Dr. JP Pawliw-Fry

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.

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.

Innovation does not magically occur in a few fortunate companies featured on the front of Fast Company, because some people take a workshop and adapt an “innovation mindset” or because you select the right technology; it starts the day people feel safe to take a risk and offer an idea that has the potential to be terrible.

In this fast moving and powerful program, you will learn from the latest research what you can do to get innovation to take hold in your organization.

Your team will learn:

- What enables and diminishes creativity?
- What are some of the internal barriers to being innovative?
- Why innovation is not driven by lone geniuses but by highly engaged teams (or, as the Japanese proverb states: “all of us are smarter than any of us”).
- How to have the difficult “Last 8% conversations” that are so vital to iterating an idea; and finally,
- How to create an environment of risk-taking that is at the heart of innovation.

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.

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 slow down, focus and make thoughtful decisions in a volatile, uncertain world. How is this possible? The answer is Mindfulness.

Mindfulness is a practice that builds our attentional strength, increases our ability to deal with the ups and downs of work life and increases resilience. In the same way that we go to the gym to build strength and endurance, Mindfulness is like strengthening 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 progressive keynote, your team will learn:

- The science of the brain under pressure.
- An introduction to the practice of Mindfulness; its performance and health benefits.
- Tools to slow down and be decisive when important decisions need to be made.
- How to use Mindfulness to become a more effective leader that others will want to follow.

Your people are burning out. After a long, difficult time during the pandemic, they are feeling overworked and underappreciated. This is causing many to question staying in their current position.
The most important thing your organization can offer them is not more money (though you need to be paying them fairly) – it is an environment strong in empathy. When an individual doesn’t feel like they have a voice, doesn’t feel valued or doesn’t know where they stand with their manager, they start to disengage, lose energy and contemplate leaving. This is especially true when they face uncertainty and the challenges of remote/hybrid work.
Equipping your managers (and your whole organization) with empathy not only helps people who are struggling to get through a tough time, but it also puts them on the road to achieving great things together. Something they truly desire.

In this powerful virtual program, your people will learn:
1. What the single greatest cause of a lack of empathy is
2. Why is building both Heart and Edge (the ability to care, tune in, and hold people accountable) so important to generating discretionary effort and building a great culture?
3. How to inspire their people to do great work.
4. What are the key components to building an environment of high psychological safety, and why does it matter to innovation?
5. How to achieve great things together in a virtual or hybrid environment.