Dr Adam Fraser

Dr Adam Fraser's Biography

Stress, deadlines, interruptions, negative emotions, bad habits and long working hours. When it's not possible to control the environment that creates challenges, the answers lie within us.

Dr Adam Fraser is experienced at facilitating solutions for individuals, teams and organisations helping them to improve performance. Adam has worked with elite sports people, armed forces and top business professionals in Australia and worldwide. He has channelled his unique insight and research into a series of ground breaking presentations. Adam is a speaker who can truly help people effectively manage their mindset and energy with positive results.

Adam shows audiences how to move from theory to action, no matter who they are or what role they perform. He has an incredible ability to make facts both relevant and fun. Audiences regularly describe Adam as engaging, dynamic, funny and highly practical. Participants immediately walk away with more awareness about themselves and strategies they can implement in work and life.

Speaking Topics Include

Strive

Embracing the gift of struggle

For the last 10 years Dr Adam Fraser and Deakin University have been studying how leaders and teams can evolve, innovate and be resilient in times of change to stay commercially relevant and profitable. Their research shows that the key factor allowing teams to transform and evolve is their relationship with the struggle and discomfort that accompanies any change.

For many years, we have been incorrectly taught that we should avoid struggle and challenge. We often look at those we believe have struggle free lives and we wish that our lives resembled theirs. After all, a life free of difficulties and struggle has to be a good life, right?! Wrong!

This misperception has lead people to avoid situations that push them out of their comfort zone. The problem with this? Individuals and organisations don’t get anywhere near their potential.

This presentation sheds a new light on the role challenge and struggle play in our development both personally and professionally. It will provide you with the proper tools you need to approach challenge and discomfort in a way that not only improves your performance and success, but also improves your self esteem and wellbeing.

“People who evolve with the changing world don’t see struggle as a threat, they see struggle as the path to development.”

Outcomes from the presentation

You will learn to have a more constructive and resilient mindset towards change and transformation.

It will create a STRIVE culture in your teams, where you reflect on progress, learn from failures and have a greater level of perseverance and tenacity when under pressure.

Help you understand why you are proud of the hard things in life.

Teach you about ‘The completion myth’ and why we feel flat after we achieve a goal and more alive when we are working towards a goal. Have you see why taking the easy path leads to dysfunction and misery.

Problems it solves

Stops you retreating back to old safe behaviours when faced with the opportunity to change and grow.

Helps teams band together and create a culture that supports transformation.

Helps align you and your teams behaviour to the strategic focus of the organisation

The strategies presented in this keynote have been shown to achieve the following results in 800 professionals from highly complex environments that were experiencing large amounts of change.

•          54% increase in level of positive mood at work

•          22% improvement in capacity to handle high workloads

•          20% improvement on level of engagement

•          27% increase in level of creativity and innovation at work11% increase in hope and optimism

 

The Third Space

Developing behavioural agility

“Some people light up a room when they walk in, others light up a room when they walk out.”

Would you like to learn how to:

•Have a bad day and not take it home with you?

Have a stressful meeting and not let that mood derail the next meeting?

Endure a de-motivating set back yet still be able to attack your next task with optimism and enthusiasm?

Transition into your next task in a way that you are completely present and give it your undivided focus?

Work from home, rather than feel like you live at work?

Your job as a team member, as a leader, as a sales person is to adapt your behaviour to meet the needs of the next role, environment or task. However, too often, one setback or one bad meeting, can derail your day by having a domino effect that robs you, and your business, of energy and focus.

Dr Fraser’s cutting edge research with Deakin University shows that what high performers have in common is that they use ‘The Third Space®’ to overcome setbacks and assume a mindset to get the most out of what is coming next.

‘The Third Space®’ is the transitional gap between “What the hell just happened?” and “What’s next?”. High performers use this space to decompress, jettison the negative and bring new focus and energy to the next task at hand.

Outcomes from the presentation

How to use ‘The Third Space®’ to transition effectively between the different roles, environments and tasks that make up our day to extract the maximum value from each.

How to “Show up” at work fully responsible for the energy you bring to constructively affect the behaviour and culture of your organisation.

A simple three step process to perform between work and home to dramatically improve work life balance and overall happiness.

How to use ‘The Third Space®’ when working from home to work more effectively and be able to switch off at the end of the day.

Problems it solves

Increases performance by stopping you from carrying the stress and frustration from one environment to the next.

Helps you turn off at the end of the day so you can go home, connect with your loved ones and come back to work more refreshed and focused.

Research Outcomes

•          43% improvement in the mood in the home, practicing the Third Space on the commute between work and home.

•          91% increase in Boundary strength (the ability to not let the previous interaction have a negative impact on the next interaction).

 

The Ripple Effect

How we all affect culture

“Culture doesn’t just come from the top down, it comes from the bottom up as well.”

One of the biggest blocks to cultural transformation is when team members outsource culture to the most senior roles. Team members incorrectly believe that it is only the leader that shapes the culture of a team, saying things like, “Culture comes from the top down” or “The fish rots from the head down.” However, when you look at the true psychology of how cultures work, you realise that these statements are inaccurate.

Science has made incredible break throughs in our understanding of how the culture of teams and organisations works. In a nut shell, we have discovered that culture comes from ‘the bottom up as well’. In this challenging and competitive business landscape, we can no longer outsource culture to the senior leaders. Every single person in an organisation affects the culture. Every behaviour from each individual sends a cultural ripple that affects the people around them, thus shaping the culture. Just think of a time when you have been in a team where that one bad apple destroyed the culture of a team!

Outcomes from the presentation

This fascinating, humorous and enlightening presentation will completely change the way your team views how they affect the culture of the organisation.

Your team will learn that:

Every member of a team has a profound impact on what that culture looks like.

Human behaviour self excites. Humans are not as independent as we would like to believe and tend to copy the behaviour of the people around them.

Every time you exhibit behaviours that are not aligned to the desired culture of the team, the culture is eroded.

Small behaviours are often thought of as being trivial. However, the wrong small behaviour can have a huge negative impact on a team or culture.

A clear list of positive ripples each person in the team can send to improve the culture of the team.

Problems it solves

The team becomes clear about what behaviours they need to apply more of and what behaviours they need to avoid to improve the team culture.

Increases one’s self-awareness about how they affect team dynamics.

The team starts to hold each other accountable for their impact on the culture.

Research Outcomes

In a number of organisations the materials presented in this presentation has lead to;

•          160% increase in the level of trust in the team.

•          74% increase in how supportive team members felt the team culture was.

•          43% decrease in the stress levels of the team.