On Tuesday, September 30th, over 30 of our Roundtable program graduates reunited to get reinvigorated through a day of leadership learning, dialog and inspiration. The sessions kicked off with a TED-style talk from our friend Charles Brown, President of The Source and followed up with a CEO Panel featuring Charles, Naseem Somani of Gamma Dynacare and Tony Gareri of Roma Moulding who absolutely killed it. Injected throughout the day were talks on mindfulness, neuroscience, the importance of leadership and peer and expert roundtables. Here are a few of the things I learned that day:
- Our community is powerful…every single speaker who came into the room commented on the amazing energy that was emanating from the participants. When you pull like-minded people together, you really feel like you can make a difference as an individual and a collective.
- Being real is sexy and inspiring… our CEO panelists blew us away with their authenticity, candor and absolute genuineness. Lose the “executive” mask… it’s not needed. Be who you are and people will want to follow you. Thanks Naseem, Tony and Charles for bringing 100% of yourself to the session and sharing the good, the bad and the not-so-pretty.
- Collaboration drives success… from our amazing volunteer alumni committee, to the consultants and experts who donated their time, to the participants who brought their energy, questions and ideas and to the ERT team who gave it their all, this “unconference” was a true result of everyone’s contributions.
- Less is more… we had so much packed into the day that I feel like we over engineered parts of it. When you bring a group of really smart people together, give them space to create their own learning. Next year, we’ll fix that piece.
- Intimate is awesome… our plan for a limited number of attendees meant more time for conversation, reflection and sharing. We don’t get enough of that these days.
- Don’t be afraid to push the comfort zone…mindfulness, gratitude and neuroscience may not feel like conventional topics for a leadership conference, but they were awesome and insightful and we’ve already received multiple follow-up notes on the epiphanies people have had a result. Don’t assume that people aren’t “ready” for this stuff…they are.
- If you build it, they will come… when I started The Executive Roundtable, I wanted to create a tribe of leaders who gave a sh*t (sorry Brenda). People who cared about leadership, cared about people, wanted to make an impact. Seeing everyone in the room of Tuesday interacting, laughing, sharing ideas and supporting each other was truly awesome. Thank you all for making it happen.
We’re already plotting next year’s event, so stay tuned. And, if you’re in our Alumni and want to get involved in planning next year’s session, drop me a line. We’d love to have you involved.
Happy leading!
