Susan David Management Thought Leader; Award-Winning Harvard Medical School Psychologist; Emotional Intelligence Expert

Emotional agility is more important today than at any other moment in recent history. Leaders and their people are experiencing intense pressure. They are simultaneously being asked to:

1. address the current needs of a world in flux, with challenges to where and how people work along with the repercussions on culture, engagement, and wellbeing; and to also
2. craft the future world of work with the need for rapid re-invention.

The ability to effectively meet complexity cannot be mandated. Nor can it be brought to life through strategy alone. Rather, this capacity depends on the core human skills of emotional agility. 

This practical and powerful talk, explores:

• The demand for flexibility, teaming, customer-centricity, innovativeness, and inclusiveness from culture and talent has never been greater.
• At the same time, increasing complexity in organizations conspires against these outcomes, leading to rigidity, black-and-white thinking, and transactional relationships.
• There can be no true organizational agility without the psychological agility of its leaders and employees. Emotional agility is a key skill set for individuals, teams, and organizations
• Emotionally agile people are dynamic. They demonstrate flexibility in dealing with a fast- changing, complex world. They face stress and setbacks with curiosity, compassion, and courage, and make choices that are values-connected and serve who they most want to be in life and work.
• The critical, internal psychological habits that enable employees to engage others across organizations, to team, and flourish.
• How getting hooked by thought, emotions and stories stops us, and our organizations, from thriving.
• How to show up to difficult emotions in oneself and others.
• How to move from rigid thinking to flexible curiosity.
• How to elevate unique human capacities (empathy, compassion, courage, and connection) in the face of stress and setbacks.
• How to maximize the likelihood that values (e.g., inclusion) will be enacted.
• Other essential steps to cultivate the emotional agility skills that are crucial human differentiators in a future, more automated world of work.

Organizations are facing a complex landscape: mental health issues have become a leading public health issue of our time. Approximately 1 in 2 employees is experiencing burnout (WHO), 87% of employees have experienced decreased wellbeing (McKinsey) and despite a cost of over $300 billion globally, workplaces are ill-equipped to effectively navigate this epidemic. Leader and employee wellbeing impacts all aspects of organizational life: teaming, engagement, culture, innovation. In sum healthy workplaces depend on psychologically healthy people.

In this practical, powerful, and potentially life-changing talk, Susan explores the crucial emotional agility skills that support the wellbeing of all people in the organization. Emotionally agile people are dynamic. They demonstrate flexibility in dealing with a fast-changing, complex world. They face stress and setbacks with curiosity, compassion, and courage, and make choices that are values-connected and serve who they most want to be in life and work.

• Susan challenges the prevailing attitude that we should “fix” our difficult emotions through positive thinking, or by encouraging employees to “be positive.”
• When we treat emotions as soft skills, try to fix them, or attempt to force employee positivity, we undermine psychological safety, mental health, and resilience, and we instead promote fragility.
• Instead, emotions are data. We can gain critical insights from them in order to adapt and respond to complexity.
• Why so-called “negative” emotions are critical to wellbeing, and key to effective decision-making.
• The crucial role of values in protecting people from emotional labor and burnout.
• Practical, science-based strategies to cultivate the human skills that enable us to connect and thrive, in complex times: courage, compassion, curiosity, emotion-regulation, values connection.