Activating Leadership Over the Long-Term
Getting a Keynote Speaker in to add to your conference, event or retreat is a great investment.
A good speaker will add perspective, ideas, fresh energy and activate motivation in the room.
But one of the missing ingredients I often find with organisations wishing to lift their leadership is that they do not have a plan from there.
How do you take the idea from the Keynote and translate it into outcomes - achievable objectives that you can activate from Day One and keep working through and developing for the long-term? That kind of implementation means you get multiples of retention, application and growth from the Keynote and/or Event.
As a Learning and Performance specialist and Consultant, I help organisations develop processes that deliver results dramatically now and for the long-term.
A process that includes Discovery, the Keynote, Facilitated Sessions and Targeted Workshops will deliver the kinds of Outcomes that make a difference and achieve lasting impact for organisations AND conference attendees. You can then take it to the Next Level, as I have with my clients.
Here's how that looks...
Discovery
Determine the context and the actual issues facing your need and/or people. This is sorely lacking in most design of most internal conferences particularly and then the selection, design and delivery of the keynote and supporting presentations. Learn what people really think and actually address it. This is not a survey. Those are limited. Think qualitative. A skilled inquirer will uncover details you will never will with a pre-determined survey.
Keynote
Incorporate a powerful Keynote that will specifically incorporate the Discovery information. This will create strong connection and direction with your audience/people. You are not pandering to the Discovery - you may, in fact, be challenging deeply held beliefs and bulwarks against change and growth. Think: not affirmation, but ignition of ideas informed by underlying realities.
Facilitated Sessions
I have created sessions that immediately facilitate continued discussion or exploration. The sessions provide the petri dish in which you can grow the new ideas and applications relevant to your context - out of the Discovery and Keynote/Conference presentations. This is developing traction and growth. The facilitator has to just that - not present a thousand slides but help deliberate conversation to occur. Assumptions, biases, reticence as well as over-confidence all may need to be addressed. You are not creating consensus, but the best uncovering of issues you can.
Targeted Workshops
Workshops I distinguish from the facilitated sessions as the workshops will still explore challenges and so on but are more didactic in nature. You want your participants to be applying what they learn. Again, a thousand slides is a waste of time. The workshops should be designed so that real issues are addressed, deliberated and course of action decided. If they can do it then, all the better.
Outcomes
When you are looking to achieve outcomes, don't think in abstractions like "Being better leaders" or "Motivating change". One of the key problems I see as a Consultant AND as a Speaker is the lack of specific, valuable objectives. As a colleague of mine, Alan Weiss, says, the focus is so often on inputs not outputs. I help clients determine what are the outputs we want from the work. By doing so, you gain measurable and demonstrative impact.
Next Level
When something works, don't leave it at that - take the experience and determine how you can reiterate the process to level up. The maxim in business is that if you are maintaining the status quo, you are just going backwards. You simply don't realise it because you're stuck in the middle and aren't looking outside at the world passing you by. Instead, keep aiming for the next level of leadership and performance as you instigate a cycle of continuous improvement that will yield dramatic results.
Contact Peter McLean for a confidential, no-obligation discussion to set up a cycle of success for your event and organisation.
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