Bill Benjamin

Your organization, like many others, is facing big challenges: whether it is an accelerated rate of change, threat of disruption, ambitious targets or aggressive competition; your people experience these organizational challenges as pressure. If not managed skillfully, this condition can result in diminished performance, lower engagement, and an inability to deal with change. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Research is clear that some leaders are better prepared to handle and lead their people through these challenges more than others. In this powerful keynote, based on the NY Times best-selling book, Performing Under Pressure, The Science of Doing Your Best When it Matters Most, your audience will learn how to leverage pressure to help them get to the other side of performance and succeed in achieving their most challenging goals.

In this cutting-edge keynote your team will learn:

▪  What exceptional leaders do differently from the average, to help their people manage change and perform at their best.

▪  How to build a culture ready to take “smart risks’ and innovate.

▪  Specific tools to leverage pressure and help others get to the next level of performance.

Why would anyone want to be led 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 & strategies to effectively manage situations of tension and conflict.

▪  Self-awareness: understanding the impact of your leadership style and 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.

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.

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.

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.

Nobody performs better under pressure. Regardless of the task, pressure ruthlessly diminishes our judgment, decision-making, attention, dexterity and performance in every professional and personal arena. In this program, you will be introduced to the concept of pressure management, offering the latest science on how your brain responds under pressure, and many empirically tested strategies to help you overcome the sabotaging effects of pressure.

The content and research for this program is based on the New York Times Bestselling book, Performing Under Pressure, co- authored by IHHP’s Dr. Pawliw-Fry.

This program provides insight into how pressure impacts the cognitive part of your brain. Using this insight, you will learn proven strategies to enable you to perform your best when is matters most.

In our experience of delivering hundreds of keynotes every year, we find the most impactful keynotes have an experience that expands beyond the presentation for both the individual participants and the client organization. Our approach to keynotes incorporates three key elements that engage the participant and organization before, during and after the keynote. Outlined below are the three components and how they contribute to an engaging experience.

1. Pre-keynote survey

The week before a keynote is delivered, we send out a custom link that directs participants to answer a link to a short (4 minute) survey to help uncover some of the key challenges they are facing. The data from this survey provides the speaker with insights that are used to ensure the presentation addresses directly some of the challenges identified by the respondents. The aggregate results (individual results are confidential) are presented as part of the keynote, providing a connection to the content and the audience.

2. Keynote presentation

The pre-keynote survey serves as a great segue to the core content of the presentation priming interest and attendees with a receptive mindset. The familiarity of the experience from the survey information combined with the thought-provoking, entertaining keynote presentation (developed and refined over working with a variety of audiences) ensures that the participants are engaged, and eager to learn.

3. Senior Leadership Team Executive Briefing

To provide a robust experience for the organization, our speakers make themselves available for a one-hour leadership briefing with your senior team immediately following the presentation to give them an opportunity to ask questions, build on the insights delivered in the keynote and develop thoughts regarding how best to apply the lessons learned and put the strategies & tools into practice.

We offer this pre, event and post keynote approach at no incremental cost as it is important to us that organizations experience the highest level of sustainable learning and swift movement toward behavior change.