Don’t Forget: We Aren’t Getting Any Younger!
As the spokesperson for the Alzheimer’s Society of NS for almost ten years, Bill was exposed to many issues regarding senior’s health and even more specifically senior’s care. The demographics are clear; senior’s health is a growing concern for this generation and the next. The term ‘sandwich generation’ is an accurate one with many people being squeezed by pressures from their children and their parents. How do we discuss these issues as they affect us immediately and personally, and as a society? For discuss them we must.
Whether you are a health care institution or association, a caregiver, a senior in need of care, or a family member challenged with the care of a loved one, ideas and feelings can be vented and reflected upon. Decisions made without this sort of consultation are decisions made in a vacuum and not responsible to, nor responsive of, those who are deeply affected.
Believe it or not, this keynote is uplifting, and interspersed with Bill’s self deprecating humour and stand-up comic wit, energy and timing!
Work Inspired
Bill explores research into how the brain works and how we can use this knowledge to create an environment that will nurture a creative response to change and keep a healthy perspective in unhealthy times. Bill focuses on empathy and what he calls “contagious inspiration” and discusses how nurturing our relationship with our selves and others can “wire our neuro” pathways and change surviving into thriving and tragedy into strategy.
Talking in Circles
Talking in Circles will be helpful for organizations who are feeling challenged by issues like: intergenerational difficulties, creative visioning for the future, team building, silos that inhibit corporate growth and effectiveness, or poor internal communication. Bill asks questions such as:
- Is what we are saying what we mean?
- Is what we are saying what people are hearing?
- Where are our ideas really coming from?
- How do we talk about the “tough stuff”?
- How come I can talk to everyone but you?
Deep Service
Every industry is a service industry, every life a life of service on some level. The deep truth is whether at work, in our community, or in our home life “we do, in fact, serve somebody. As leaders and managers, we serve our company, our fellow employees and our clients; and to an important, and often neglected sense, we serve our community, our society and our world. At home we serve our families, our neighbourhoods, and again our society and the world. The depth and quality of this service is directly affected by how we see ourselves as being “in service”. Perception drives performance. When our lives are seen from a “service” perspective, it deepens our understanding of our place andmission in the world. Deep Service explores the idea of servant leadership in your specific industry context.
Seeing with Safety Glasses
Safety is a mindset. Much more than just rules and protocols, it is a way of seeing and then acting on what we see. It is about anticipation and the individual and collective responsibility for changing our workplace. Through his work with a number of diverse organizations, Bill has learned that the essential ingredient in creating a culture of safety is the development of a safety mindset. This mindset affects how we perceive our workplace and how we understand our responsibility to our selves and our co”workers. At its core, building a culture of safety is about building an empathic and caring community.
Acting Up
Our life is our own show. It is our own unique performance and creation. We never play just one role. We play many at work and in our personal lives. In our work a day world we don’t often take the time to ask the deep questions about motivation and intention. Our lives are acting on us, instead of us acting out our lives. That is why the discovery of what Bill calls and defines as the ‘authentic self’ is so critical. Without knowing who we are, we can never be fully in charge of who we will become.
In the Acting Up keynote, Bill explores some of the neuroscience of self and the current discussions of mind, brain and body consciousness. His ideas about the nature of ‘mask’ and the characters we play everyday, consciously and unconsciously, help the audience start to see that they too are playing roles and significant roles at that. He helps the audience see how the roles they play intersect and impact one another. He stresses the importance of understanding, not just how you see yourself, but also how you are seen by those around you.
In Acting up, Bill explores strategies for ‘acting up’ to our better selves and playing the roles we want to play the way we know we want to play them. He discusses the value of friends and the need for safe “rehearsal space’ as we try out our various ‘character revisions.’ He shows how character is created through challenge and failure and the important truth of “the Watcher” which operates in all our lives. And the importance of understanding there is a distance between action and reaction. This is a fun and insightful keynote that is among Bill’s most personal and heartfelt offerings. Bill often says, “I’ve truly lived this one! My whole life has been an experiment in trying to Act Up and not just act out.”
