At the beginning of December, I was invited to give a keynote speech at the first international INNECO conference in Thessaloniki. INNECO is the largest conference ever held in Greece for young entrepreneurs. The organizers aimed to inspire and encourage young entrepreneurs and founders in Greece, and to position the conference as an annual event in the long term. To this end, personalities from various countries were invited to discuss their core topics and professional experi-ences. They included successful founders of innovative companies, executives of renowned firms, and independent entrepreneurs from a wide range of industries.

The conference was launched by the Youth Entrepreneurship Club NE, the larg-est association of entrepreneurs in Greece. Club NE was founded in 2010 and is based in Thessaloniki. In the meantime, the organization has offices throughout Greece, but also in other European countries and in the USA.

Together with 22 other personalities from the business world, I was also invited to speak at the conference as an expert. My one-hour keynote speech entitled "In Touch - more success by being in touch with yourself and others" focused on rela-tionship competence as a central factor for entrepreneurial success. To a capacity crowd, I talked about my own professional experiences and the greatest challenges in which I am now supporting leaders in my work:

A large part of the working time of executives and employees in companies is used to overcome conflicts and their consequences. Year after year, enormous amounts are incurred by companies due to uncooperative behaviour and escalated conflicts, destroying potential profits of the economy by such friction losses.

In response, more humanity is needed in leadership and collaboration. First, it is essential to understand the basic human needs and then to account for them appro-priately – both for individuals themselves and in the leadership work with employees and teams. This includes, in particular, the neuro-scientifically proven needs for ap-preciation, monitoring, orientation, connectedness and joy.

Key aspects of good leadership therefore include positive focus, authenticity and trust. While this is easy to understand, in practice, many executives still find it to be new ground, often contradicting their own leadership skills and their own leadership experience.

Systematic development of leadership competencies – starting with building solid personal competence – is therefore one of the most important and at the same time most underestimated influencing factors of successful companies.

The presentation attracted a large amount of interest, and participants asked their questions in an immediately following panel discussion. It was fantastic to see how many of the young entrepreneurs in attendance are interested in this topic and want to know more about it.

https://inneco.gr/en/speakers/