Carolyn Stern

Addressing the feelings of others in the workplace can be a terrifying proposition. For many leaders, asking what lies behind the actions and reactions of their people is akin to opening Pandora’s box. They don’t want to find out what’s lurking inside. Many managers don’t know how to deal with—and they fear—their employees’ emotions.

Leaders of these organizations have good reason to be scared. After all, few of us know how to handle emotions (let alone handle them at work). Many of us have not learned how to tend to our feelings and those of others. So isn’t it better to sweep all those pesky emotions under the rug and carry on as if they don’t exist? The answer is an unequivocal no!

Instead of spending time and money on dealing with the inappropriate behaviours and disrespectful communications stemming from emotional issues in your workplace, you can get to the heart of those issues and deal with your feelings and the feelings of your people head-on.

In this session, you will learn the emotional skills and mental strategies needed to be stronger and more intelligent than your feelings and help others learn to explore their emotions. Emotions should not be feared but celebrated. A wealth of amazing possibilities are available if we learn to harness the superpower of our emotions.

As we come to grips that social distancing has become integral to our daily lives, staying emotionally connected together apart has been challenging. We have had to pivot our lifestyles, and most of us have had to learn to work remotely from our homes. We have had to adjust our home office spaces, reorganize our schedules, and try our best to remain productive and focused on our job at hand. Staying home and safe has come at a cost. Many of us feel disheartened and lonely without the regular socializing and impromptu water cooler talk that we used to have at serendipitous moments when we were in the office. In this keynote, we will cover how to use emotional intelligence to stay emotionally connected, continue to build meaningful connections, remain motivated and inspired, and collaborate and innovate with colleagues even though we are physically apart.

Most employees are satisfied with their jobs, but are they engaged? All organizations want actively engaged employees because they are enthusiastic about their work, inspired and motivated by their leaders, empowered with autonomy to do their job their way, and confident they can achieve excellence. In this keynote, you will discover some of the traits that leaders need to create a culture of engagement within their teams. You will walk away with skills to develop deep, meaningful relationships with your staff, so they are committed to doing their best work for the organization.

Communicating with impact is crucial whether you are a seasoned professional or just starting out your career. Being aware of your communication style and those around you is imperative to creating and building prosperous business relationships. In this keynote, discover what your communication style is, learn how to communicate with impact, and determine how to flex your style to communicate effectively with others.

Building high-performing teams is crucial given the large network of people you interact with through the course of your job. Think about all the people that you come into contact with in your work life: colleagues, board members and other volunteers, donors, clients, the general public and so on. With this large network of people connected to your organization, learning how to work well together is vital. People in every workplace talk about building teams and working as a team, but few understand how to develop and lead an effective, productive team. This keynote shows you how.

Learning to apply emotional intelligence in the workplace is critical to business success. In school, we were put into teams, but we were never taught how to work with those teams. Our instructors gave us stress, but they never taught us how to handle and manage our stress. You see, most of these life skills are not taught in school or the workplace, for that matter. In today’s day and age, soft skills are just as, if not more, important than hard skills. Being aware of your emotions are skills that can be taught, and this keynote will start you off with the basics.