Once we’d beaten the driving rain on our journey to eWorld Procurement and Supply yesterday, the sight of the Grand Connaught Rooms off Covent Garden was very welcome. We were well looked after by the staff and were glad of the nice hot drinks and breakfast bites on offer courtesy of Proactis.
The first session was the keynote motivational speech ‘Altitude to Attitude’ by Adventurer Tori James, the youngest British woman to reach the summit of Everest. We didn’t attend it, but we have listened to her before at other events. However, we did speak to a representative from eprocurement firm ProProcure who did attend. Her impressions were good. She came away feeling inspired about teamwork, leadership and a positive mind-set. Tori had talked about her team having to be returned to base camp, owing to climate conditions and their readiness to tackle them, while other teams continued to the summit (although it must be said she did reach the summit on another day). She highlighted how it is often hard for a leader to make the difficult decision to split up a team to achieve a goal, but that sometimes it’s the right decision for all. So our listener came away understanding that sometimes you have to be the leader, listen to yourself and make the decisions to do the right thing.
