Erik Wahl

The best sustainable edge in business is the ability to differentiate yourself from your competition. Through this entertaining and highly practical program, we will uncover new ways to make your organization more creative, innovative and profitable, but more so, help your employees see the need to become better storytellers within and for your company and industry.

By embracing innovative strategies, professionals at all levels can achieve superior levels of performance by creatively and visibly differentiating themselves from the competition. No matter what kind of organization you have—from a small company to a large corporation—employees at all levels will better able to embrace the future by becoming more innovative, more productive and ultimately more profitable.

ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE

• > Differentiation, differentiation, differentiation
• > Telling a better story
• > Outthinking the competition

EMBRACING CHANGE

• > Working smarter, not harder
• > Sustaining excellence in a changing economy
• > Leveraging chaos to capitalize on opportunities

Today’s leaders face a pressure to innovate—or else perish—unlike any other time in history. Advances in social, mobil and cloud technology, coupled with fierce global competition has made the business landscape nearly unrecognizable from what it was a mere 10 years ago.

Erik Wahl’s entertaining and invigorating Art of Leadership presentation paints a compelling new portrait for what the successful leaders of tomorrow will look like. He inspires audiences to shed old ways of thinking and “business as usual” processes that are outdated, inefficient and detrimental to productivity. Audience members learn new ways to build an emotional connection to drive future employee engagement. Erik’s presentation stretches traditional assumptions on leadership. The end results include:

• – innovative solutions to further your organization
• – attracting and engaging quality employees
• – new efficiencies and the end of detrimental redundancies

Growth and comfort cannot co-exist. When leaders come from a place of authenticity, curiosity, exploration and purpose, this leads to more meaningful connections among team members and with clients and customers—and ultimately, a more profitable organization. An engaged employee equals an engaged customer.

Somehow we’ve come to believe that creativity is reserved for the chosen few: the poets, the painters, the writers. The truth is bigger and better than that. Creativity is in all of us. We simply need to rediscover the keys that will unlock our potential. UNthink is the keynote experience that will push members of your organization beyond their traditional thought patterns and habitual levels of performance. UNthink will inspire audiences to realize they are capable of so much more than they have been led to believe.

The UNthink program helps reframe your organization’s thinking so that new creative actions become possible. Learning how to UNthink will inject your daily grind with new passion, allowing employees to see how the organization wants and needs all of their talents and energies, not just the ones they’ve been using so far. You’ll begin the process of rethinking your life as a blank canvas of limitless opportunity on which to create your masterpiece.

This program will allow your organization to:

• 1. Step outside convention to discover new and unexpected solutions to business challenges
• 2. Challenge pre-conceived notions about what’s possible
• 3. UNthink your way to increased creativity, productivity and passion

It’s one thing to understand the importance of creativity to the success of your business, but what most people don’t understand is to how to put a structure in place so that innovation can find its way. The paradox of creativity is that structure creates freedom. Even the wildest minds require extreme orderliness and attention to detail so that they have the space and discipline to create.

Consider:

• – Beethoven sat down everyday at daybreak, regardless of season, and composed until 3:00pm.
• – Kafka started writing at 11:30pm each night.
• – Mozart taught lessons by day and composed only in the evenings.
• – Picasso ate lunch each day with his family in silence and only allowed visitors one day per week.
• – Mark Twain awoke at 5:30 am, ate a hearty breakfast, and wrote until 5:00 pm.

This training covers:

• – Why fanatical discipline is necessary to creativity and innovation
• – How to tap your “beginner’s mind,” which is a way to harness a fresh perspective on an issue and map uncharted solutions
• – How to overcome mental fatigue and mind blocks
• – How to set up a structure and culture in your organization that fosters creative work

The greatest advantage in an AI-driven world is not becoming more machine-like. It is becoming more human. Through this timely and highly engaging program, we explore how to harness AI as a catalyst for innovation while reclaiming the creativity, courage, and imagination that make us unmistakably human. Audiences will learn how to think more expansively, adapt more confidently, and use emerging technology without losing the human edge that drives connection, meaning, and breakthrough ideas. HUMAN-CENTERED INNOVATION / Harnessing AI as a creative catalyst / Expanding imagination in a rapidly changing world / Using technology without losing human connection CREATIVE COURAGE / Reclaiming curiosity, risk, and original thinking / Building confidence in times of uncertainty / Turning disruption into possibility