Video calls and webinars are as ubiquitous as wildly overgrown hairstyles these days, but hear us out: there’s a new weekly webinar series that is well worth shining up that webcam and spending another hour in front of your screen. Clear Head, Strong Mind was created by ILEA in partnership with Certified Leadership and Personal Performance Coach Angela Braun to help our industry walk through all of the various stages of this experience we’ve found ourselves in. The series focuses on a different relevant topic each week, determined by the stage we’re at along this process, and provides practical, usable advice and guidance to help us get through this with our mental, physical, and professional health intact.
“The event industry had a really quick, difficult transition to make due to the pandemic,” Angela points out. “The industry came to a grinding halt in a very short period of time, and this series came to be out of necessity.”
Very quickly, ILEA’s International Board of Governors needed to answer the demand to get information out to its members, starting with immediate technical, tangible issues that needed to be addressed in the wake of the global shutdown of live events. Now, as we’ve settled into a new normal and are facing the ongoing reality, the focus of the series has shifted as well.
“It was about stabilization first, and now we’re in the space of uncertainty – what’s going to happen next, what is it going to look like when we’re allowed out of isolation and are able to work again? Once things stabilized, it became about emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing.”
Now over one month in, Clear Heads, Strong Minds is covering topics that Angela describes as a “mindset shift,” designed to help us lean into uncertainty and build our resiliency. In weekly episodes, topic experts have covered things like recognizing grief, practicing radical self-care, the correlation between stress and emotional eating (Hands up? Us too.), dealing with toxicity, and how physical movement can help us process emotion and manage stress.
Presented via Zoom, the webinar is a combination interview and presentation style, depending on the topic and the presenter. The format is typically about 15 to 20 minutes of topic discussion delivered by a subject matter expert, followed by an interviewer asking additional questions, and the chance for live questions from attendees.
“It’s an opportunity to step away from business for a while to focus on our own wellbeing,” Angela says. “It’s a chance for us to ground into wellbeing, as it relates to recovery, from a powerful place versus from a place of disillusionment.”
Anglea and the ILEA team behind Clear Head, Strong Mind are currently planning topics through the end of June, and are starting to shift focus into the recovery phase. That means that discussions will begin to centre around looking toward the future, with subject matter like vision, productivity, inspiration, adaptation, and fostering the creativity and innovation our industry will lean into now more than ever.
If all this sounds like something worth blocking into your work-from-home schedule, you can register for the May 22 discussion, “Why a growth mindset is essential to success” here, and keep an eye on this page for future sessions. Clear Head, Strong Mind is currently open to everyone free of cost, and we’d love to see you join us as we dig into our industry’s reality, and pro-actively tackle our response. The webinar team has big plans for the future of the series through the duration of the current situation and potentially even post-pandemic, and they’ll be looking to the industry for feedback as they continue to develop it further.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: we believe in the resilience and spirit of our community, and the power and impact of positivity. The more we come together to have these types of conversations now, the stronger we will be on the other side. Sign-up, get in on the conversation, and let us know what you think!
Photo credit:
angelanicolecoaching.com
