High Profile Leaders In Taranaki Take Up Silent Leadership Challenge

Influential leaders from around New Zealand are going deaf for the day for the Silent Leadership Challenge to raise awareness around hearing impairment.

42 high profile leaders have signed up for the challenge on Friday 2 August, with two leaders from local company Methanex in the Taranaki region participating. All participants will tackle three communication challenges in their workplace and one at home while wearing bright yellow hearing protectors to simulate deafness.

Local company, Methanex NZ Ltd is highly supportive of the Silent Leadership Challenge with Jayne Francis, Director of Corporate Resources and Brian Ropitini, Director of Manufacturing both inspired to take part and raise money. 

“Jayne and I are both looking forward to participating because we know that effective leaders must have a good degree of awareness about self and others when it comes to communication. We believe we will learn a lot from the simulation exercises that will require us to be much more attentive to non-verbal communication,” said Brian. “And as a manufacturing company, with loud equipment on our sites, Methanex is fully supportive of raising awareness around safe practices to prevent hearing loss – so it is really a good fit with our safety culture.”

With over $23,000 raised to-date, The Foundation is seeking others to get involved to meet their target of $100,000 in donations.  All funds raised will go towards The National Foundation for the Deaf to fund its advocacy and support work on behalf of deaf and hearing impaired New Zealanders, and its work to raise awareness of the need to prevent noise-induced loss hearing loss.

“We are absolutely delighted with the tremendous support to-date from a diverse range of leaders throughout New Zealand,” said The National Foundation for the Deaf CEO, Louise Carroll.

“But we’d love to see many more corporate and community leaders on board.”

To join the Challenge, leaders need to register online at www.silentleadershipchallenge.com and aim to raise funds by seeking sponsorship donations from people in their professional and social networks.
On the day of the Challenge, participants will be posting photos and personal stories online via the Foundation’s Facebook and Twitter pages, using the hash tag #silentleadershipchallenge.

Registrations close on Wednesday 31 July at 5:00pm.

All information on the event and cause can be found at www.silentleadershipchallenge.com.

ENDS

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