Kath Koschel

Kath Koschel's Biography

A testament to the power of human spirit, Kath Koschel is a survivor who has overcome incredible odds and unimaginable tragedy to inspire ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Koschel is a former professional cricketer and Ironman competitor who’s world came crashing down when she broke her back twice in the span of five years and was told that she would never walk again. Instead, she faced the challenges head-on and defied all medical prognosis by teaching herself to walk again on three separate occasions.

In the midst of these harrowing experiences, she believes she experienced two things in large amounts: adversity and kindness. After re learning to walk for the second time in her life, this realisation kickstarted a 2-month journey around Australia which relied solely on the kindness of strangers. No cash, credit card food or water – and no help from family or friends!

Driven by a passion to spread gratitude and kindness sin the world, she founded Kindness Factory™ with the goal of encouraging one million acts of kindness. To date, Kindness Factory has recorded over 7 million acts of kindness and is now a registered not-for-profit in three countries.

An internationally sought after speaker and author of Kindness the book, Kath has worked with some of the biggest and most well-known companies and brands in the world to help them achieve perspective, resilience, good culture and of course, kindness.

To enquire about Kath contact Helene Greenham directly: helene@platinumspeakers.com.au

Speaking Topics Include

Mental Health Fitness

What if we thought about mental health in the way that we thought about physical health? Just like physical fitness, mental fitness is pivotal to all human development; informing our performance and our mindset whilst also aiding our ability to connect with others effectively. Mental fitness underpins the foundation to a life well lived, in and out of the workplace.

Alarming statistics now show us that mental health related concerns are a global issue with depression, anxiety and even suicide rates rising dramatically from 2023 to 2024.

So how do we address these worrying trends that threatens to cripple the ability for humans to live happily, perform effectively and work together well?

In the Mental Health: Building and Sustaining Mental Fitness keynote, Kath unpacks what mental fitness means and how to effectively manage it with her mental health framework, backed by evidence-based strategies including:

• Self awareness as a foundation for growth and moving through to self- acceptance
• Growth through adversity and change – How to grow through what we go through
• Linking gratitude, humor and kindness to mental health and fitness
• How to cultivate community and conversation through connection and belonging
• How to build resilience, optimism and agility

WORKPLACE CULTURE

In an age where technology is taking over, 43% employees don’t feel a sense of connection to their co-workers, 38% don’t trust their co-workers, and 22% don’t even have one friend at work. 70% of employees are disengaged from their jobs—with disengagement at a record high. Employee disconnection leads to lower productivity and lower rates of retention. Creating a workplace of belonging and kindness is proven to aid better mental health, as well as increasing profitability, productivity, high performance and retention. It’s good for your people and good for your business.

Employees who experience high levels of belonging, psychological safety and kindness at work have greater resilience, well-being and personal and professional growth. They experience a 56% increase in job performance and 170% increase in employer promotor score, and better-connected employees save large organizations millions per year. Kath can also make this keynote bespoke to your workplace by working with you in the leadup to understand your specific needs and then addressing them via 4 of 12 common themes that can be addressed to better your companies culture via an evidence based framework of kindness; collaboration, compassion, empathy, gratitude, humor, humility, honesty, mindfulness, positivity, perspective, Self-acceptance and trust.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Learn 4 ways to increase psychological safety in the workplace
• How to foster higher levels of psychological safety in your team.
• How to deepen trust and build high-value relationships with co-workers, customers, and clients.
• How to build an inclusive culture
• Bringing collaboration back post covid

CHANGE RESILIENCE

Change is a reality for all and it comes at us in many ways. But be careful, history shows that only a small number of change strategies succeed. Your people will enable it, or obstruct it.

Kath knows what it takes to support change in an organisation. Having high instances of change in both her personal and professional life, Kath now helps organisations around the world to adapt to the new, pushing progress forward and into the now and future through a proven framework of gratitude, perspective and kindness.

Kath will build a bespoke offering with key and actionable take aways for the audience to implement immediately to overcome resistance, manage the change process and land on key messages for your business

Key takeaways:

• Key steps to implementing change and how best to manage it
• Providing perspective to overcome resistance to the change process
• How to create and navigate opportunity in the change process
• How to bring choice to periods of change
• Adopting a resilience mindset in the face of change