Bill Benjamin
- Partner, Institute for Health and Human Potential (IHHP)
- Emotional Intelligence, Performance, and Leadership Expert
- Helping people and teams overcome the barriers that often hold them back from reaching their full potential
In Person-Fee 🛈
Fee Range
$15,000 - $20,000
Virtual Fee:
$10,000 - $15,000
Travels From
Illinois
Bill Benjamin Speaker Biography
As a math and computer science guy, Bill Benjamin discovered the power of managing emotions while he was working in the technology industry. Bill is very honest about the struggles he had early in his career as a leader. He was so impressed by the Institute for Health and Human Potential [IHHP]’s brain science-based approach to Emotional Intelligence, and even more so by its practical applications, that he became a partner in the company. Now that’s commitment!
Bill’s experience in technology and sales gives him real-world experience in the types of challenges that organizations face today. His analytical background in math and computer science drives him to take a practical and scientific approach to helping people understand how the brain responds under pressure, and how that can help increase leadership and performance.
Bill has an authentic approach that resonates with the audience and especially with those that might be typically resistant to the important relationship between ‘soft-skills’ and exceptional leadership. A natural storyteller, he balances anecdotes with science and research to engage all types of participants. When he is not speaking, Bill spends time working with senior leaders and their teams at Fortune 500 companies helping them overcome the barriers that often hold them back from reaching their full potential.
Bill loves to write and contributed to the New York Times and Amazon bestselling book, Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When it Matters Most, co-authored by IHHP’s JP Pawliw-Fry and published in 65 countries with multiple translations. Bill is also a regular contributor to CEO magazine, Training Magazine, as well as other leadership publications.
Bill is originally from Canada and moved to New York City in the nineties. He now calls Chicago home and it is here you will find him indulging in his other passions – his family, scotch, and cycling.
To book Bill Benjamin call Executive Speakers Bureau at 901-754-9404.
THE CALM PERSON IN THE BOAT: LEVERAGING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE DURING COVID-19
The world and your people are facing not one virus, but two: Covid-19 and the virus of fear.
Fear can get in the way of our ability to think clearly, make good decisions and work effectively as a team. And yet this is exactly what we need to do right now to successfully navigate this crisis. Your team requires Emotional Intelligence based tools to manage their brains and behavior under pressure so they can remain calm and form the kind of response your organization needs today.
Specifically, your team will learn:
- Strategies to be the “calm person in the boat” who can deal with the uncertainty and fear rampant in today’s environment
- How to coach others who are at a distance and feeling overwhelmed emotionally by the change and challenges they are experiencing
- How to make difficult decisions and have difficult conversations
- Habits of individuals who perform at a high level under pressure
This powerful program is delivered by Bill Benjamin of the Institute for Health and Human Potential – who wrote the book on pressure, the New York Times bestseller, Performing Under Pressure – and worked with Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve Bank during the global financial crisis. They will share specific tools to help your people manage their emotions and their brain so they can show up with more confidence, empathy, and courage during this difficult time, enabling everyone else on their teams to remain calm, confident, and focused.
LEAD IN LAST 8% SITUATIONS
• Now is not the time to play safe. Tough decisions and conversations that may have been put off in the past are now critical to your success.
• Avoiding difficult decisions, conversations, and situations, what we call Last 8% Situations, not only handicaps your organization’s ability to adapt and win but disengages your most important resource, your people.
• In this powerful virtual program, your people will learn specific tools to engage in difficult conversations and decisions that lead to a high performing culture that drives innovation, engagement, and success.
Are you an Exceptional Leader? Why Meeting Your Biggest Challenges has Everything to Do with Leading Under Pressure
Your organization, like many others, is facing big challenges: whether it is an accelerated rate of change, the 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.
MINDFUL LEADERSHIP: NAVIGATING A 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 focus, make thoughtful decisions, and connect to a variety of employees, customers and stakeholders in a volatile, uncertain world. How is this possible? The answer is Mindfulness.
Mindfulness is a practice that builds our attentional strengths, allowing us to be more present for people and important decisions and increases our resilience, the ability to deal with the ups and downs of life. In the same way that we go to the gym to build physical strength and endurance, Mindfulness is strength training 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 powerful keynote, your team will learn:
• An introduction to the practice of Mindfulness and how it powers performance, energy and health
• The science of the brain under pressure
• 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 Science of Emotional Intelligence: The Missing Ingredient Behind Building a Highly Engaged Organizational Culture
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.
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 operating systems (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.
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.
- 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.
EXPANDED KEYNOTE EXPERIENCE
IHHP Expanded Keynote Experience
In our experience of delivering hundreds of keynotes every year, we find the most impactful keynotes have an experience that expands beyond the presentation of both the individual participants and the client organization. Our approach to keynotes incorporates three key elements that engage the participant and organization before, during and after the keynote. Outlined below are the three components and how they contribute to an engaging experience.
1. Pre-keynote survey
The week before a keynote is delivered, we send out a custom link that directs participants to answer a link to a short (4 minute) survey to help uncover some of the key challenges they are facing. The data from this survey provides the speaker with insights that are used to ensure the presentation addresses directly some of the challenges identified by the respondents. The aggregate results (individual results are confidential) are presented as part of the keynote, providing a connection to the content and the audience.
2. Keynote presentation
The pre-keynote survey serves as a great segue to the core content of the presentation priming interest and attendees with a receptive mindset. The familiarity of the experience from the survey information combined with the thought-provoking, entertaining keynote presentation (developed and refined over working with a variety of audiences) ensures that the participants are engaged, and eager to learn.
3. Senior Leadership Team Executive Briefing
To provide a robust experience for the organization, our speakers make themselves available for a one-hour leadership briefing with your senior team immediately following the presentation to give them an opportunity to ask questions, build on the insights delivered in the keynote and develop thoughts regarding how best to apply the lessons learned and put the strategies & tools into practice.
December 17, 2021
Bill was the most thorough presenter we have had for our leadership conference. He took the time to learn all he could about our organization and did an outstanding job of engaging the audience throughout his presentation.
ApolloMD Helpful 0