In the Give column, the participant posts a card that completes the sentence If I could name one area in which my team and I have developed expertise that may be useful to others in the company, it would be. This conference will address many topics and challenges surrounding women in leadership positions and has networking as a key highlight. This leadership focus is the theme of many virtual conferences, conference breakout sessions, and conference agendas. At the Future Festival World Summit, the worlds top inventors gather to brainstorm about the future and build prototypes. Because Kallos was looking to jump-start a culture change, it dialed up both features. The event will highlight case studies from well-known engineering businesses and practical advice and frameworks. But what actually happens is wearyingly predictable: impromptu speeches disguised as questions, multipart inquiries requiring time-consuming answers, softball questions intended to curry favor with the leaders, and questions relevant to only a handful of people in the roomto all of which the leaders must extemporize answers. Facilitators are also needed to help guide small-group discussions. A leadership conference may also be a great opportunity to evaluate your own leadership skills in an informal setting. The conference is a youth-led initiative whose goal is to develop leadership skills to help create a healthier and more equitable global health ecosystem that benefits everybodys health and wellness. Some of the best leadership conferences for women include The Wonder Women Tech Virtual Summit, Womens Leadership Conference, and The Women Lead 2032 Festival. Each table was given 66 poker chips and a game board on which to allocate the discretionary portion of the annual $3.3 billion operating budget. Instead of wasting valuable conference time explaining the structure, top leaders were able to have a problem-solving session about its implementation with knowledgeable, well-prepared attendeesthe people who would ultimately have to make the new structure work. Learn more about digital transformation week. The conference will also spotlight leaders who are working tirelessly to solve todays most pressing industry challenges. There is a better way. In the healthy discussion that ensued, a consensus emerged that growth was being constrained by an inability to tell consumers a compelling story. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies. And then they promptly forget about the summit until a few weeks before the event, when the planner starts reminding them that they need to pull their presentations together. An abbreviated day three included breakouts by region and concluded with a call to action from the CEO and promises from the executive team to track and support the commitments individuals and groups had made during the summit. Eight to 10 weeks before the meeting, attendees should be surveyed so that the summit director can determine how much time to spend on each objective and identify related issues that should be addressed. Sometimes the CEO suddenly remakes the entire agenda. Leading technical and engineering organizations at a high level can be difficult and isolating. The event focuses on supporting the advancement of women in leadership positions. The conference will highlight topics ranging from data science and content to automotive technology and environmental sustainability. This era is a tumultuous time for both technology and business. The event transcends from learning to sharing, connecting, and having fun. The element of surprise in this exercise can have a galvanizing effect, and identifying individuals creates opportunities for networking. Learn more about the Shortcut to Tech conference. And enthusiasm will build for each succeeding summit, as people look forward to a memorable event thats strategically significant for everyone. Numerous techniques can be employed to harvest the ideas of conference attendees. In the Get column, each participant posts a card that completes this sentence: If I could get help in one area that would make me and my team more successful in the coming year, it would be The card is like a classified ad, asking for a particular type of expertise or assistance. Instead of having 200 people sit through podium presentations on each of the five objectives, for instance, Kallos broke attendees into five groups of 40. Thirty days after the Kallos summit, each participant received an e-mail from an executive committee member listing the actions that person had committed to in the next 30 days section of his or her worksheet, followed by a single sentence: Shoot me a quick e-mail letting me know how these went.. You can learn a lot from other leaders. Rather than viewing meeting planning as a lower-level administrative function, the top executive convening the summit (the meeting owner) should designate a summit director and grant that person the authority to control the agenda and to say no to people asking to add things that dont fit its focus. He has extensive experience directing, controlling, and creating complex ideas and software platforms as the CTO and Chief Scientist at N26 and as a Technical Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks. You can also enhance your companys digital culture by being familiar with the essential tools and procedures that can help you make better business decisions, increase operational efficiency, and improve client retention. These and other exercises, designed to ripple far beyond the walls of the meeting venue, can be explicitly tied to the objectives of the summit. Heres how the planning process generally unfolds: Some six to 12 months in advance, a midlevel executive from HR, finance, strategy, marketing, or corporate communications is charged by the CEO or another top executive with planning the summit. Two 20-minute podium presentations, each focused on one objective, were broken up by exercises performed by each table and breakout sessions, followed by reports to the entire assembly. A leadership conference is an event that brings together company executives and experts to discuss leadership, collaboration, and other workplace challenges. Learn more about the Wonder Women Tech Summit. We argue that, in fact, this approach is ultimately more democratic, because it ensures that a cross-section of questions are answered in a way that brings substance to what is often an empty exercise. When executed well, annual gatherings of an organizations high-level leaders are worth the effort and expense. Many leaders resist this technique as somehow manipulative or undemocratic, feeling that an open mic is more honest. When you join the FCCLA, you will meet others who share your interests in family, leadership, community service, and accomplishment. In actuality, you may rapidly get fresh insights and ideas by meeting with leaders and learning about their job. Weve found that carefully focused and framed material usually takes no more than about 60 minutes to read. During the conference, participants will meet and hear from some of the worlds most prominent female leaders on the most critical topics of our time. The goal of the 2022 conference is to increase industrial diversity and stimulate innovation. It doesnt have to be like this. Dubbed as the largest conference for women in tech, the Wonder Women Tech Summit takes a hybrid format, with over 500 speakers from across the globe and three days of virtual events. Leadercast Live is one of the most popular virtual leadership conferences globally. A huge opportunity has been missed. GLOCs mission is to create innovative approaches to attain universal health coverage and financial access for people living in extreme conditions worldwide. Attending a leadership conference is about listening to the speakers and absorbing their wisdom during presentations. Include only the minimum amount necessary to set up discussions planned for the event. Learn more about ILAs Women and Leadership conference. C-level executives, division presidents, and function heads begin lobbying to add speaking slots or favored subjects to the agenda. Once participants have posted all their offers to assist and requests for help, they switch rooms with another breakout group and survey the Gives and Gets on those walls. He struggles to get on the executive teams calendar to discuss it. There is also a virtual version of the conference for those who cannot attend physically. Participants will also be able to tour The Lab, an immersive experience that offers mixed reality and futuristic products. At the end of day one, largely devoted to top-line growth, participants filled out a worksheet that asked them to list specific steps they and their teams would take to increase revenue immediately, in the coming three months, and in the coming 12 months. Such audience response systems can also facilitate highly complex group deliberations during breakout sessions. The conference brings together the countrys most innovative and fastest-growing firms in an exclusive setting that allows them to learn from one other and exchange ideas. Next, check out this list of the best HR conferences and these fun leadership activities for work. Every year, high school HOSA leaders, educators, and medical specialists from across the globe gather for the HOSA-International Leadership Conference. The TeamLead is one of the best in-person leadership conferences. After the summit, organizers should track commitments made during the event and equip attendees with talking points and presentations that help them discuss with their employees what happened at the summit and how to turn the results into action. Perhaps someone needs help developing a product feature, reconfiguring a plant layout, or adjusting a customer contract to achieve a certain outcome. You can consider attending a pre-conference leadership workshop to get the most out of this learning opportunity. For example, the percentage of people saying they fully understood the companys growth strategy rose from 37% in Kalloss pre-meeting survey to 82% after the summit, and the percentage describing themselves as optimistic or very optimistic about the companys prospects rose from 49% to 80%. Employing some simple principles and tools can make that happen. Among the responses were: We lack focus, Too many initiatives distract our attention, We lack new products, The plan to grow is not clear, and Our ability to attract and retain top-notch talent is questionable. The responses were compiled and a subset was displayed on a screen at the front of the room for discussion. But after some discussion, most executive teams develop a few concrete objectives. An emcee should be selected to introduce the sessions and speakers, smooth transitions, clarify questions from the audience to the speakers, and present instant polls and other social media input during the event. After the meeting, all the Gives and Gets are recorded and distributed to the appropriate individuals for follow-up. Breakout sessions allow you to interact with other attendees in a more engaging setting while also providing an opportunity to learn and network with like-minded individuals. This conference invites women of various ages, backgrounds, and professions to attend and share their knowledge. Seven to 10 days before the meeting, attendees can be given reading material focused on the objectives. A coordinator, reporting to the director, should be appointed to handle scheduling, travel, production, and logistics with the venue. People across the organization will understand what the results of the meeting mean for them. Participants will get the opportunity to join a discussion on IIoT Strategy with their peers. By applying the appropriate techniques before, during, and after the summit, C-level leaders can seize this rare opportunity to harness the collective knowledge of frontline executives. We are a little obsessed with company culture. The summit directors first contact with the CEO and the executive team may need to include a discussion of locationsan issue that requires a long lead time. If a participant sees a Get that she or someone she knows could address, she leaves a Post-it with a message about how she might be able to assist. The annual Global Leadership Conference (GLOC) brings together global leaders, legislators, academics, and non-governmental organizations representatives. Attendees will also get the chance to network with professionals from across the globe. The best way to improve your leadership abilities is to attend a leadership conference and pick up new skills and insights. When 90% of the 200 respondents indicated that they were proud of the brand, the focus of the objective restore faith in the brand was shifted to determine how to communicate our pride in the brand to sales reps. Open-ended survey questions included the standard Whats the one question you or your team would like addressed at the upcoming conference? and If you were riding in the elevator with the CEO and could tell him the one thing that would most improve the companys prospects, what would it be?. Repeating the pre-meeting survey questions will give you valuable insights into the impact of the event. That evening, the summit director, editor, and meeting owner can select the best questions and add ones they feel should have been asked; the executive team can formulate responses to the more provocative ones; and the rest can be parceled out to the appropriate executive team members. Later sessions address topics, such as a new ad campaign or a product rollout schedule, that concern only a portion of the people in the room. Company executives and leaders can build a crucial network and get new knowledge by attending leadership conferences. Not only did the quality of the promised actions greatly improve, but attendees learned what colleagues throughout the organization would be focusing on in the coming months, creating opportunities for collaboration. These sessions help professionals sharpen leadership competencies, strong leadership qualities, and team management skills. The annual strategic off-site should be designed and managed differently from all other meetings. After all the Give and Get cards have been posted, participants are given Post-it notes and asked to circulate around the room. Learn more about the National Leadership Conference. Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor. Brainstorming? Whats more, the executive team should track progress on any initiatives or commitments undertaken. We have found that an ideal podium session includes no more than four presenters who speak for 15 to 20 minutes each, using just five to seven slides. The globe summit will serve as a platform for innovators to exchange ideas, prototypes, and obstacles to invention. The conference will feature workshops and enlightening lectures. In some cases we have conducted sessions before the close of the meeting in which leaders, working with tablemates, simulate communicating major points to their teams and get feedback on both content and style. The Future of Everything Festival, hosted by the Wall Street Journal, brings together executives and innovators from various sectors to discuss and debate the latest developments in business, technology, health, science, and culture. But most leaders and meeting planners simply assume that the events are too unwieldy to allow for much more than an annual update and marching orders from the top. You found our list of top leadership conferences. The design and execution of the meeting itself should make that work come alive in what is in essence a series of structured conversations, carefully orchestrated to generate ideas, alignment, and, often, surprises along the way. Ernst & Young has planned a two-day conference for CEOs and high-growth entrepreneurs where they can meet and exchange ideas. Focusing C-level and other stage presentations on the objectives and making sure the presentations tie together requires appointing an individual as a single point of editorial contact. When a large percentage of the 90 people there said no, she asked participants to anonymously submit written questions, which she addressed on the spot. Day one was devoted to the first two objectives: understanding the current state of the company and communicating pride in the brand. Before the summit, its crucial to clarify roles and responsibilities (a director, who oversees planning and owns the agenda; a design team; a content editor; and so on), define a clear set of objectives for the summit, design the event around those objectives, and prepare attendees for productive conversations through reading material and brief webcasts. What characteristics should the communication have: Anonymous or public? Before the meeting, participants were required to join in on one of three webcasts conducted by the new division head, who used a few simple diagrams to explain the new operating structure and then answered typed-in questions from participants. In real time or delayed? During the conference, you will get the chance to learn from a group of senior IT executives and visionaries sharing real-world ideas on how to impact both the business culture and the IT environment. Another template was used to capture the suggestions from all five dialogues around the table and to communicate those results to the entire assembly. Given the many moving parts of large, multiday meetingspresentations, breaks, meals, breakouts, audiovisual setup, and the likedeviation from the schedule is impossible. The following morning, when the 200 participants walked into the auditorium, their reaction, as intended, was shock. Five executive team members, each responsible for explaining one of the objectives, rotated through the groups. Because companies generally dont design leadership conferences around concrete objectives, they typically pay little attention to what happens afterward. Executive team members spend a few minutes reacting to the locations. The event hosts many competitive activities to build leadership, professional, and technical skills. The conferences also allow you to meet other CEOs who may be dealing with the same difficulties. Learn how to create a winning business plan. Kallos kicked off its conference with a brief (15-minute) keynote in which the CEO introduced the meeting objectives and framed what was going to unfold. Contrary to what leaders and planners assume, you can have genuine and productive conversations with hundreds of people at once. Learn more about the Forbes Under 30 Summit. Four to six weeks before the meeting, the content editor should begin to assist all presenters, including outside speakers, in using one or more of the meetings objectives as the starting point and backbone of their presentations and to coordinate the presentations with one another. HBR Learnings online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Business Plan Development. Atlanta hosts the conference each year, and the event streams live across the globe. He must hold the line against presenters who say they have a few extra slides but promise they can get through them in the allotted time and those who try to cram mountains of information onto each slide. Solutions to a specific problem? But thats hard to do if all theyve brought back is a notepad full of haphazard observations, doodles, and a few vague slogans, as so often happens. In his current role, Patrick aims to accelerate the development of technical leaders via coaching, mentoring, and education. The conference provides an avenue for members to learn about leadership and other FCCLA topics, explore career options, and interact with notable guests. These events help you keep abreast of the most recent developments in the industry so that you may put them into practice. Every year, in virtually all large and midsize companies, high-level leaders come together for a leadership summit. Location: Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, Nashville. This is commonsensical, but rare. During leadership conferences, you will get the opportunity to participate in workshops, network with other professionals, and get actionable insights to solve various business-related or industry-specific challenges. The event gives leaders the chance to learn about the newest e-commerce trends, innovative company models, and how to build the perfect workplace. How to stop putting your top people to sleep, A version of this article appeared in the. Yet all too often, connections are left to happen by chanceat meals, in breakout groups, or during coffee breaks and cocktail hours. Take, for example, an exercise we call the poker chip game, first described in Off-Sites That Work (HBR, June 2006), which allows small groups using a game board and some poker chips to determine how a company should allocate its resources. Most leaders assume that summits wont allow for much more than an update and marching orders. Many old-school, low-tech tools are still remarkably effective in gathering input, including 3 x 5 cards on which participants write questions; color-coded cards, which participants can hold up in response to questions; templates to guide small-group discussions; and reports from breakout sessions. Such tools can make brainstorming, often unwieldy and unfocused when conducted with hundreds of people, more productive. Complex exercises. The participatory nature of the sessions encourages participants to share their thoughts and views. If the editor responsible for coordinating content has done a good job, the podium presentations will be succinct and integrated. Take, for example, a consumer products company well call Kallos, which has more than 35,000 employees and hundreds of thousands of sales reps. A new leader had succeeded a celebrity CEO, who in his wake left financial problems, low morale, and a culture that tolerated broken promises on the part of managers. They may suggest a few more speakers. An orientation webcast, similarly lasting no more than an hour, can also prepare participants to make meaningful contributions at the summit. teambuilding.com is a leading authority on team building and engagement at work. For four days, more than 9,000 young leaders and innovators from different fields will immerse themselves in engaging activities, from technology to entertainment to finance to fashion to charity. The conference covers talent management, leadership development, mentorship, and approaches to fight bias. Read more on the Saint TeamLead conference. Larger breakout groups? Small tables? But thats not the most important topic. The event promises to be exciting and give participants a unique opportunity to meet industry experts and decision-makers from the industry. As they wandered the perimeter of the room reading the comments about their own and their colleagues commitments, some were visibly embarrassed. Learn more about Bio-Innovation Conference. Information, proposals, and solutions flow in only one directionfrom the top downand not all that coherently. Additionally, continuing education credits are available for attendees. The result was eye-opening for top management. If she sees a Give that could be helpful to her, she places a Post-it with a message under the card. Its usually not clear whether theyve understood the messages theyre supposed to take back to their people, much less what anyone would be expected to do as a result. You can follow us on LinkedIn for team building tips! When he does, he uses his allotted 15 minutes to offer up some possible locations, three to five potential guest speakers, and a preliminary agenda seemingly related to a theme. Those 200 Gives and Gets typically generate hundreds of Post-its, creating a network of connections across locations, functions, and business units. Some of the topics that the event covers include: The conference will highlight industry-centric speakers and offer attendees networking hours. Participants will have a wide range of opportunities to interact with one another. Learn more about the Womens Leadership Conference. Read more on the Global Leadership Conference. Leaders will know in advance that theyll be heard. Naturally, there will be a focus on female leaders at the ILAs Women and Leadership conference. This years Maryland Life Sciences Bio-Innovation Conference will see many leading life sciences professionals with global brands, venture capitalists, and potential startups come together. To encourage collaboration within teams or discussion groups that emerged at the summit, either by design or by happenstance, enable attendees to continue the conversation among themselves through an intracorporate social network. Text messages work well when more-substantive answers are desired, as when 140 attendees at a leadership conference for an information management company were asked to name the biggest obstacle to the companys achieving its growth goals. Most leadership summits also include an open-mic Q&A session in which attendees ask questions of the CEO or the executive team. Such themes are often so laughably vacuousOne company, one vision, Forward together, Creating a common futurethat virtually any presentation or activity could be made to fit them. By carefully coordinating the event planning and applying some high- and low-tech practices during the summit, leaders can direct the conversation without inhibiting creative responses. The conference will challenge and inspire you to become the greatest leader you can be as you sit through keynotes and speeches from thought leaders and top CEOs. Whos in the Room? If you hold the Q&A on the second day, you can ask people to submit questions at the end of day one. If each breakout room holds 50 people, each participant will see 100 requests for help and 100 offers. Thanks to technology advances, the results of such exercises can be displayed instantly, providing comprehensive feedback to guide further deliberation. In addition to networking possibilities, the one-day conference will provide attendees with strategies for creating high-performing teams and energizing the spirit of cooperation among groups. The goal of advisors, mentors, coaches, and technical leaders is to help the next generation of leaders and organizations grow and thrive. Keynote speakers give you an inside look at how strategies and technologies can transform IT and your company. To avoid embarrassing participants, the comments can be provided to them individually rather than posted publicly. Solid pre-meeting work clarifies the objectives, coordinates the content, and initiates engagement with attendees. More importantly, leadership conferences provide a platform for CEOs to connect with other leaders in the industry. Discussion templates? The editor should attend rehearsals and provide feedback. But for many companies, the leadership summit is a numbing series of presentations in which information flows only from the topand not that coherently. But many companies squander this rare opportunity to harness the collective knowledge of their frontline leaders. How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them. The real moment of truth for a summit occurs when leaders return to their divisions, regions, or functions, and people ask, So, what happened at the meeting? Those leaders should be able to answer clearly and explain the implications. Only after a second instant poll indicated that virtually all attendees were comfortable explaining the strategy to others did the session proceed as planned. Typically, executives will want to specify several outcomes, but the important point is to formulate them as outcomes, not as a grab bag of agenda items loosely connected by a vague theme. To determine which tool to use when, the director should ask four closely related questions: Polling technology as simple as a wireless keypad or an app accessed through a smartphone or web browser allows participants to respond to yes-or-no questions or to indicate how much they agree with statements such as I am confident that we will achieve our revenue goals for the next two years. Polling results can be projected at the front of the room in real time for everyone to see (the luxury goods company did this). Participants will learn insights and strategies from some of the worlds most eminent leaders. The following is a list of all the leader conferences to consider should attending, together with descriptions, dates, and registration links: Considered one of the top executive leadership conferences, the EntreLeadership Summit will refresh you and your organization and provide fresh leadership insights. Guided or open-ended? Leadership conferences are a helpful way for business owners and executives to meet other like-minded professionals. The keynote speaker of the 2022 event, Patrick Kua, has more than 20 years of experience as an IT executive. Answers to all questions that were not addressed at the meeting, whether from executive team leaders or from attendees, should be provided within one to two weeks. Here are some frequently asked questions about leadership conferences: Leadership conferences are events that bring together industry leaders and experts for keynote presentations, brainstorming sessions, and workshops. 2022 teambuilding.com, all rights reserved | Terms | Privacy, HOSA Annual International Leadership Conference, Data & Technological Infrastructural facilities.