Speaker, trainer, performer, and social entrepreneur Doug Manuel uses his distinctive and unusual method to support businesses of all shapes and sizes in fostering collaboration and engagement among their employees.
Companies are improving their performance culture by investing more attention to building sustainable teams thanks to his innovative approach to developing corporate employees’ capacity for empathy, enhancing communication and collaboration, and embodying a renewed sense of purpose.
His methodology combines keynote moments with personal reflection and collective music making giving his audiences the opportunity to put theory into action.
Doug has the technical knowledge and facilitation skills to bring any number of people together in different locations online, as well as the stage presence to generate empathy, connection, and collaboration in a room of thousands, thanks to his nearly three decades of running programs, and experience of living and working on different continents and speaking a variety of different languages.
Through his work with virtual management teams, networking events, Oprah’s SuperSoul Sessions, and TED Talks, he has demonstrated how empathy, wellness, communication, personal leadership, agility, and a shared sense of purpose improves collaboration, employee engagement, and retention, and business outcomes.
Doug can help you create a culture of collaboration in your organization, making your next conference, event, or meeting not just unforgettable but also a far more productive and engaging experience.
Working with multi-national corporations, professional sports teams, leading business schools, and international non-governmental organizations are just some of Doug’s many past success stories.
Doug reflects, “I know what it’s like to feel isolated and alone. And so I know what it’s like to search for meaning and direction. I know what it’s like to find purpose and discover a whole new world of human connection and energy.”
Doug not only brings this to the teams he works with but to every endeavor and project that he undertakes.
Takeaways from Doug’s thoughts on remote working
Even if the pandemic is over, remote working isn’t, and we still need the ability to manage many of our professional interactions online, even if we can now meet in person again. Consequently, our teams at times will likely continue to experience fatigue, a lack of motivation, and emotional distancing. Doug Manuel has developed a set of tools that can be used to create interactive experiences that have a sense of meaning, and that keep people connected and teach them to take care of themselves.
Champion of teamwork
It’s clear that even as we continue to adopt hybrid methods to be and work together, the lack of genuine human connection is still the biggest factor contributing to unmotivated, disengaged, and fragmented teams.
For productivity to soar, team members must feel a sense of unity and be inspired by a shared goal. British speaker and trainer Doug Manuel has been actively helping organizations do just that for nearly 3 decades.
Providing teams with meaningful, energizing, and motivating experiences that boost collaboration, he leaves the teams and audiences that he works with the necessary resources to increase productivity and improve business outcomes.
Employees who work closely together on a regular basis are more likely to like and respect each other, which is why teamwork is so effective at fostering harmonious relationships among workers. As they continue to collaborate, they gain a deeper understanding of one another and develop the ability to accommodate their differences. Team members become more cooperative after spending significant time together, which benefits productivity and morale. Workplace happiness has been shown to increase productivity, which in turn accelerates the rate at which businesses achieve their objectives.
Workers who collaborate on projects are more likely to reach their goals on time and under budget compared to those who work alone. By pooling resources and dividing and conquering tasks, a team can reduce stress for everyone involved. Salespeople, in particular, work under intense time constraints to achieve their annual quotas. By dividing up tasks and responsibilities, teams can feel less pressured to rush through their work and instead focus on doing a good job from start to finish. Because of this, they should be able to speedily achieve their sales quotas.
Workers’ levels of work experience, knowledge, and expertise, as well as their skill sets, vary widely across an organization. Working on a project together facilitates communication and cooperation between workers. When new hires talk with veterans, they can pick up valuable tips they never would have gotten otherwise. Older workers can learn from the new perspectives of younger workers and vice versa. Teamwork is crucial in the workplace because it encourages employees of all experience levels to question and improve upon one another’s ideas and methods in order to reach a consensus on a practical, efficient approach to a problem.
Individual workers are more likely to have low morale and to shirk responsibility. When working together, people have more faith in one another because they don’t want to risk disappointing others. In addition, when employees work together, it increases everyone’s sense of accountability, and this is especially true when those employees are seasoned pros who have earned a reputation for reliability and dedication. As a result of increased productivity and efficiency, businesses stand to gain greatly from teamwork amongst their staff, as projects are more likely to be completed on time.
An organization would be wise to promote methods to enhance teamwork, but if there is a breakdown in communication within the team, the initiative will be in vain. Communication must be encouraged within teams for them to function effectively. When there is mutual trust, the conversation flows smoothly. The issue, of course, is that trust is not simply assumed. Care and attention are required. In order for trust to flourish in a group, there must be a free flow of information. Team morale will plummet if members are unable to express themselves freely. Teaching cooperative skills are crucial for developing good dialogue.
Introducing Do You Speak Djembe? his award-nominated stage show to the keynote stage
With the help of ‘Do You Speak Djembe?’ chosen by Oprah to open her third SuperSoul Sessions and by TEDx Hollywood, this all-new conference format experience will encourage your teams to work together whilst creating beautiful music with an amazing band on stage. If you’re looking for a unique live event, this turns the participants into the main attraction and makes them the star of the experience.
‘Do You Speak Djembe?’ is a collaborative keynote for corporate teams that embraces and embodies diversity and inclusion, and boosts presence and performance, active listening, collaboration, and communication. This entirely unique moment hails from hundreds of successful performances in Paris, tours through Europe, and a 4-month run at Chicago’s Apollo Theatre.
Doug Manuel’s ‘Do You Speak Djembe?’ which was nominated for 2 JEFF awards, will infuse a refreshing spirit of cooperation to your next meeting or conference.
Inspiring, motivating, and uniting audiences of all sizes is what Doug and his live band of world-class musicians do best through the power of rhythm and the drum. Audiences come together and learn some simple djembe rhythms so that they can perform to the music of their youth. From Otis Reading and Sister Sledge to Prince, Michael Jackson, Pharell Williams, and beyond. Together we make the link between collective music-making and the history of music to find that we all have more in common than that which separates us.
Doug tailors all of his presentations to the goals and themes of your organization, then uses a combination of stirring storytelling and motivating music to inspire people to be and work together.
