Dr. John Izzo

Speaking topics

Presentations listed below include in-person and virtual keynotes, as well as workshops, fireside chats, and other presentation formats.

• 100% Responsibility, 0% Excuses: Creating a Culture of Responsibility

  Taking responsibility means stepping up and seeing yourself as the agent of change, whether it is changing your company or changing the world — it starts with you.

  In this hard-hitting keynote Dr. John Izzo talks about a concept he calls 100-0 (100% responsibility, 0% excuses) and how each one of us can take greater accountability when we put our excuses aside by focusing on what we can do and the role we play. He gets leaders from the CEO to the front line thinking about what they can do personally to step up.

  Your leaders will leave knowing the main reasons why people don’t step up to take responsibility, the keys to getting people to take ownership, and how to influence people to create a culture of ownership.

  Izzo brings compelling examples of how leaders and companies achieved optimal results by creating true ownership. Your audience will get practical ideas and proven methods on how to see what’s in it for them personally when they step up, and how it improves their personal brand.

• Leading for Transformational Change: Turning Resistance into Results

  Would you like your people to consistently embrace change and create ongoing innovation? Almost every organization today is experiencing unprecedented change and a need to drive innovation and transformation to stay successful. Dr. John Izzo has spent an entire career helping leaders and organizations not only embrace change but inspiring them for transformational change.

  Your audience will discover proven methods for getting others to embrace change. Izzo explains the neuroscience behind change and how to use that knowledge to help others embrace change. The audience will discover the keys to personal resilience and learn how to create a climate for innovation and understand the true source of change resistance and how to overcome it in yourself and your organization.

  This talk is hard hitting, practical, and guaranteed to get your people stepping up to change.

  You will discover:

  • Why people don’t resist change, they resist being changed.
  • Find out the three keys to getting people to embrace change.
  • Learn to drive the why and empower people on the how.
  • Find out how to become more change hardy and able to embrace change.

• Stepping Up: How Taking Responsibility Changes Everything

  Have you ever wondered why some people step up and create positive change in the world and in business? In this presentation, Dr. John Izzo shows audiences how “stepping up” creates positive change while improving satisfaction at work and in life. Based on his bestselling book, Stepping Up, he shares important principles such as:

  Why only naïve people ever change the world.
  The way each of us can step up every day in our lives to make a bigger difference.
  Show how leadership is not a position but a decision.
  Filled with inspiring examples of how people have stepped up to make things better in their own world, audiences will leave feeling inspired that their individual actions can make a difference in the workplace, our lives, and for the greater good of the world. They will leave this keynote motivated to take action immediately by focusing on what they can do personally to drive change rather than relying on others.

• The Purpose Revolution: Differentiating Your Brand in an Age of Disruption

  Companies today struggle to find a place of true differentiation that grows lasting competitive advantage. Differentiating by products, service, or price is becoming more difficult in an age of fierce global competition. What’s even more disturbing is that consumers say they wouldn’t care if 70% of brands they buy from disappeared!

  The good news is that there is a great source of brand advantage emerging that few companies are taking advantage of: the desire for Purpose. There is a revolution of expectations happening globally among customers and employees, and this shift represents perhaps the greatest opportunity to grow your brand. Dr. John Izzo calls this The Purpose Revolution. Research shows that brands that truly connect customer to their purpose have much higher levels of loyalty.

  Over 80% of consumers say that they want to buy from companies that are improving society and planet. Over 35% of these consumers are highly motivated by purpose and are demonstrating a willingness to pay a premium for brands that they believe in. This trend towards buying with purpose is global, it’s growing fast, and the smartest brands in the world are already reaping the benefits.

  In this powerful keynote based on his book, The Purpose Revolution: How Leaders Create Engagement and Competitive Advantage in an Age of Social Good, Izzo shows your audience what customers want, what converts that desire into loyalty, and how you (and your organization) can connect consumers to your authentic purpose.

  Izzo is a consummate storyteller and will wow your audience with examples of this emerging revolution among consumers and brands while showing powerful tools for you to connect customers to your story while embedding purpose in your company.

  Your audience will:

  • Understand the emerging purpose-driven consumer — who they are and what they want.
  • Discover why most companies fail at purpose and how to succeed.
  • Find out the biggest mistake marketers/leaders make in communicating purpose.
  • See why most consumers don’t believe our story of good and how tell a believable story.
  • Hear powerful examples of how companies are winning loyalty through social good.
  • Learn how to tell your purpose story to consumers and how to make employees ambassadors for your purpose brand.
  • Find out how to embed purpose into your brand.

• The Purpose Revolution: Winning and Engaging Talent in an Age of Social Good

  Attracting, engaging, and keeping talent is a key driver of success for every enterprise. Although talent want the same things they have always desired, there is a shift happening that is changing the war for talent. Across every demographic of age and country, there is an emerging purpose-focused employee who wants to be a part of organizations that are creating social good both for customers and society.

  Over 50% of employees globally want to work for companies that have a purpose and half of millennials say they would take a pay cut to be at a company whose purpose they believe in. Research also shows that when employees believe in the purpose of the company, they are more productive, more engaged, and more willing to put in discretionary effort. This desire to be part of a purposeful company cuts across all demographic categories of age, gender, and country though it is most pronounced among millennials.

  This keynote will help leaders and companies see how this trend is changing the talent game and how to thrive with a workforce focused on doing good.

  Your audience will:

  • Understand the emerging purpose-focused employee and how different they are from every class of employees that have come before them.
  • Discover how team members define purpose and social good.
  • Learn practical ways to connect employees to your purpose and involve them in your efforts at social good.
  • Hear powerful examples of what leading companies are doing to win the war for talent in an age of social good.
  • Find out the three things leaders can do every day to connect team members to your purpose.
  • Know the three biggest mistakes organizations and leaders make in connecting with purpose-focused talent (and how to avoid them).
  • See how every team member can help their company become a force for good in society.

• Workshop: The Habits of Happier People

  Have you ever wondered why some people seem to maintain ongoing levels of happiness and optimism greater than others do? Do you realize that research shows us by simply changing a few key habits, we can raise the level of our ongoing happiness?

  Happiness is serious business since team members who are happy perform better, make fewer critical mistakes, make better decisions, are significantly more resilient, and are more successful. What’s more, happiness is one of the prime life goals for almost all people globally. Yet, few people know anything about the emerging science of happiness that shows how simple habits can raise the sustainable level of happiness we experience.

  This keynote explores the habits of happy, optimistic people and shows how we can become happier and more optimistic while coaching others to be happier and cultivate positivity in their lives.

  Based on solid research, your audience will learn habits that can improve their level of happiness on an ongoing basis. Your audience will also discover how to help their teams become happier and achieve greater levels of success.

  Session outcomes include:

  • Discover the research-based habits of happy people.
  • Learn simple daily, weekly, and monthly habits that lead to sustainable increases in happiness and resiliency.
  • Learn about the five core happiness habits.
  • Discover how to help coach others and teams towards sustainable happiness and resiliency.
  • Understand team practices that enhance happiness and resiliency.
  • Be inspired to move towards greater happiness.
  • Achieve higher levels of performance.

• Workshop: Leading for Empathy and Inclusion

  Diverse teams where people experience inclusion have been shown to create higher performance and innovation. Empathy and the ability to customize how we lead to the individuals who work with us are critical skills for leaders to drive engagement. Research shows leaders who demonstrate empathy and inclusion grow innovation, retain talent, and lead more highly engaged teams.

  Leaders must create a climate where each person can showcase their unique attributes in a way that brings out their personal best. This inspiring keynote or workshop will help inspire your audience to commit to diversity while giving them practical steps to become more inclusive, empathic leaders.

  Participants will understand how to create more inclusion and value the diversity of backgrounds, cultures, and experiences, while exploring the negative impacts that exclusion brings to the workplace. Specific skills for demonstrating empathy and increasing team inclusion will be introduced and developed.

  Session outcomes include:

  • Help leaders see that diversity with inclusion is the key to high performance. Building a place where each team member can be themselves and where the team benefits from a range of lived experiences.
  • Inspire leaders to make inclusion a key focus of their leadership.
  • Explore how gearing leadership to individual team members’ values and preferences leads to higher performance.
  • Understand intersectionality — how each person is the confluence of multiple rivers that make them who they are. Our goal is to understand their experiences and appreciate all factors of their identity.
  • Learn how to demonstrate greater levels of empathy and build trusting relationships while leading diverse teams every day.
  • Understand the role of unconscious bias in leading inclusive teams and how we can overcome our privilege and bias.
  • Learn what it means to be an ally for those who feel marginalized.
  • Gain skill at getting to know team members: their purpose, their lived experience, their engagement language, and how they want to be included.

• Workshop: Champions of Accountability: Creating a Culture of Responsibility

  Accountability is a major part of every formal leader’s role. Accountability is greatly misunderstood and often perceived negatively both by managers and team members. Done well, the goal of accountability is to inspire and enable people to achieve greater levels of skill, performance, and effectiveness — thereby maximizing their potential.

  Most leaders have had little training on both how to lead accountability in a positive way and the keys to helping people change their habits and move performance to higher levels.

  This session helps leaders gain new skill at leading for greater accountability while learning the key principles and practices that facilitate sustainable changes in behavior and attitude in those they lead.

  In this session, you will:

  • Discover how to frame accountability positively for self and team members.
  • Learn the four biggest mistakes leaders make in leading for accountability.
  • Understand how to determine if you need to coach motivation or skill (and how to coach each).
  • Find evidence-based practices to help yourself and others create sustainable behavioural change.
  • Discover how to help people take 100% responsibility for their own growth.
  • Apply these principals to real life cases of leadership situations.
  • Apply the learning and identify action plans.
  • Conduct an accountability self-assessment to identify areas for growth.

• Workshop: The Secrets of Highly Engaging People Leaders

  Organizations and teams with high levels of employee engagement are significantly more profitable, have much higher customer loyalty, higher productivity, and a better reputation with customers than those with moderate engagement. In fact, the average highly engaged team member can be up to 40% more productive than a disengaged performer. But what are the secrets to highly engaged teams and highly engaging leaders? Why do some leaders consistently create highly engaged associates?

  Dr. John Izzo has spent a lifetime researching what separates truly passionate, high engagement teams and leaders from the rest of the pack. In this interactive session, he shares the four keys to creating high engagement teams and shows why some leaders are consistently able to get high levels of commitment from people. Izzo gives your attendees practices for how leaders can immediately drive engagement for better results.

  Based on his work with many of the best workplaces in the world, Izzo shows leaders how to implement simple disciplines and routines guaranteed to create highly engaged teams.

  Your leaders will not only see their role in driving engagement but will leave with ideas they can implement right away that will lead to significantly higher engagement. Izzo has a great track record of getting leaders to become engagement champions.

  Session outcomes include:

  • Learn the five secrets of engaging leaders.
  • Gain practical, simple to implement tips for becoming a more engaging people leader right away.
  • Find out why some leaders are routinely more admired (and how to become one of them).
  • Apply these principles and choose areas for personal improvement.
  • Learn how to check in every day to be amore engaging people leader.

• Workshop: Leading for Purpose

  If you really want your people to be engaged and bring their best to work, then you need to make sure they have a deep sense of purpose. Research shows that people who see the purpose of their work are more productive, work longer hours and are more engaged.

  Dr. John Izzo first introduced the idea of higher purpose at work in his book, Awakening Corporate Soul, and he has been helping leaders and team members harness the power of purpose for over 25 years. In 2018, his ground-breaking book, The Purpose Revolution, showed how the emerging desire for purpose is reshaping the world of work.

  In this session, Izzo not only shows why purpose is so critical, but provides attendees proven methods to discover personal purpose and shows leaders how to drive purpose and the “why” with teams.

  By going through this program, you will:

  • Identify personal purpose.
  • Discover how to stay focused on purpose every day.
  • Learn how to help team members find purpose.
  • Gain the keys to coaching purpose.
  • Discover how leaders drive purpose with teams.

  Please note: There are two versions of this program, with one aimed at individual performers and the second focused on people leaders.