The pursuit of holistic well-being has evolved to encompass physical, mental and social dimensions. The Reel Insights learning track at Expo! Expo! IAEE’s Annual Meeting & Exhibition 2024 offered a compelling exploration of cultivating health, wellness and safety. Bringing together experts from healthcare, psychology, workplace safety, environmental science and education, this learning pathway provided actionable strategies for integrating wellness practices into our daily lives and communities.
Participants discovered how innovative safety protocols are transforming workplaces and how educational initiatives are building foundations for lifelong wellness habits. As we unpack the key insights from this transformative learning track, we invite you to consider how these integrative approaches might enhance your own wellness journey, benefit your organization, or strengthen the exhibitions and events community’s health initiatives.
Leadership for Well-being: Strategies to Alleviate Stress and Foster a Healthy Workplace
Author, Speaker, Trainer and Performance Coach David Suson focused on leadership approaches that reduce workplace stress and anxiety while fostering employee well-being. He proposed that traditional approaches to workplace stress reduction often fail because they do not address root causes. Instead, he recommended the “MVP” framework for leadership that transforms workplace culture and relationships:
M – Mindset: Leaders must shift their mindset from demanding performance to inspiring it. This involves seeing leadership as coaching, mentoring and development rather than authority and control. Suson encouraged leaders to examine their first experiences with leadership and recognize how these might shape their current approach.
V – Value Them: Leaders should demonstrate genuine care for team members as individuals, not just workers. This includes remembering personal details about employees’ lives, interests and special days. Even with difficult team members, Suson advocated practicing “inattentional blindness” by intentionally looking for value in everyone.
P – Push Them Up: Leaders should focus on elevating their team members’ careers and capabilities. Suson addressed the common fear that developing employees might lead them to surpass the leader, countering with the metaphor that “a rising tide lifts all boats.”
Suson emphasized that well-led teams experience less stress and anxiety, resulting in higher engagement, performance, retention and fewer problems like “quiet quitting” and excessive sick days.
Key Takeaways:
- Effective leadership focuses on inspiring rather than demanding, which addresses the root causes of workplace stress and anxiety.
- The MVP framework (Mindset, Value Them, Push Them Up) provides a practical approach to leadership that reduces stress while improving team performance.
- Simply knowing leadership principles isn’t enough – implementation is what matters. As Suson noted, “It’s not what you know, it’s what you do with what you know.”
The Curious Calendar Game: Mindfulness for Executives, Managers and Staff
Natasha Coco Benitez (Coach Coco) focused on mindfulness techniques for workplace professionals through calendar analysis. She encouraged participants to examine their personal and professional calendars with “compassionate curiosity” to gain insights into their well-being priorities.
Coach Coco applied a reflective exercise she calls “The Curious Calendar Game,” where participants review their calendars (or photos as an alternative) from specific time periods to assess three dimensions of well-being:
- Social well-being: Examine social connections like volunteering, gatherings with friends, and hobbies.
- Emotional well-being: Reflect on emotions experienced, including those avoided or suppressed, and self-care practices.
- Workplace well-being: Identify aspects of work that provide positive feelings versus those that deplete energy.
Coach Coco also offered action steps that help identify patterns to release and habits to cultivate, along with reflective questions about commitment integrity and potential six-month outcomes.
Key Takeaways:
- Regular calendar reviews can reveal important insights about how we prioritize well-being across social, emotional and workplace dimensions.
- Improved workplace well-being correlates with significant benefits: employees are 3x more likely to be engaged at work, 69% less likely to search for a new job and 36% more likely to thrive in their overall lives.
- Sustainable well-being improvements come from both identifying commitments to release (“one pattern to slowly release”) and positive habits to reintroduce (“one habit to gently bring back”).
The Culture Catalyst: Shifting Leadership Perspectives with Neuroscience
In this session, Matthew Kalb, CMP, CEM-AP, Vice President of Client Experience at T3 Expo focused on how leaders can transform workplace culture through understanding neuroscience principles. He explored the definition of culture, introduced concepts of neuroplasticity and contrasted transactional versus transformational leadership styles.
Kalb emphasized that leadership behaviors are contagious throughout an organization and highlighted five characteristics of enhanced teams, with special focus on psychological safety. He offered practical strategies for leaders to improve workplace culture, including restructuring one-on-ones, celebrating failures, implementing 360 reviews and adjusting interview processes to prioritize emotional intelligence.
Key Takeaways:
- Psychological safety is fundamental to effective teams. Organization leaders should strive to create environments where team members feel safe to take risks, express ideas and admit mistakes without fear of negative consequences.
- Leadership behaviors are contagious. Good or bad leadership trickles down through an organization, highlighting the importance of leaders modeling desired behaviors and mindsets.
- Small, incremental changes are more effective than large ones. Lasting cultural change happens through small, manageable shifts rather than attempting major overhauls, as self-control is an exhaustible resource.
Join the Conversation at Expo! Expo! 2025
As we look ahead to Expo! Expo! IAEE’s Annual Meeting & Exhibition 2025 taking place 8-10 December in Houston, exhibitions and events professionals are poised to connect with thought leaders who understand the intersection of professional success and personal wellbeing while gaining actionable strategies that can transform organizational culture and individual performance. Whether you seek solutions to common workplace challenges or are looking to stay ahead of emerging trends in professional development, Expo! Expo! 2025 provides the perfect environment to expand your knowledge, strengthen your network and reenergize your approach to leadership.
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