Four Teams in Nine Days: What LEO Pharma, Lufthansa, SAP Concur and HIQA Taught Me About Resilient Teams

Resilient teams are not the ones that never struggle. They are the ones that talk honestly about pressure, ask for help early, look after the person as well as the performance, have leaders who go first, and treat wellbeing as a weekly habit rather than a once a year event. That is what two decades of recovery, 29 years in the classroom and years of speaking in Irish workplaces have taught me, and it is what I was talking about in four very different rooms over nine days this October.

My name is Enda O’Doherty. I am an Irish keynote speaker on resilience, workplace mental health and leadership, based in Waterford, and the author of I’m Fine. Between 7 and 15 October 2026 I spoke to teams at LEO Pharma, Lufthansa, SAP Concur and HIQA. I want to thank each of them, and share what the most successful teams have in common.

In nine days I delivered keynotes to a pharmaceutical company, an airline, a global software company and the national health and social care regulator. Four sectors, four very different pressures, one shared question: how do we keep going, and keep each other going, when the work is relentless?

LEO Pharma Ireland, Wednesday 7 October

I spoke on site at LEO Pharma Ireland in Crumlin, Dublin. LEO Pharma is a global dermatology company working in a highly regulated industry where accuracy is everything. That kind of environment builds conscientious people, and conscientious people are often the last to admit they are running on empty.

Lufthansa, Thursday 8 October

The next day I was with the Lufthansa team in Dublin to mark World Mental Health Day. Aviation runs on precision, shift patterns and split second timing. It was a privilege to lead their World Mental Health Day session, and a reminder that the people who keep complex operations moving need someone to check on them too.

SAP Concur at the Aviva Stadium, Tuesday 13 October

On 13 October I delivered a keynote for SAP Concur at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. SAP is one of the largest software companies in the world, and SAP Concur is its travel and expense business. Speaking to a high performing commercial team in a stadium built for high performance felt fitting, and I am grateful to everyone behind the scenes who made the day run so smoothly.

A few days later, Franklin Ryan, Expenses Team Leader in Finance Operations at SAP Concur, left this recommendation on my LinkedIn profile:

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Attending Enda’s speaking session was a fantastic experience. He brings so much energy, passion, and insight to the stage. His talk was deeply inspiring and provocative, driving home the powerful reminder that we are the masters of our own destinies. I walked away thoroughly motivated and energized. Enda is an absolute must-have speaker for any event!

Franklin Ryan, Expenses Team Leader, Finance Operations, SAP Concur

HIQA, Thursday 15 October

Finally, I delivered a wellbeing session for the national team meeting of the Disability Regulation Directorate at HIQA, the Health Information and Quality Authority. HIQA is the independent body that regulates health and social care services in Ireland. The people in that team carry real responsibility for the safety and dignity of others, and work like that can quietly take its toll.

Because the pressure is real and measurable. In a 2025 survey of 1,000 employees in Ireland carried out for SD Worx Ireland, 50% said their work is mentally demanding or stressful, and 24% had taken leave for their mental health in the previous year, against a European average of 18%. Only 45% said they feel comfortable discussing mental health with their team.

That last figure stays with me. More than half of Irish workers do not feel able to tell the people beside them every day that they are struggling. I know that silence well. For years my answer to every question about how I was doing was “I’m fine”, which is why I chose those two words as the title of my book. I was not fine. I was a teacher with addiction and depression, holding it together in public and falling apart in private.

The research on what makes teams work points the same way. Google’s Project Aristotle studied 180 of its own teams to find out why some outperformed others. The most important factor was not talent, experience or structure. It was psychological safety: whether people believe they can admit a mistake, ask a question or raise a concern without being punished or embarrassed.

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The most important factor in team performance was not talent or structure. It was whether people felt safe to speak up.

In my experience, the most successful and resilient teams share five habits. None of them costs money. All of them take courage.

1. They talk honestly about pressure

Resilient teams say the hard thing out loud. People can say “this week is too much” or “I got that wrong” without fear, and that is psychological safety in practice. When pressure is named early, it can be shared and managed. When it is not, it goes underground and comes back later as burnout, sick leave or resignation.

2. They ask for help before they need it

For the Share the Load mental health campaign, a group of us carried a washing machine up Kilimanjaro. About an hour from the summit, altitude sickness stopped me, and my companions carried the washing machine the rest of the way to the top. It is the most important lesson I have learned about teams: strength is not carrying everything yourself, it is letting other people carry some of the load.

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Strength is not carrying everything yourself. It is letting other people carry some of the load.

3. They look after the person, not just the performance

High performance and good mental health are not opposites. I ran nine marathons in eight days and completed two Ironman races, and every finish depended on rest, recovery and people who noticed when I was struggling. Teams are the same. The best managers ask how someone is, ask again, and listen to the answer.

4. Their leaders go first

Culture follows the person at the top of the room. When a senior leader admits a period has been difficult, or talks openly about the support they have used, they give everyone else permission to do the same. Leadership resilience is not about appearing unbreakable. It is about modelling what honest, sustainable work looks like.

5. They treat wellbeing as a habit, not an event

A keynote can open a door, and I am proud when people tell me a session started a conversation in their team. But resilience is built in the ordinary weeks that follow: the check in at the start of a meeting, the manager who notices, the colleague who says “go home, I have this”. The organisations that get the most from a wellbeing day keep the conversation going long after the speaker has left.

A good resilience keynote gives a team a shared language for pressure and permission to use it. It will not fix a broken culture in an hour, and any speaker who promises that is overselling. What it can do is make it normal, for one afternoon, to admit that work is hard, and give people practical tools and a story they will remember when they need it.

I speak from lived experience rather than theory. I spent 29 years as a teacher, I have been in recovery from addiction for over two decades, and I have spoken for organisations including JPMorgan, Pfizer, Accenture, TikTok, AIB, Abbott, Vodafone and Sanofi. You can read more about my resilience keynotes and workplace mental health keynotes, or see what clients say on my testimonials page.

Choose a speaker with genuine lived experience, a track record with organisations like yours, and the willingness to tailor the session to your team. Then ask three questions before you book.

• ▸Is the story real and relevant? Audiences can tell a speaker who has lived it from one who has read about it.
• ▸Will they adapt to your audience? A boardroom of ten, a wellbeing day for two hundred and an online team meeting each need something different.
• ▸Is the topic handled safely? A mental health talk should leave people feeling supported, not exposed. Ask how the speaker signposts help.

My guide to booking a corporate keynote speaker in Ireland covers formats, lead times and what to expect. For more on performance, read the secrets of high performance teams.

To everyone at LEO Pharma, Lufthansa, SAP Concur and HIQA: thank you for inviting me in, for listening so generously, and for the conversations afterwards. Being trusted to speak to people about something as personal as their mental health is a privilege I never take lightly, and those nine days in October will stay with me.

About the author: Enda O’Doherty is an Irish keynote speaker on resilience, workplace mental health and leadership, a TEDx speaker and the author of I’m Fine. Connect with him on LinkedIn.