Marissa Afton
Marissa Afton is a driving force behind leadership development and change initiatives at multinational companies.
Marissa Afton's videos
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- English
Marissa Afton's 2024 biography
Meet Marissa Afton
Marissa Afton is a Partner and Head of Global Accounts at Potential Project. She is a driving force behind leadership development and change initiatives at global companies. She helps leaders and organizations unlock their potential to create cultural excellence and superior performance, resilience, and innovation.
Marissa is co-author of Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way (Harvard Business Review, 2022). She is also a contributing author for The Mind of the Leader: How to Lead Yourself, Your People, and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results (Harvard Business Review, 2018). She is an energetic and highly engaging speaker who shares a joyful, pragmatic, and inspiring presentation style with a variety of audiences who have spanned the globe. In addition, she is also a regular contributor to publications like Harvard Business Review, Forbes, TD Magazine, and Fast Company.
A mindfulness practitioner for over 25 years, Marissa is recognized for her breadth of knowledge and deep experience in transforming organizations by transforming the mind. She has worked across industries with top companies including Apple, Bloomberg, Cisco, Eli Lilly, Google, and Amgen to amplify employee engagement, organizational commitment, resilient performance, and innovative growth on the individual, team and organizational levels.
Marissa Afton's 2024 talks & topics
Women in Leadership: The Science of Why & How Women Leaders Excel
Research shows that women leaders generally have more engaged teams and drive better job performance. By driving more engaged employees, women leaders save their organizations $1.4MM for every 1,000 employees. Moreover, their vision of ideal leadership is more in line with what employees want: the combination of human care and business performance. However, our research shows that women generally underestimate their leadership capabilities compared to men, which leads to increased chances of burnout and an intention to quit. This engaging session will share the eye-opening research that women leaders need to develop greater confidence in their leadership capabilities. It will also help them enhance their leadership by focusing on four drivers of leadership excellence based on research: caring presence, courage, candor and transparency.
Enhancing Performance Through Caring Leadership
Many leaders struggle with an either-or mentality when it comes to driving business results and caring for their people: “Either I drive performance and results at the risk of pushing my employees to disengage or even quit, or I take care of my employees at the risk of seeming too soft and ineffective.” The good news is that leaders don’t need to choose. Research shows that being a human-centered leader who balances care and performance drives the best outcomes for the business. This interactive session will offer insights and provocative data into why and how caring leaders produce the best business results. It will also offer a simple but powerful tool to drive caring performance: the Flywheel. The Flywheel consists of four skills to practice and master: caring presence, courage, candor and transparency. Leaders will learn why these skills are critical for developing psychological safety and trust, and how to develop and utilize them in daily interactions with their people.
Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way
Building Human Connection in a Hybrid World
Developing Mental Agility to Survive and Thrive in Turbulent Times
Three Mindsets for Leading in Turbulent Times
Managing Difficult Conversations with Courage and Compassion
Developing the Mental Strategy of Balance
Better Sleep for Better Wellbeing
Not Letting Stress Become Burnout