10 things we learnt at our Brave Together Dubai Conference

As a challenging year draws to a close, we reunited, both in-person and virtually for our Brave Together Dubai Conference, in collaboration with Marketing Mania.

We were captivated by stories from speakers who inspired us to be brave and bold leaders, and open ourselves up to discovering new opportunities that lie ahead in 2021.

Here are our top 10 best bits:

1. Everyone should have equal opportunity and the chance to control their own potential. This year has given oxygen into the conversation about fairness in society.

2. Sustainable high-level performance is underpinned by diversity of thought. You don’t know what you don’t know. Narrow thinking leads to worse solutions and broader thinking drives the breakthroughs.

3. The second biggest killer for 16 – 24-year olds is suicide. As empathy goes down, depression, anxiety and burn out go up. We need to focus on empathy and what it does for the world.

4. There is an ROI of empathy. Our cognitive ability is linked to our emotional ability. When you are connected, innovation will grow, creativity will excel, team collaboration and brain performance will improve.

5. Marketing is a vast function and understanding what marketing does is a challenge for some. It can be quite subjective and is a public facing element of any organisation – anything that goes out can be seen by the entire company. No other function has that.

6. The ultimate end goal isn’t influence, it’s growth for your company. Influence isn't about power, influence is about growth. When we grow ourselves, we grow our companies.

7. In order to make things happen, you cannot do it alone. To be effective is to bring everybody with you.

8. In a tough negotiation you need clear strategy and tactics from the beginning. Talk about common interests to stabilize high pressure situations and to slow down the negotiation.

9. Energy is everything and without it, nothing happens. Be strategically smart about focusing on what matters - you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.

10. Thomas Barta shared with us his 4 tips for driving impact as a marketer. These included:
- Tackle big issues
- Side with the revenue camp, make sure your work is associated with profitable revenue
- Walk the halls - listen, decide, communicate
- Hit the head and the heart - what's your story of hope?

To hear more from Thomas Barta and Syl Saller about becoming an influential change leader and achieving real business impact, don’t miss our Accelerate: Marketing Leadership Masterclass.