Motivational Leadership Speaker

• They need an uplifting keynote, general session or training program from a passionate and energetic presenter who engages their audience and inspires them to reach higher.
• They need to restore effective communication so people from different generations can talk and work together to get the job done.
• They need to re-gain team harmony and cohesion after a period of growth, merger or acquisition, so they can get everyone on the same page.
• They need to re-build morale after the loss of a big client (or other demoralizing “incident”) before they lose another one.
• They want to preserve or re-gain the “family feeling” and excitement they had when they first started.

Do you know? Is it evident in everything that every member of your team says and does? Is it in the forefront of their minds and so strongly instilled in their hearts that every action demonstrates what is important to them and the organization? When corporate culture is unclear or confused, everything suffers: engagement, productivity, customer service, morale, profits – everything.

But when the corporate culture is clear, leaders don’t have to “be everywhere and see everything” because employees will demonstrate your shared values automatically. And if someone has a bad day, their peers will jump in to help them because doing anything else “is not the way we roll here.”

Strong leadership – WOW leadership – is at the heart of culture because it guides everyone’s actions. From the Board Room to the Break Room, everyone is committed to excellence, to making a difference and to reaching their full potential … together.

When leadership falters, decisive and authentic action is needed to help the team recover quickly in order to keep the organization from losing momentum or even sliding backward.

More importantly, how do your associates view your leadership style and leadership teams?

Do your employees have to come to work because they make a paycheck… or do they love to come to work because they make a difference?

Creating the WOW is not about big, flashy one-time actions that create fleeting impact and then are gone. It’s about our people and their willingness to consistently engage and take ownership for their role in the organization’s success.

But their willingness to consistently engage and take ownership relies on their leaders’ willingness and ability to consistently help them remember that they matter – and that their actions matter… and that make a difference every day.

Do your policies and procedures enable and encourage team members to be creative and innovative when serving others? Do they feel safe to use their judgment in order to create exceptional experiences? Do your systems and tools support and enable them to follow those creative actions through to completion? Or do those experiences fall flat because the systems or tools don’t work, and actually prevent them from keeping their promises?

Disengagement and burnout often prevent people from sharing new ideas and going the extra mile to find hidden WOW’s that add up to exceptional experiences for everyone around them.

In this program, Sandy shares uplifting leadership ideas, entertaining stories and case studies, and easy-to-use models that foster innovative and proactive thinking. The program inspires attendees to fully engage and bring their ideas to fruition by sparking their creativity and showing them how to anticipate knowledge gaps, improve processes, enhance productivity, eliminate excuses and break the “status quo”, so their ideas can be realized.

By reinforcing a culture of service, values, creativity and respect, Sandy also demonstrates how to effectively leverage the competitive advantage that exists in tapping into the tacit knowledge of the team, so it doesn’t remain hidden or “walk out the door” to benefit your competition. The result is that attendees remember that they do make a difference… and can lead others to do the same.

“Fabulous – As a new supervisor, I am leaving with great ideas.”
– WOWplace leadership training program attendee

“The presentation was GREAT. It was obvious that Sandy put a lot of time and effort in customizing the presentation for KUA.”
– KUA Manager

“We’d like to have Sandy come in and work with one department for 6 months, and then expand out to other departments once the concepts are in place in the first one!”
– WOWplace leadership training program attendee

“WOW, this was excellent. She kept my interest throughout. Also, challenged us at the beginning to participate in her own way. You would have felt less than you should be if you did not join in. We were very lucky to get this woman.”
– Healthcare association conference attendee

Alternative title:  "The Leader’s Challenge: Getting People To Do What You Need  Them to Do"

The mindsets and concepts of how to be a great leader have been known, analyzed and taught forever! In fact, we all know what to do; the difficulty comes in finding ways to do it consistently, even in the face of disengagement and business and personal pressures.

An added challenge comes from the fact that we all have “blind spots” when it comes to our own thoughts and behaviors that are hard for us to recognize and even harder for others to point out to us.

In this engaging and entertaining program, Sandy shares stories, examples and insights that help leaders identify what their people won’t – and can’t – tell them about what they may be inadvertently doing to inhibit employee engagement and contribution. She will share The WOWplace® Rules, five categories of leadership behaviors that outline a successful formula for not only creating cultural consistency in the midst of human inconsistency, but also allowing everyone to respond respectfully and compassionately when human mishaps occur so everyone can get back to business ASAP.

Key Takeaways:

• Use 5 leadership guidelines to motivate and engage associates at a higher level by making the workplace: Safe, Respectful, Human, Innovative, and Rewarding.
• Learn how to avoid a multitude of attitudes and behaviors that actually drive talented people away…
• Find ways to break the “Knowledge is Power” cycle and tap into your biggest source of competitive advantage: the tacit knowledge of your people.
• Build stronger relationships by remembering to focus on “Human” Duties while performing Job Duties.

*If time permits, Sandy also guides attendees in using her proprietary leadership assessment tool, Leadership Bingo™, to quickly assess their strengths and identify any gaps (“blind spots”) in their leadership skills or their consistency in applying those skills to everyday workplace situations.

Most leaders don’t want to be good leaders, they want to be great leaders. They not only want their people to help them look good, but they truly care about helping others succeed in their own right. Great leaders recognize that the more successful their people are, the more successful their entire organization will be. They also know that people don’t leave companies… they leave people, and in our competitive job market they must engage their best team members to keep them from being snatched up by other companies.

However, leaders are only human and sometimes have “blind spots” that prevent them from recognizing the actions, words and attitudes they exhibit that may be hindering the creativity and engagement of their teams.

Recognizing and changing even small things about the way they interact can bring big results because leadership impacts employee engagement, customer service, productivity, sales, profits… everything! So, it is imperative to get leadership right.

Through a series of examples and case studies, Sandy will share the 10 most common activities leaders must stop doing immediately, as well as uplifting stories, ideas, templates and models to help them focus on positive everyday behaviors they can implement now. She will also help attendees recognize their “emotional logo™” and how they can change their emotional “branding” to inspire their teams to produce higher results.

Key Takeaways:

• Recognize and eliminate 10 behaviors that hinder team performance.
• Utilize tools and templates to help you focus on positive everyday behaviors.
• Recognize your “Emotional Logo" and understand its effect on others.
• Learn simple actions you can do every day to inspire your teams to produce higher results.

Whether we realize it or not, we all have an “emotional logo.”  It consists of one (or more) actions, gestures or words that leap to mind when people think about you. In other words, it’s how we’re “branded” in the minds of others. And that branding can either help us be incredibly successful as leaders – or stifle our effectiveness without us ever realizing why (or that) it is happening. The good news is that with self-awareness, focus and practice, we can make that logo anything we wish it to be.

Through a series of stories and examples in this engaging and entertaining program, Sandy explores how and why our logos are formed, what inadvertent messages they may be sending to our teams, and what we can do to ensure they are true “WOWs!” for everyone we wish to lead or influence.

Exceptional customer service starts and ends with leadership. Employees will treat customers as well as they feel they are being treated by leaders, so it’s up to leaders to lead by example and model the behavior they wish to see in others.

In this program, Sandy shares mindsets that enable employees to offer exceptional service to both internal and external customers. She also shares case studies from her work with clients, as well as others, who have overcome difficult challenges and achieved higher levels of customer retention and loyalty.

Sample discussion points:

• What is the impact of consistency on creating the WOW (which is a matter of will:

                W ill I O r W on’t I?)

• Tapping into employees’ under-utilized talents and abilities, fostering employee initiative?
• Building trust and respect by being a role model for the actions and mindsets you expect from your teams.
• Understanding the impact of being HUMAN and relatable in building stronger relationships; encouraging everyone to focus on their “Human” Duties while performing their Job Duties.
• Creating higher levels of respect & trust (effective leaders don’t DEMAND respect, they COMMAND it).
• Motivating employees to do the extraordinary, despite every reason (excuse) not to do so.
• Gaining buy-in for new initiatives.
• Fostering proactive and critical thinking, as well as accountability in the workplace.
• In terms of innovation and creativity, what do we need to do (or stop doing) to take our results to the next level?
• Helping everyone realize that we must take reasonable and appropriate risks to create breakthrough performance.
• Using proactive formulas, tools and templates for creating WOW experiences.

Sandy’s presentation showed that she is very knowledgeable, energetic, passionate, humorous (downright hilarious at times), and engaging. Her deliverables were empowering, enlightening, and reaffirming.”

– Mark Toatley, CRA, FAHRA (AHRA 2017 Annual Convention attendee)