Kieran Flanagan

Kieran Flanagan's Biography

Speaker | Author | Social Commentator - #Communication & #Brand.

Kieran Flanagan is the strategic and creative mind behind the most successful new product launch in Australian history and the most extraordinary brand resurrection achieved anywhere in the world.

She has run thought leadership, personal branding, presentation skills and leadership communication programs for global tech giants, financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies & professional services firms, as well as facilitating engagement strategies with the UN and Singapore Government to fight human trafficking in Asia.

Her passion for education and training also saw Kieran lead Australia’s Premier Advertising School, AWARD, and she is currently a Black Belt Mentor on Personal Branding at Thought Leaders Business School and coaches leadership teams on compelling communication & presentation skills.

She has won awards around the world for communication, creativity and marketing effectiveness and was voted by Meetings & Conventions USA as one of the “Top 25 C-Suite Speakers to watch.”

Kieran is the co-author of three books, co-host of “A show called Brandin’” for LinkedIn and “The Behaviour Report™” and likes to chat about all things communication, branding and leadership on TV shows like Sunrise, Studio 10 & Sky Business News.

She is also kind of partial to the books, movies and philosophies of “Pollyanna” and the “Fast & Furious” franchise.

Speaking Topics Include

Communication & Brand:

Key messages and takeaways in Kieran’s presentations:

• The communication trends shaping team & customer expectations
• How personality psychology and communication archetypes inform both how we communicate using our own Default Frames™ and are also understood through the Default Filters™ of others.
• Why our brand, our reputation and “earned trust” is less about what we say and more about what others say when we are not in the room
• How to raise our collaborative intelligence through co-creation and communication channels that are open, diverse and consistent
• The psychology behind the “sell” and the three levels of communication that drive influence, engagement and persuasion
• How our mindset is shaped by our self-talk & inner communication
• The 4 spheres of communication - Self, Team, Community & Marketplace
• The structure, humour and presentation skills that will take your leadership communication from ’50 shades of beige’ to inspirational and captivating

 

Out-Think - How to solve complex problems & create more innovative solutions

Performance and relevance is no longer just a function of our knowledge or current understanding. Nor are they necessarily linked to our capability or proficiency within existing processes.

Tomorrow’s competitive advantage is, in fact, all in your mind. The metric for high performance is now mental agility and the ability to change the way we think. This requires an ability to think, un-think, re-think and most critically out-think! Brain training may have increased our processor speed, but now we also need to update our cognitive software.

In this exciting and thought provoking presentation, Kieran Flanagan will explore how we drive more creative problem solving, success by design and advance innovation on purpose - deliberately, consistently and congruently.

Full of tips, tools and new ways to approach and solve problems, Out-Think might be thought of as “Luminosity for the business brain” as Kieran reminds us all that, “If we think the same as we always have we’ll get the same ideas we’ve always gotten.”

Outcomes:

• Increase your ability to change the game by changing your frame of reference
• Gain skills that encourage a culture of creative & critical thinking - driving innovation and more strategic solutions
• Develop a mindset that helps individuals think on their feet and be more proactive and solution-focused
• Learn tools that help individuals bring better ideas to the table and use better judgement in assessing them for relevance and salience

Unlock your Genius - How to tap the unique intelligence in you and your team

All of us possess a unique intelligence and mental framework that we rely on, particularly under pressure. However, each of these frames comes with inherent unconscious biases and limitations in terms of how broadly (or narrowly) we might see the world, and opportunity.

In this exciting and liberating presentation, Kieran Flanagan will help you unpack your personal genius, identify your Default Thinking Frames™ (including their limitations), whilst building an appreciation for the unique intelligence that lies in the other members of your team.

This understanding is critical if we want to raise our Collaborative Intelligence (our We-Q) because it allows us to see the individual capabilities and blind spots within our team and to then not only seek diversity as a corporate social responsibility “box-ticking” exercise, but rather, encourage real diversity of thinking and points of view. This “cognitive diversity” has been shown to significantly help teams be better prepared to solve increasingly complex and interconnected problems and to survive in times of crisis and change. In other words, by understanding the individual genius that lies within ourselves and the members of our team, we also increase our team genius.

Outcomes:

• Identify your Default Thinking Frames™ and those of the members of your team
• Spot “cognitive gaps” in team structure and learn how to plug those gaps with new hiring filters and mental bridging tools & techniques
• Increase collaboration, decrease political conflict and elevate appreciation within the team for what others bring to the table
• Amplify your personal genius whilst being more conscious and capable around its associated biases and blind spots

Transformational Leadership - How to make positive change & make change positive

It’s been said that if you’re not leading change, you’re simply managing the status quo. It’s a pithy aphorism and it might well be true, but it doesn’t make leading change any easier or help your team meet impending change with courage and confidence.

In this inspiring presentation, Kieran Flanagan will explain why transformation and innovation are not just about change or new product and service design, but are in fact about category leadership.

She’ll reveal why leaders and organisations need to think of themselves as thought leaders who advance their fields and move their categories forward finding a competitive advantage in their intellectual property and the contribution they make to their customers and communities.

Transformational leadership requires an ability to innovate, collaborate, to inspire by words and example, but most critically, it demands the capacity to make positive change by making the change itself a positive experience.

Outcomes:

• Identify your organisational thought leadership - the change and contribution you and your organisation and team will make within your field
• Understand how Transformational Leadership makes you a beacon for attracting and retaining top talent as well as customer and client loyalty and evangelism
• Learn how to use behaviour design to make positive change a positive experience
• Change your metrics for successful transformation and innovation to include externalities including how you move your industry forward