Association of Business Psychologists 2009 conference reflections
03/07/2009, Author: Alan Redman
The May 2009 ABP conference seems like a while back but as Dean of the conference I was recently asked for my reflections.
At the end of every Glastonbury the festival organiser Michael Eavis describes the event as the best Glastonbury yet. It’s a tradition I’m going to appropriate for the 2009 ABP conference, which was definitely the best one yet.
The conference had some other Glastonbury parallels; a silent disco, some rain on the first day, a diverse programme of events, mind-altering experiences and a few crazy-eyed veterans from the 1960s.
The turnout for the conference defied early pessimistic predictions of numbers based on the threat of imminent financial apocalypse (‘moneygeddon’). The crowd peaked at about 130 which is around 27% down on the busiest conference of 2007. The general mood about business and the future was upbeat and positive though tempered by the challenges and uncertainties we all face.
Fortunately the theme of the conference was “Business Psychology in an age of austerity” so there were plenty of sessions sharing advice, experiences and techniques for successfully navigating the challenges of the times. A cocktail-fuelled World Café kicked off the proceedings in which Jo Hennessey, Sarah Lewis and Ruth Sealy facilitated group discussions around our responses as business psychologists to this age of austerity. This session was elegantly balanced by a keynote from Martin Boroson that introduced us to one minute mediation techniques.
On the second day we were very fortunate to hear from two leading keynotes from industry and our profession: Fleur Bothwick described her diversity and inclusiveness work at Ernst & Young. Professor Ivan Robertson’s session explored his work in the area of improving well-being within organisations. Other sessions covered diverse issues such as retention in a downturn, organisational resilience, appreciative leadership and risk taking behaviour in traders.
The third day of the conference kicked off with the traditional, gentle start-time to give victims of the previous night’s bounties a chance to perform some physiological damage limitation. Sessions filling the Status Quo slot included a double-length exploration of embodied leadership, some experiential mindfulness and the power of positivity. The conference was rounded off with a keynote presentation from Jonathan Males, Olympic psychologist, who described his work with teams and atheletes.
It was that last session which crystallised, for me, some of the overarching themes that emerged from the conference. Jonathan described key principles for athletic success that could be applied to our work. “Run your own race”, “do the basics very well” and “adapt where you need to” struck me as a distillation of much of the advice and reflections delivered by the conference as a whole.
I would like to thank all those people who came along to the conference and made it such an enjoyable and successful event. I also want to thank my conference team, many of whom worked very hard (I count myself among the slackers). You can download copies of the conference presentations on the ABP website as well as news and an early-bird form for the 2010 event.
So in summary: 2009 was the best conference yet but not as good as the next one.
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