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Barbara May: Roll with Life’s Punches

Barbara May is an award-winning business coach, educator, team building expert, and one of Northern America’s pioneering team building speakers.  Her diverse career spans 2 decades of experience in education, from school counselor and special education teacher to executive director and sports consultant.

Her career arc also includes roles in entertainment, non-profit management, government (serving as President of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS) – Edmonton Chapter), facilitating more than 500 Career and Employment Workshops, teaching the National Coaching Certification Program’s “How to Coach” course for 15 years, and holding the Guinness World Record for longest stand-up comedy show in history.

Her involvement in so many industries has given her a wide and diverse professional palette. A background this broad lends itself towards recognizing what gaps need to be bridged in corporate or educational environments so effective team building and communication can take place.

Of course, with 20+ active experience comes 20+ years of obstacles.

At age 46, Barbara May suffered some pulmonary emboli, which are blood clots that take place in the lungs.

She survived of course, but that event and the subsequent recovery turned out to be the breakthrough she needed.

A medical scare like this will slow anyone down, but Barbara utilized her collective knowledge, observations, and wisdom to push forward and achieve a higher sense of mental and emotional fortitude.

That health crises was what she needed to discover her purpose. Barbara May created Stumbling Blocks, a team building seminar designed to show companies new ways of overcoming adversity and solving problems in the workplace.

As a keynote or workshop teamwork speaker, she highlights which obstacles your team might face:

  • Letting side issues take the stage
  • Feelings of stagnation
  • Resenting work
  • Getting defensive
  • Allowing teamwork to give way to individual complaints.

It’s just as important to identify which stumbling blocks as it is to recognizing the solution.

Stumbling Blocks Team Building Seminar

By sharing her struggles and triumphs openly as a team building speaker, Barbara helps teams rebuild their stumbling blocks, and become productive, motivated, and happy.

The Stumbling Blocks team building seminar reinforces and supports a handful of key objectives in order to create and manage an effective team environment:

  • Communication, collaboration, and resolving conflict
  • Handling stress and setbacks
  • Moving on and learning from your mistakes
  • Taking initiative and being willing to ask for help
  • Public speaking and presentation skills
  • Change management and accepting change

Barbara’s Stumbling Blocks  is a crash course in overcoming challenges, and defeating adversity. These seminar showcase 3 main programs designed to detect which stumbling blocks are obstructing progress.

Motivation
Opening and closing keynote speeches for meetings, conferences or team building events.

Team Building
Interactive, fun, and informative team building seminars for everyone from new recruits to emerging leaders and senior executives.

Leadership
Customized skill building workshops on problem solving with communication and overcoming mistakes.

If your team seems stuck, don’t feel stuck; feel inspired. Barbara May will show you how.

If you’re interested in contacting Barbara for a team building workshop or seminar, you can book her through the Speakers Bureau of Canada here:

By Gordon Breault,
Executive Director of Speakers Bureau of Canada
Feb 4th, 2017