Joseph Grenny

Over the past twenty years, Joseph Grenny has taught and advised more than one hundred thousand leaders on every major continent from the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies to the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. He has advised CEOs and senior executives on more than a dozen major change initiatives—receiving credit from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics' President as a key factor in helping the organization win the $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter program.

Joseph is coauthor and contributor to eight books, including three New York Times bestsellers, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when Stakes are High and Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior.

An expert in topics ranging from leadership and interpersonal communication to organizational change and effectiveness, Joseph has been cited in dozens of newspapers including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. He has also appeared on more than one hundred radio and television programs including CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, and The Today Show.

Having delivered more than one thousand speeches in his career, Joseph's engaging style is a sought-after mix of entertainment, practicality, and foundational research. Traveling across the globe from East Asia, to India, to Europe, Joseph has spoken to associations and organizations including NASA, the American Bankers Association, the Supreme Court of California, the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, American Public Works Association, and the American Society of Training and Development. A seasoned executive and business strategy expert, Joseph has addressed executive level teams for clients including IBM, Progressive Insurance, Sprint, Textron, McGraw-Hill, Eli Lilly & Company, Texas Instruments, and Genentech. Whether he's speaking to an audience of more than ten thousand or to a small executive team, Joseph's dynamic and captivating style keeps his skills in high demand.

Formerly, Joseph was president of California Computer Corporation and an executive for the Covey Leadership Center. Building on his extensive history of entrepreneurial and leadership experience, Joseph co-founded VitalSmarts and currently serves on its board of directors. With award-winning training products based on more than thirty years of ongoing research, VitalSmarts has helped more than three hundred of the Fortune 500 realize significant results using a proven method for driving rapid, sustainable and measurable change in behaviours. VitalSmarts has been ranked twice by Inc. magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in America and has taught two million people worldwide.

• 6. Silence Kills: The Seven Crucial Conversations in Healthcare

  All too often, well-intentioned professionals in healthcare organizations choose not to speak up when they're concerned with the behavior, decisions, or actions of a colleague.
  
  Your participation in this presentation ensures your involvement in a movement that is sweeping the nation. Released in 2005 at a national press briefing, this study is making a big impact on the healthcare industry. "Silence Kills" reviews seven categories of conversations that are especially difficult and, at the same time, appear to be especially essential for people in healthcare to master, including: ·Broken rules
  ·Mistakes
  ·Lack of support
  ·Incompetence
  ·Poor teamwork
  ·Disrespect
  ·Micromanagement
  
  
  Exploring the current trends in healthcare, Joseph Grenny guides his audience through solutions to avoidable medical errors. With 195,000 people dying each year in U.S. hospitals because of medical mistakes, this study suggests that creating a culture where healthcare workers speak up before problems occur is a vital part of the solution.

• 5. Silence Fails: The Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution

  The success of an organization is directly determined by how well people in that organization execute on their high-stakes projects, programs, and initiatives. And yet execution trends are anything but promising:
  
  A recent survey by VitalSmarts revealed that 83 percent of employees say they are working on projects, programs and initiatives they believe will fail. Research shows that fewer than one in three critical initiatives will achieve its intended goals and almost half are deemed outright failures.
  
  New research by VitalSmarts and The Concours Group shows that these failures are largely predictable—and, therefore, preventable.
  
  In the groundbreaking study, Silence Fails: The Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution, researchers found that project failures are almost always preceded by conversation failures. Specifically, they found that success and failure can be predicted with 85 percent accuracy based on how well participants—from the executive suites to cross-functional teams—perform in five crucial conversations.
  
  More importantly, these five conversations are not just a predictor of but an inoculation against shockingly high rates of failure to execute on ambitious and otherwise right-headed plans. When leaders are skilled at holding these five conversations, the odds of success increase 50-80 percent.
  
  In this engaging, interactive, and hard-hitting presentation, you will learn practical, actionable skills for engaging more effectively in these emotionally and politically risky conversations. Expected results range from immediate improvement in decision-making, higher quality execution of mission-critical plans, and improved engagement of project leaders.

• 4. Leadership for Maximum Engagement: Crucial Skills for Team and Organizational Performance

  For decades, experts and researchers have studied and dissected what differentiates the best leaders and leadership teams from the worst. This research has led the VitalSmarts team of experts to focus on vision, audacious goals, execution, and accountability. Leadership expert and New York Times bestselling author Joseph Grenny argues that rather than separating the bad from the good, leadership teams will learn more by asking what differentiates the good from the best. The best teams achieve something the rest never attain: 100 percent engagement and absolute intellectual honesty.
  
  The Holy Grail of team performance is completely leveraging the hearts and minds of every team member. Typically, the roadblock that derails teams from leveraging their full potential is found in breakdowns of Crucial Conversations. Failures to fully disclose intellectual differences and fully confront collapses in performance are the root cause of mistrust, politics, and disengagement in top teams.
  
  This highly practical, entertaining, and engaging presentation will draw from 20 years of study with over 100 executive-level and senior management teams that highlights skills needed to attain 100 percent engagement. Grenny and his co-authors have spent more than 10,000 hours watching how virtuoso teams manage crises, make decisions, and spur each other to peak performance through masterful practice of crucial conversations. Participants will learn skills that will immediately help them improve their crucial conversations and influence their team to maximum engagement.

• 3. Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

  What do a high-powered Fortune 500 executive, a tribal leader in sub-Saharan Africa, and the founder of a San Francisco-based conglomerate run exclusively by ex-cons have in common? They've all helped themselves and others change behavior. In other words, they're all influencers.
  
  The Fortune 500 executive brought a new product to market in a third the time of her predecessors—saving a struggling company. The tribal leader eliminated a deadly disease. The founder of the San Francisco conglomerate transforms hookers, thieves, and drug dealers into productive citizens. Each of these influencers has solved some of the world's most profound problems.
  
  We all want to be influencers. Hardly a day passes that we don't try to influence ourselves or others to do something new and different. Whether you're looking to improve your relationships with your direct reports or motivate your employees to demonstrate more concern for profitability, you are continually working on ways to exert influence.
  
  And yet, in spite of the fact that we're routinely trying to help ourselves and others alter their behavior, few of us can articulate a model of what it takes to do so. It's time this changed.
  
  In this fast-paced and inspiring presentation based on the New York Times bestseller, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, you will learn to create rapid and sustainable change. You will journey from San Francisco to Thailand and meet influence masters who have made change not only achievable and sustainable, but inevitable. You'll find out why some managers have increased productivity repeatedly and significantly—while others have failed miserably. In short, you'll discover how to: ·Motivate yourself and others to do things you don't feel like doing
  ·Rapidly master new skills to achieve greater results
  ·Harness the power of peer pressure to accelerate change
  ·Quickly amass the social influence to change the behavior of hundreds or thousands of people
  ·Use the invisible and constant power of the environment to make change the path of least resistance
  ·The most important capacity you can hold is the capacity to influence behavior. Once you tap into the power of influence, you can begin to solve the problems you care about most—from the simplest to the most persistent, resistant, and profound challenges you can imagine.
  

• 2. Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior

  Based on the New York Times bestselling book Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior, this captivating topic guides audiences through the steps to mastering crucial confrontations and harnessing the power of turning every disappointment or broken promise into an opportunity for enhancing accountability, improving performance, and ensuring execution.
  
  After more than thirty years of research in two dozen industries involving over 25,000 individuals, Joseph Grenny has observed leaders struggle with accountability challenges that turn productive organizations into organizations mired with obstacles, sagging quality, and low morale. Joseph's observations confirm that leaders who fail to hold others accountable can expect poor results.
  
  On the other hand, top-rated leaders step up to problems, solve them, and improve relationships - all in one healthy confrontation. Instead of backing away from the real issue, allowing problems to escalate, or charging in, the best individuals, teams, and organizations: ·Confront and manage gaps
  ·Permanently resolve broken promises and missed deadlines
  ·Transform violated rules and bad behaviours into productive accountability
  ·Strengthen relationships while solving problems
  ·Achieve higher levels of performance
  ·Audience participants will walk away from this fun and engaging speech with a new set of high-leverage tools to effectively achieve breakthrough results. Armed with a new skill set for holding others accountable, participants will create more positive results personally, professionally, and throughout their entire organization.
  
  
  Participants experience significant improvement and real results in areas such as: ·Performance
  ·Productivity
  ·Teamwork
  ·Change Management
  ·Quality
  ·Relationships
  ·Safety
  ·Meetings
  
  
  Are you craving similar results? Let Joseph's Crucial Confrontations presentation be the catalyst your organization needs to drive rapid and sustainable change, get stalled change initiatives back on track, and turn good individuals and teams into key contributors.

• 1. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High

  Whenever you're not getting the results you're looking for, it's likely that a crucial conversation is keeping you stuck.
  
  After more than thirty years of research in two dozen industries involving more than 25,000 individuals, Joseph Grenny has observed leaders struggle with poor performance, stalled change initiatives, low productivity, strained relationships, and general lack of results. Joseph's observations confirm that leaders who avoid talking honestly with the right people about the right issues can expert poor results.
  
  On the other hand, top-rated leaders routinely employ skills that turn diverse thought into synergy and synergy into results by mastering Crucial Conversations. In short, when the stakes are high, opinions differ, and emotions run strong, the best individuals, teams, and organizations:·Have the skills to step up to controversial and heated issues
  ·Professionally discuss issues in a way that makes it safe for everyone to speak
  ·Create an environment where people share their best ideas, make wise decisions, and then act on those decisions with conviction
  
  
  Based on the New York Times bestselling book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, this captivating topic guides audiences through the steps to mastering crucial conversations and harnessing the power of turning every employee interaction into an experience that achieves synergy, alignment, and agreement.
  
  Audience participants will walk away from this speech with a new set of high-leverage tools to effectively achieve breakthrough results. Armed with the new skill set to make the most of every interaction, participants will create more positive results, personally, professionally, and throughout their entire organization.
  
  Participants experience significant improvement and real results in areas such as:·Productivity
  ·Quality
  ·Teamwork
  ·Relationships
  ·Safety
  ·Employee Satisfaction
  ·Efficiency
  
  
  Are you craving similar results? Let Joseph's Crucial Conversations presentation be the catalyst your organization need to drive rapid and sustainable change, get stalled change initiatives back on track, and turn good individuals and teams into key contributors.

• Joseph is truly gifted at his craft. I have never been so sure of doing the right thing as I am with our decision to invite Joseph to present to our leadership team. Joseph, his stories, and his brilliant material were a complete hit.
  Banner Desert Medical Center
• In selecting speakers, I try to find someone who is topical, interesting to listen to, and most importantly, who can connect to our people and culture. From the outset, Mr. Grenny demonstrated his commitment to learning about our company, who his audience was, and capitalized on his knowledge and research to make his messages directly relevant to what we do in our business. His presentation, the response in Q&A, and his willingness to spend time with us made the event a success. I highly recommend him as a speaker and a consultant.
  CH2M HILL
• We asked Joseph Grenny to provide a three-hour overview of Crucial Conversations to a global leadership conference of our top one hundred executives. Most were highly skeptical about consultants in general. Joseph delivered an outstanding presentation in the face of these high-risk conditions. He moved the audience back and forth between laughing hysterically and thinking deeply about how crucial conversations impact results that really matter. The three hours flew by and the audience was left wanting more.
  Eli Lilly and Company
• Joseph Grenny has the ability to normalize the challenges we all experience, touch people on an emotional level with his storytelling, and challenge us to move forward and address those 'Crucial Conversations' that are keeping us stuck whether at home or work. In a short time, Joseph Grenny's presentation kept people talking and learning long after he walked off the stage. The concepts resonated with participants.
  City of Eugene

• 
  September 2007

  Influencer

  We all want to be influencers. And yet, despite our routine attempts to help ourselves and others change behavior, few of us know what it takes to be one. Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, is a revolutionary book that combines the skills used by hundreds of successful change agents with five decades of the best social science research to deliver a proven model for changing behavioursÃ

  
  
• 
  August 2004

  Crucial Confrontations

  Crucial Confrontations borrows from twenty years of research involving two groups. More than 25,000 people helped the authors identify those who were most influential during crucial confrontations. They spent 10,000 hours watching these people, documented what they saw, and then trained and tested with more than 300,000 people. Second, they measured the impact of crucial confrontations improvements on organizational and team performance--the results were immediate and sustainable: twenty to fifty percent improvements in measurable performance.

  
  
• 
  June 2002

  Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High

  When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation badly and suffer the consequences; or read Crucial Conversations and discover how to communicate best when it matters most. This wise and witty guide gives you the tools you need to step up to life's most difficult and important conversations, say what''s on your mind, and achieve positive outcomes that will amaze you.