Sarah McVanel

Speaking topics

Presentations listed below include in-person and virtual keynotes, as well as workshops, fireside chats, and other presentation formats.

• The Exponential Power of Recognition

  Superglue your culture through meaningful connection and abundant appreciation.

  If you had the easiest, fastest, simplest, and no-cost strategy to engage, unite, and retain everyone in your organization, would you want to know about it?

  Many passionate, brilliant, hard-working people want to do their best yet feel unappreciated and overworked. Similarly, there are well-intentioned leaders who wish to show appreciation to their people, but they’re busy and unsure if their efforts will make a difference.  Add to that a stale and misaligned corporate recognition program, and what you have is the perfect recipe for disengagement and turnover!

  How do we bridge the gap between what employees need and what organizations are prepared to do? Recognition is the answer. And it’s easy! All you need to know are the three universal strategies that work instantaneously. As a result, you’re going to raise trust, boost satisfaction, deepen a sense of belonging, and go down in history as the best boss and colleague ever!

  This work is magical. And it creates a ripple effect. It gets leaders, employees, and everyone in between excited again. It gives people hope that they can LOVE work again. This session will introduce you to a proven process for self, team, and organizational recognition called F.R.O.G. — Forever Recognize Others’ Greatness. You will walk away ready to take action and shift your culture right away.

  Learning outcomes:

  • Develop greater confidence in giving and receiving sincere and authentic acknowledgments.
  • Understand where your organization is wasting time and money on recognition programs that do not work (and what to do about it).
  • Be inspired to apply simple recognition habits at home and work.
  • Understand the data and evidence substantiating the exponential power of recognition from a neuroscience, behavioral economics, and work psychology lens.
  • Explore what retention-rich organizations do that transforms their employees into an army of recruiters.

• Recognition in a Hybrid World

  Rebuild connection and deepen engagement across the digital divide.

  Contrary to popular belief, hybrid workplaces are NOT disconnecting your people. The problem is not employees logging in from different locations, watercooler conversations being moved to keyboards, or the tumbleweeds rolling down your office floor like the wild west. The problem is that before the rise of hybrid workplaces, we did not have authentic recognition practices hardwired into the cultural fabric. What we know today is the need for clarity and conviction to make recognition practices strong, authentic, sustainable, and owned by all.

  The good news is that recognition is one of the most practical, accessible, and cost-effective ways to fuel healthy working relationships, trust, and retention. It allows your people to connect across the digital divide to participate, voice their opinions, brainstorm, and collaborate.

  And guess what? You can do it from anywhere!

  Consider recognition to be your cultural glue — whether you’re in-person or online. Let Canada’s recognition expert, Sarah McVanel, walk you through her three key remote recognition ingredients: nutritious, delicious, and luscious. Never has recognition been more important and as digestible.

  Learning outcomes:

  • Learn the most practical, hybrid-friendly ways to appreciate an individual, team, and organizational level.
  • Hear what the most recognition-rich hybrid workplaces are doing to boost collaboration and deepen the connection.
  • Develop greater confidence in giving and receiving authentic virtual compliments.
  • Transform your face-to-face rituals that worked and amplify them into hybrid practices that are sustainable and infectious.
  • Understand the data and evidence substantiating the exponential power of recognition from a neuroscience, behavioural economics, and work psychology lens.

• Solution-Focused Greatness: How to Amplify Collaboration, Resilience, and Positivity in Others

  Sick of people fixating on problems, focusing on issues beyond their control, pointing fingers, and casting blame? Do you feel like you’re constantly firefighting a revolving door that churns negativity?

  Isn’t it more productive to identify solutions and, in turn, fuel connection, awaken creativity, and elevate appreciation? And what if you weren’t the only one doing it? Here’s the secret — everyone has greatness. They just don’t all believe it.

  People want to do well and have a desire to contribute. What if we see their greatness even when they’re not operating at their very best? How might you lead differently? How might you show up with greater curiosity? How might you do less telling and do more asking to co-create possibilities? When you embrace the belief that people are already great, it acts as a wedge in that negativity revolving door. You don’t lose hope, your best people, and your most innovative ideas.

  This session will empower you to leverage the five most resourceful questions (that you’re not currently asking) to access the solution to any problem.

  Learning outcomes:

  • Practice the five most effective, solution-focused coaching questions that address negativity, gossip, and a problem-fixated mindset.
  • Understand how to foster an environment that’s rich with curiosity and continuous improvement.
  • Increase your team’s hopefulness, resiliency, and well-being through easy to implement tactics.
  • Notice the signs that you’re firefighting, micro-managing, and behaving unresourcefully.
  • Create collaborative and innovative solutions, even when no easy answers seem to exist.

• Flip Side of Failing: How Unconditional Recognition Ignites Resilience, Relationships, and Retention

  Failure is a tough nut. Either we treat it like the other “f-word,” or we’re espousing its virtues for learning. Let’s face it. We don’t have much resilience when failure comes crashing into our lives and careers. Most often, we play it safe. We avoid it or feel shame or blame when failure inevitably happens. We’ve had plenty of experiences that tell us to avoid failing at all costs.

  Before you think this is your “unmotivational” speech, trust me when I say that this is empowerment personified. We will be challenging the very definitions of success and failure that we’ve blindly accepted, and explore how it’s sabotaging our well-being, performance, and satisfaction. What does failure mean to you? Does it define you? Can you give yourself permission to fail?

  In this session, you will truly experience and absorb the F.L.I.P. framework: Fail, Learn, Ignite, Praise. Each dimension of FLIP allows you to harness the power that comes from failure and let go of ego or judgment. Learning from your failures creates your path to greatness. These lessons will forever change you and help you become more decisive, confident, and action oriented.

  The question is… where’s your FLIP? How can you become more failure resilient? If you’re ready to explore how unconditional recognition of yourself and others can ignite passion and performance, this session is for you.

  In this energizing and entertaining session (with a few fun twists), you will awaken possibilities, deepen connections, source solutions, and improve individual and organizational performance by recognizing greatness in a whole new light. Rather than kryptonite, let failure be your superpower.

  Learning outcomes:

  • Develop greater failure resiliency by deconstructing unhealthy failure resistance.
  • Identify how to best share, explore, and leverage the inevitable failures to fuel performance and innovation.
  • Experience the flip side of failing firsthand and reflect on its relevance personally and professionally.
  • Create a failure resiliency intention at a self, team, and organizational level.