John Spence

John Spence is an internationally recognized leadership development expert, executive coach, and bestselling author named by the American Management Association as one of America’s Top 50 Leaders to Watch alongside Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. His mission of “Making the Very Complex Awesomely Simple” has guided more than 300 organizations worldwide to higher performance.

Career Highlights and Recognition
At just 26, John was named CEO of an international Rockefeller foundation, overseeing projects in 20 countries and reporting directly to Winthrop P. Rockefeller III. He has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Business Thought Leaders in America, received the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award, and is ranked among the top 500 leadership development experts in the world. His client list includes Microsoft, IBM, GE, Merrill Lynch, AT&T, and dozens of Fortune 500 firms.

Author and Educator
John is the author of five books, including Excellence by Design and Awesomely Simple, and has been a guest lecturer at more than 90 universities including Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, MIT, and the Wharton School of Business. His keynotes focus on leadership excellence, strategic thinking, high-performance teams, and organizational culture, delivering actionable frameworks that audiences can implement immediately.

The Leader Of The Future

Based on John’s work as the senior instructor for several corporate leadership development programs, this speech focuses on the characteristics, skills, attitudes and behaviors that are demanded by top talent of leaders they willingly follow. Topics for this speech include respect, vision, honesty, communication, teamwork, integrity and ethics. This thought-provoking and motivating session will help attendees understand what is required to be a highly effective leader.

Awesomely Simple

Taken directly from the core ideas of John’s book, this speech deals with the six critical strategies for building and sustaining a highly successful organization. Full of stories, anecdotes and lots of real-world application, this speech will help attendees clearly understand what they must focus on to take their business to the next level and keep it moving forward. This speech is appropriate for anyone who manages or leads a team, department, division or an entire organization.

Creating A Winning Culture

One of John’s most popular speeches, this program takes an in-depth look at what is required to build the kind of corporate culture that attracts, retains and grows truly outstanding employees. Based on the Great Places to Work study and the Firms of Endearment study, this speech touches on issues such as: communication, teamwork, motivation, accountability and delivering superior customer service.

The New Normal: Dealing Effectively With Change

Anytime there is economic or organizational turmoil and your employees are faced with significant change, it is absolutely critical to help people understand how to effectively embrace change and move forward proactively towards the “new normal.” This speech deals with the emotional cycle that people move through as they struggle with change and outlines specifically what must be done to create an organization that can deal successfully with change.