Pep Rosenfeld – Leadership Lessons From 20 Years of Business Events

Pep Rosenfeld is a comedian, event host, and co-founder of Boom Chicago. He took part in the Speaker Contest Final on the 10th of May 2023, and here is the summary of his keynote “Leadership Lessons From 20 Years of Business Events”!

If you wish, you can watch the keynote here:

“When you’re leading, lead like a person,” was Pep’s main message. In his keynote, he encouraged people to lead like people, not like “leaders.” Throughout the 20 years he has worked as a host at business events with companies big and small, Pep has seen and heard it all: “When the rubber hits the road, folks, I’ve seen some stuff. And I have notes.”

Pep came prepared with a collection of tips based on what he has learned from these events and companies. You might have heard the phrase, “don’t sweat the small stuff.” Well, Pep’s first tip is that you should definitely sweat the small stuff: “The small stuff at the office is what most people who don’t work in the C-suite, that’s what they call ‘my job’.” Pep says that the small things are the first ones that come up in conversation with employees because that is their daily experience. And anything new and innovative you want to introduce to the company will receive some resistance at first because it interferes with the small stuff. You should listen to your people: “Acknowledging what sucks and then letting them know honestly and clearly when and how they can expect it to improve.”

The second tip touched upon values: stop tweaking them. Pep pointed out that although values are extremely important, 80% of all company values are the same. So, how important is rewording them over and over again? In fact, Chat GPT can easily create your values for you in any form you’d like, perhaps even to match the name of your company. “If the AI can write the values, maybe you should worry about something harder,” Pep suggests, “like, modeling the values for your team.”

Pep brought out his third point: do joke about THAT. “That” being the thing you don’t want people to joke about. “Leaders” try to dodge the difficult and uncomfortable issues. “You, as a person, you’ve got to find the language to talk about what your team is worried about.” Pep believes that humor is an important tool to help with that.

His fourth tip was that “actual people actually show up for their team.” And last but not least, his fifth and final tip was, “Human beings understand emotion, so show some.” He added that as people, we not only show emotion, but we need to be in tune with the emotions of others. We all have heard someone say, “The data speaks for itself,” however, Pep disagrees and points out that people should be the ones speaking for the data.

Pep really hopes that we don’t lead like “leaders” who are always guarded and never admit their mistakes or acknowledge problems. Instead, we should celebrate the things that make us human. He even created an acronym for us to remember the tips he has given:

A – Actually show up
L – Laugh and use humor to discuss the difficult stuff
I – Issues are issues, so do sweat the small stuff
V – Values, live them, don’t rewrite them
E – Emotions, don’t just show yours, be tuned in to others’

---

On the 10th of May at 18:00 EEST in Helsinki, we got to experience an inspiring and exhilarating evening with five incredible Speaker Contest 2023 finalists. All of them gave impeccable speeches, however, our jury and audience could only choose one winner. Maryna Saprykina, a Ukrainian sustainability consultant, won the competition with her keynote “Sustainability in the Times of War.” We will be hearing from her again next September at Oslo, Amsterdam, and Nordic Business Forum.

But right now, we have other amazing speeches to learn from! You can find the summaries and videos from our other Speaker Contest finalists here:

Tobias Sturesson – How to Overcome Your Company’s Greatest Culture Challenges

Ritu G. Mehrish – Leader’s Block – The Opposite of Potential

Thijs Launspach – What We Get Wrong About Stress