Dr. JP Pawliw-FryEmotional Intelligence and Leadership Speaker in Canada

Building a Last 8% Culture: High Performance in an Uncertain World

Whether we like it or not, the pandemic has dramatically influenced and re-shaped the way we work. Ignoring this means your workplace culture will grow by default instead of design, putting you at risk of losing top talent, especially in the age of the Great Resignation. The biggest challenge for organizations is adapting to uncertainty and fostering a culture that can deliver performance in critical moments.

What’s the solution? In this keynote, Dr. JP Pawliw-Fry takes the riddle out of employee retention. He breaks down the myths surrounding workplace culture and reveals the key to building engaged and high performing teams in today’s volatile, uncertain, and complex world. Culture exists primarily at the team level, and leaders who lean into challenging conversations are the ones who truly create culture.

While many executives and CEOs feel the onus falls on them, Pawliw-Fry shows why it’s actually team leaders and managers who drive culture-building. Why? Because culture exists within individual teams, not an organization. Through sharing practical tools and strategies needed to increase connection and empower others, audiences will learn:

The two pillars of high performing cultures: High connection (psychological safety) and high courage (ability to do hard things skillfully).

What a “last 8%” culture is, and how to build team culture through a “Model and Own” approach.

Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When it Matters Most

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. Leaders feel agency during critical moments, which enables them to deliver performance and succeed.

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.

Are You An Exceptional Leader?

Why Meeting Your Biggest Challenges has Everything to Do with Leading Under Pressure

Your organization, like 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, which can result in diminished performance, lower engagement, and an inability to deal with change. It doesn’t have to be this way. Many leaders misunderstand culture by thinking it is set at the top, when in fact it is shaped by team-level actions and conversations.

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 New York Times bestselling 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.

The Science of Emotional Intelligence

The Missing Ingredient Behind Building a Highly Engaged Organizational Culture

Why would anyone want to be led by 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). Significant challenges arise when leaders rely solely on technical skills instead of emotional intelligence, especially in high-pressure environments.

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 to manage it more effectively.

Self-awareness: understanding the impact your leadership style has on your people.

Strategies to manage emotions when there is tension and conflict.

How to win the hearts and minds of your people by connecting to the emotions that drive their behaviour.

Engaging stories from the frontlines of leaders who are stepping up and winning in the most challenging pressure-filled circumstances.

Why the Conversation You are Not Having is Holding You Back: Getting to The Last 8%

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. Avoiding the last 8% of a feedback conversation creates significant challenges for both individuals and organizations, including increased anxiety, decreased psychological safety, and diminished performance.

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. More challenging conversations are essential for high performance, and difficult conversations are a key skill for leaders to develop.

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.

All Change is Personal

Why Leading Through Disruption and Change is About People Not Technology

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 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.

Mindful Leadership

How to Use Mindfulness to Navigate Today’s Demanding, Complex World

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 forward-thinking keynote, your team will learn:

The science of the brain under pressure.

An introduction to the practice of Mindfulness; its practice 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.

The Art of Empathy

How are managers doing today with all the changes and challenges they are facing?

Well, our research shows that 65% of employees would forego a pay raise to get their manager fired.

Maybe not so well.

What can you do? With engagement levels at historically low levels, this is a serious problem that organizations need to solve if they are going to adapt and win. The good news? In our research, we found pockets of employees who feel differently, who are far more engaged. The reason? They felt they had an exceptional manager who, specifically, had a higher level of empathy.

This program focuses on what your managers can do to create a high-performance environment that meets the needs of your employees: Leaders succeed when they master feedback conversations and difficult conversations, especially during critical moments.

How your managers can be “umbrella” managers for their people – tuned in and understanding of the challenges their people face and offering protection from the stress and pressure everyone in the organization feels.

How to listen, have empathy, be humble, and emotionally connected while setting challenging expectations and holding people accountable.

Actionable strategies to manage more effectively.

Employees with exceptional managers have greater clarity of what is expected of them and are able to better navigate through changes and challenges.

With this program, you’ll see the positive impact of showing your employees that their manager is on their side.