By: Noha Yahia Abji and Kristen Preszcator

A welcome reception in a medieval inspired room was a great contrast to the forward-looking topics we discussed at the 2017 PrimeGlobal Emerging Leaders conference in Chicago.

We kicked off our first session with Lego Serious Play®, which utilized Lego® models created by us to build and explore aspects of our ideal leader and team. This was a fun and innovative tool which really helped set the tone for this interactive and introspective conference.

Our next session utilized tools that improvisational comedians use to communicate more effectively with an audience. This was geared towards finding ways to manage anxiety experienced in speaking engagements and finding methods to communicate concisely by setting a general structure towards these engagements. Our third speaker broke down the importance of adapting communication styles between people with different backgrounds and adjusting our style so that we are able to interact with them more effectively. Our day ended with a riveting architecture tour on the Chicago River followed by an exciting ping pong tournament that turned into ping pong basketball by the end of the night.

The second day opened with a session on empowering our teams. The session speakers utilized a comedic and light analogy to highlight the serious issue of allowing dependence within our teams and the problems that this creates. They encouraged us to question our team members and empower them to resolve their own problems instead of merely providing answers. This was followed by an informative presentation on different leadership styles. The speaker provided us an opportunity to explore which styles we use personally and the merits and limitations of each style.

Each of the sessions provided an opportunity for us to reflect on our own experiences, what are we doing well and where we might be falling short. The conference strived to answer the underlying question of what can we do to ensure we are being effective leaders and to provide us with useful and practical tools and takeaways to enable us to continue in the right direction. The conference concluded with a final goodbye from our wonderful PrimeGlobal hosts and warm embraces from the attendees we had met and bonded with during the sessions.

Shimmerman Penn is a 10-year member of PrimeGlobal, one of the top five largest associations of independent accounting firms in the world, providing a wide range of tools and resources to help member firms furnish superior accounting, auditing and management services to clients around the globe.