Bill Benjamin

The world and your people are facing not one virus, but two: Covid-19 and the virus of fear.

 Fear can get in the way of our ability to think clearly, make good decisions and work effectively as a team. And yet this is exactly what we need to do right now to successfully navigate this crisis. Your team requires Emotional Intelligence based tools to manage their brains and behavior under pressure so they can remain calm and form the kind of response your organization needs today.

 Specifically, your team will learn:

• Strategies to be the “calm person in the boat” who can deal with the uncertainty and fear rampant in today’s environment
• How to coach others who are at a distance and feeling overwhelmed emotionally by the change and challenges they are experiencing
• How to make difficult decisions and have difficult conversations
• Habits of individuals who perform at a high level under pressure

This powerful program is delivered by Bill Benjamin  of the Institute for Health and Human Potential – who wrote the book on pressure, the New York Times best seller, Performing Under Pressure – and worked with Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve Bank during the global financial crisis.  They will share specific tools to help your people manage their emotions and their brain so they can show up with more confidence, empathy and courage during this difficult time, enabling everyone else on their teams to remain calm, confident and focused.

Why would anyone want to be led by you?  This is the single most important question a manager or leader needs to ask themselves if they want to unlock the potential and creativity of their people. The reason your employees get up in the morning and choose to be engaged and productive has nothing to do with a manager’s level of IQ or technical capabilities, it has everything to do with their manager’s level of Emotional Intelligence (EI).

The research is clear that Emotional Intelligence is the single most important driver of an engaged, results-driven, highly effective workforce, especially in environments that are undergoing significant change and disruption.

In this interactive keynote, your team will discover:

• What the brain does under pressure and specific tools to manage it more effectively.
• Self-awareness: understanding the impact your leadership style has on your people.
• Strategies to manage emotions when there is tension and conflict.
• How to win the hearts and minds of your people by connecting to the emotions that drive their behavior.
• Engaging stories from the frontlines of leaders who are stepping up and winning in the most challenging pressure-filled circumstances.

From the moment we wake up, we are bombarded with emails and inundated with requests. Distractions today are stronger and more pervasive than at any other time in human history, diminishing our ‘attentional strength’. Yet leaders are expected to focus, make thoughtful decisions and connect to a variety of employees, customers and stakeholders in a volatile, uncertain world. How is this possible? The answer is Mindfulness.

Mindfulness is a practice that builds our attentional strengths, allowing us to be more present for people and important decisions and increases our resilience, the ability to deal with the ups and downs of life. In the same way that we go to the gym to build physical strength and endurance, Mindfulness is strength training for our brain. It is the antidote for a multi-tasking world where leaders need to make important decisions, be present to engage people and inspire their teams to the next level of performance.

In this powerful keynote, your team will learn:

• An introduction to the practice of Mindfulness and how it powers performance, energy and health
• The science of the brain under pressure
• Tools to slow down and be decisive when important decisions need to be
• How to use Mindfulness to become a more effective leader that others will want to follow

Why are some people able to deliver under pressure while others fall apart?  This program, based on the ground-breaking New York Times bestselling book, Performing Under Pressure, The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most, answers this question. After studying more than 12,000 individuals from around the world, over seven years, IHHP learned what the top 10% performers do to succeed under pressure.

In this innovative, case study driven program, you will learn:

• How to better manage pressure so instead of becoming a ‘derailer’ it becomes a competitive advantage to grow your career and help your organization drive performance.
• Research from our study of 12,000 people and what the top 10% did to excel under pressure.
• Three pressure insights that will help you avoid the sabotaging effects of pressure.
• Stories of leaders and organizations who have managed pressure effectively to get to the other side of performance.
• How to build your ‘COTE of Armor’ (Confidence, Optimism, Tenacity, Enthusiasm) to help inoculate you against pressure and increase your confidence as you walk into any pressure situation.

If the Hippocratic Oath main directive is ‘first, do no harm,’ then the brain’s is ‘first, keep alive.’ Yet the usual approach most organizations take in managing change and disruption does not take into consideration this neurological reality. Leaders bring their ‘five-point strategies’ or get overly focused on the latest technology and completely miss that real change happens in the mind, and more specifically, in the operating systems (the brains) of their people.

To get your organization to successfully adapt to external disruption and the new world of work, requires managers and leaders to accept that all change is personal and that until they start managing from this point of view, their people will not step into uncertainty and take the risks required to achieve successful change efforts.

In this provocative keynote, your team will hear about other organizations that have succeeded in adapting to change and disruption by leveraging the operating system of the brain.

Your team will learn:

• How to identify the traps leaders fall into as they attempt to manage the pressure of change.
• How to create an environment of risk-taking and learning to adapt to disruption.
• Concrete tools to help leaders manage their emotions, thoughts and conversations to lead more effectively in the face of change and uncertainty.
• How to help your organization take action and approach the pressure associated with change and disruption with more confidence and enthusiasm.

When facing a challenging conversation, most managers adequately cover the first 92% of content they want to cover. When they get to the more difficult part of the conversation, more often than not, they avoid the last 8% of the conversation. What’s missed is the critical information and feedback an individual or organization needs to improve performance, grow and achieve objectives.

Having the “Last 8% Conversation” is one of the key differentiators of world class organizations and while having them is not easy, it is a skill that can be learned and mastered.

In this powerful keynote, your team will learn:

• What is a “Last 8% Conversation” and why most people avoid them.
• How to have these conversations in a way that the other person can hear us.
• How to navigate the difficult emotions that typically prompt us to avoid the Last 8% Conversation.

How to inspire your team to be more courageous and skillfully step into having the conversations they need to have.