should plan every moment or decision of your life albeit personal or work based on what a set of cards say.
However I do believe tarot can be used to trigger self development and awareness of macro and micro trends.
On my journey back that day I found myself wondering how I might run an entire workshop around the principles and themes reflected in the 78 card deck I grew to respect.
Tarot decks are organised into 4 suits (each with their own element) known as the minors and 22 major theme cards. Within each suit there are 1-10 number cards and 4 face cards. You may draw parallels to playing cards - the original cartomancy.
We love a top 10 list so here are the top 10 tips for running workshops taken as inspo from the 1-10 minor tarot cards:
