The Resilient Leader and Team

The Resilient Leader and Team – how to look after your mental health and that of your team

Introduction

Has there ever been a time when our individual and collective resilience has been more tested than in the past year? And so it continues as we head into 2021. We can see light, but the end of the tunnel is not quite within touching distance yet. We need to make sure that we have the stamina to get there. What looked like a sprint in March 2020 has very much turned into a marathon and the training for each of these races is completely different, as we know.

With this in mind, we believe that looking after your resilience and that of your team matters more than ever. It has a direct impact on your mental health and can also be the difference between business success and failure. Understanding how to build and protect your personal and organisational resilience matters more than ever.

Seminar overview

When our resilience is reduced as individuals, nearly everyone notices physical and emotional symptoms. Our capacity to think rationally and clearly takes a hit and we find ourselves triggered into survival mode. A different recovery strategy will be needed if you are a perfectionist or a control freak, someone who avoids conflict, a pleaser or a combination of these.

What can undermine your resilience? What are the signs? And what strategies help you recover? How do you spot when others are at risk and what can you do to help? For some, recovery is swift and easy. For others, much less so. What factors make up that difference?

In teams, the landscape is more complex. There is more interdependence, more of a focus on governance and structure, momentum, proactivity and values.  Now that transformational change is more of a way of life than a once in a decade event, how do you prepare your team, especially your leadership team, for this? Come to this session to learn about the characteristics that we notice in teams when they are more able to stay resilient even when they carry significant responsibility and are under pressure to deliver at pace.

We will explore the pressures of working life as a leader and provide a framework for thinking about personal resilience. We will look at the 10 factors that show up in resilient teams and suggest the questions that you might want to be asking of yourselves and your leadership colleagues in an interactive and discursive session.

Benefits

• Understand your own version of resilience and what triggers you
• Share experiences with others in the group
• Explore the characteristics of resilient people and organisations
• Stretch your thinking around the key resilience questions for you as an individual and for your teams
• Consider what you might do differently tomorrow to ensure that you are safeguarding your mental, physical and emotional well-being, and that of your team

Who should attend

Anyone leading a team in your agency.

About the presenter

Vonnie Alexander spent 25 years in the Marketing, Advertising and Communications industry as a leader and entrepreneur. Working with clients from across all sectors and media.

In 2002, she set up Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw with three partners and grew the business before selling it to Publicis Groupe ten years later. During that time she saw it grow, stumble through recession and grow again, both in reputation and performance.

She has seen first-hand what it takes to lead and achieve ambitious business goals within organisations large and small. She has also observed that we can be at our most creative and resourceful (resilient) when challenged or under pressure if we are mentally prepared, and that it doesn’t take much to knock us off balance if we are not.

Her own resilience was severely tested in 2014 and it was at this point that she decided to retrain as a coach. She has been running a thriving coaching practice for the past 5 years working with clients in the worlds of retail, publishing, professional services and, of course, advertising and communications.

Running this session online

Normally, AAR seminars are held in the rather lovely Penthouse over at the IPA on Belgrave Square, and we hope to be welcoming you through their doors again very soon. However, during these challenging times of social distancing and restrictions indoors, all of our Core and Senior seminars will be delivered remotely via Zoom video conference. This enables us to continue to deliver on our commitment to providing training for our agency subscribers in a safe and convenient format.

We will be running one session only from 10am to 12.30pm on Wednesday 27 January 2021 via Zoom. If you or a colleague would like to participate, please do email us on events@aargroup.co.uk and we’ll be sure to send you the conference details.

NB: AAR seminars are exclusive to AAR subscribing agencies only. A maximum of FIVE places per agency for our remote sessions, please.

Many thanks for your flexibility and support throughout these unprecedented times.