Taking on anything challenging—even when meaningful and exciting—will involve stress, discomfort, and struggle. In a world defined by uncertainty, the most powerful way to raise the bar and get to the next level is to boost the collective potential of how people work together. That starts by helping leaders and their people build awareness of their behavior, learn to embrace the emotions that come with challenges, and strengthen the skills of empathy to thrive collectively together, whether in-person or virtually.
Sara Ross, Chief Vitality Officer of the leadership research firm, BrainAmped, studies the influence of emotional intelligence, vitality-generating energy, and organizational culture on leadership, performance, and teamwork. Combining these areas and looking at them through the lens of brain science, Sara uses humor and storytelling to ensure people have actionable strategies they feel empowered to start using the moment they leave their seats.
Specifically, Sara will share the following in her keynote:
- It’s less about what you know and more about how you lead; learn the key behaviors that differentiate the best from the rest for creating stand-out leadership, performance, and teamwork.
- Knowing what to do and doing what you know are not the same; establish an in-the- moment emotional management strategy to strengthen personal accountability, make better decisions, and respond more skillfully—even in the most challenging circumstances.
- Trust is both a science and a skill; uncover the brain science of trust and how to use it to create more collaborative, innovative, and diverse cultures.
- To demonstrate empathy, you need to first develop it; learn an approach to extend empathy, especially in difficult conversations that get to the heart of the matter while strengthening relationships and driving results.
- Caring for people is not the same as carrying people; embody a mindset to shift leadership fatigue into leadership vitality.
*** It tends to be the best fit for groups looking for tools and insights around:
✓ Helping people strengthen their emotional intelligence and creating high-trust environments.
✓ Creating collaborative cultures where people feel cared about, respected, and part of something bigger.
✓ Strengthening leadership, relationships, and teamwork.
✓ Addressing change, getting buy-in around change initiatives, and creating cultures that foster innovation.
✓ Helping people build self-awareness and take personal ownership of their actions.
✓ Strengthening emotional-management strategies to help people approach and deal with difficult conversations, feedback, and relationships.
✓ Increasing the skill of empathy to strengthen diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
✓ Bettering listening, communication, and coaching skills, particularly in virtual and hybrid environments.
✓ Insights on how emotional intelligence influences recruitment, retention, and psychological safety.
We all want to put the last few years behind us. Unfortunately, with stress spiking, energy dropping, and levels of languishing—that motivation-dulling sense of blah-ness—lingering, we can’t ignore the toll things have had on people.
Based on the research and principles shared in her book, “Dear Work, something has to change,” Sara Ross shows that addressing these challenges and navigating the changing world of work requires a new question. Instead of asking how to help people feel less stressed and tired, Sara transforms the traditional approach by asking how can we help people feel more ALIVE. After all, the antidote to languishing isn’t to languish less—it’s to flourish more.
Looking through the lens of brain science, Sara teaches organizations, leaders, and their people how to boost their work vitality quotient to activate their Aliveness Factor. In addition to learning, this keynote will leave audiences laughing, inspired, and feeling recharged with actionable take aways to create more human-centered organizations, energized leaders, and healthier, happier, high-performing people. Specifically, Sara will share how:
- Beliefs can be the biggest barriers; identify three common misconceptions people hold regarding work, success, and rest that keep them stuck in the survival zone and how to shift them into aliveness activators.
- Surviving the day is not a strategy; learn a mindset to work better with stress and how to use it to fuel the energy needed to pursue bold, meaningful goals, invest in important relationships, and live a full, energized life.
- Boosting vitality requires intentionality; build physical, mental, and emotional fitness and fortitude by practicing more strategic self-care both at work and outside of it.
- Standing out does not require burning out; highlight the vitality amplification effect of incorporating three simple yet empowering questions that leaders can use to help their people work from their stand-out zone, while moving themselves from feeling leadership fatigue to leadership vitality.
- This is the era of work-life blur; break the cycle of over-working and under-living by managing work-life boundaries (yours and others), while simultaneously contributing to an organizational culture that supports vital work and people—particularly in hybrid environments.
*** It tends to be the best fit for groups looking for tools and insights around:
✓ Addressing stress, burnout, well-being, and happiness.
✓ Building resilience, fortitude, and mental/emotional/physical health.
✓ Reigniting a sense of purpose, possibility, and a positive mindset to overcome the inevitable obstacles and embrace the undeniable opportunities of the future.
✓ Establishing healthy work-life boundaries and habits for better productivity and effectiveness, including creating better screen-life balance.
✓ Practicing more strategic self-care and energy management through breaks and time off – even without an abundance of time.
✓ Working and leading in virtual/hybrid work environments that are based in empathy and empowerment.
✓ Managing leadership energy to better engage, motivate, and support their teams (even when both are maxed out).
✓ Setting clear expectations for teams creating healthier and happier workplace cultures.
✓ Insights on how organizational vitality influences retention, recruitment, and psychological safety.
Never have the skills of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) been as heavily tested and relied upon as right now. With people navigating new ways of working, this is especially true for teamwork and collaboration.
The challenge is that with stress, exhaustion, and disconnection on the rise, it has also never been as difficult to practice these skills as it is right now, whether at work or home. In this keynote, Sara Ross will change that by helping you tap into your EQ skills to go from simply surviving the stress of today to thriving with energy and resilience, in spite of the stress of today.
Building on the science of resilience and performance, as well as her current research and experience coaching leaders and advising organizations as they focus on the future of work, Sara will share the following:
1. The top two behaviors that make the best stand out from the rest in high-stress environments and how to apply small mindset shifts to help you demonstrate each without exhausting yourself in the process.
2. How to strengthen personal accountability by exploring the science of emotions to better understand the impact you have when emotions run high, especially through email.
3. How to use a stress-buffering strategy to help deal with difficult situations and adapt to changing environments with confidence and resilience.
4. Whether in-person or virtual, an approach to connect and collaborate with empathy to expand your understanding of others, stretch and test new ideas, and address challenges in a head-on, trust-strengthening way
Faced with constant uncertainty, intense scrutiny, leading virtually, and on the heels of a pandemic, never has strong leadership been as essential or as difficult to practice as it is now.
Two areas being most heavily tested; how leaders leverage and evolve their emotional intelligence (EQ) skills and how leaders manage their energy to show-up day after day in a purposeful way, defined as their vitality quotient (VQ). The combination of these two is the difference between good but exhausted leaders surviving the stress of today versus leaders that standout and thrive, in spite of the stress of today.
Building on the science of resilience, as well as her current research and experience coaching leaders and advising organizations as they focus on the future of work, Sara will share the following:
1.The top three behaviors that make the best standout from the rest and the mindset barriers that must be overcome to demonstrate each in high-stress environments.
2.The science of how emotions influence leadership presence and how to ensure your vision translates into your desired impact and why this can be especially hard in virtual environments.
3.How to use a stress-buffering strategy to help deal with difficult situations and adapt to changing environments with confidence and resilience.
4.Whether in-person or virtual, an approach to balance empathy and accountability to expand your understanding of others, empower others to stretch and test innovative ideas, and address challenges head-on, so performance is lifted without exhausting yourself in the process
The need for resilience has always been high. With record levels of unrelenting stress, ambiguity, and challenge, the demand for resilience has become constant. Not just for the significant setbacks and major change, but as an on-going skill to deal with everyday frustrations and obstacles. When looking to build resilience skills, most of the focus is on the “bouncing back” element. The problem is, this is only half the equation.
To truly strengthen your Resilience Quotient (RQ), you must also learn how to fall better when you get knocked down! The most resilient, and often the most successful people, stand out not because they never fall but because they fall better, which helps them get up faster. This allows them to consistently stretch their potential to learn, innovate, adapt, and thrive – even in the most stressful times.
In this keynote, Sara Ross will take you through a four step research-backed method to raise your RQ by sharing the following:
1. The difference between challenge-stress and crisis-stress and the brain science of emotions triggered by each.
2. Three mindset shifts to change the narrative of the story you tell yourself when it’s keeping you stuck, discouraged, and overwhelmed.
3. An approach to increase your awareness of obstacle-thinking and how to instead focus on the opportunities those obstacles present, the choices you can make, and how to channel both into positive momentum-creating action.
4. A strategy to address the three thieves of resilience: perfection, comparison, and the fear of judgment and how to use your fear to fuel your growth.
Taking on anything challenging, even when meaningful, involves stress. In a world defined by unrelenting change, it’s not surprising there’s been a spike in stress levels and a drop in energy levels. Leaders and their people report feeling perpetually consumed by work and behind on life. The challenge is that the traditional well-intentioned advice of “ease up and slow down” to tackle stress is often impossible to apply. Worse, it inadvertently results in people feeling they need to compromise their drive and dedication in the process. There is a better way.
In this keynote, Sara Ross will share her research showing you that raising yourWork VitalityQuotient (WVQ)will help you pursue bold goals without burning out in the process.
Sara will take you through the steps to increase your WVQ, making it your distinct competitive advantage in the future of work by:
1.Differentiating healthy standout-stress from unhealthy sacrifice-stress.
2.A method to spot and avoid the most deceiving “Brain Traps” that disguise themselves as paths to success but instead negatively influence your decisions, effectiveness, vitality, and relationships.
3.A Key Vitality Indicator (KVI) system to monitor your mental, emotional, and physical energy helping you identify the tipping point where more work becomes counterproductive with ways to replenish your energy when you don’t have an abundance of time.
4.Strategies for better energy management in virtual environments, setting work-home boundaries, and dealing with digital depletion exacerbated in virtual work. If you feel like you’ve been running on fumes to just get through the day, Sara will give you the tools to get you back to firing on all cylinders to help you take on the day, so you stand out in the work you do, the leader you want to be, and the positive impact you want have both at work and at home.
Taking on anything challenging, even when meaningful, will involve stress. In a world defined by unrelenting change, it’s not surprising there’s been a spike in stress levels and a drop in energy levels. People report feeling perpetually consumed by work and behind on life.
For leaders, there is an additional layer of pressure–managing their stress, their energy, and their work as well as that of the people they lead.The challenge is that the traditional well-intentioned advice of “ease up and slow down” to tackle stress is often impossible to apply. Worse, it inadvertently results in people feeling they need to compromise their drive and dedication in the process. There is a better way.
In this keynote, Sara Ross will share her research showing you that raising yourLeadershipVitality Quotient (LVQ)will help you stand out as the leader you want(and need to be),without burning yourself or your people out in the process.Sara will take you through the steps to increase your LVQ, making it your distinct competitive advantage in the future of work by:
1. Differentiating healthy standout-stress from unhealthy sacrifice-stress.
2. A method to spot and avoid the most deceiving “Brain Traps” that disguise themselves as paths to success but instead negatively influence your decisions, effectiveness, vitality, and relationships.
3. A Key Vitality Indicator (KVI) system to monitor your mental, emotional, and physical energy helping you identify the tipping point where more work becomes counter productive with ways to replenish your energy when you don’t have an abundance of time.
4. Highlight the amplification effect of vitality-boosting and depleting practices to help you understand how to lead more energized teams and organizations.5.Strategies for better energy management in virtual environments, setting work-home boundaries, and dealing with digital depletion exacerbated in virtual work.
