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Adrian  Gostick

Adrian Gostick

Bestselling Leadership Author & Organizational Culture Expert

Adrian Gostick

Bestselling Leadership Author & Organizational Culture Expert

Biography

#1 bestselling author Adrian Gostick provides advice to some of the world’s largest organizations on managing change, driving innovation, and leading high-performance teams.

Gostick is a global thought leader in the fields of corporate culture, leadership, and engagement. He is founder of the workplace assessment company FindMojo.com and author of the #1 New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestsellers All In, The Carrot Principle, Leading with Gratitude, and Anxiety at Work. His award-winning books have been translated into 30 languages and have sold more than 1.5 million copies around the world.

Gostick writes weekly on leadership strategy for Forbes, and his work has been called “fascinating,” by Fortune magazine and “creative and refreshing” by the New York Times. He has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, CNN, and CNBC, and is often quoted in The Economist, Financial Times, Newsweek, and Wall Street Journal. In 2020, Adrian was ranked as a top 10 Global Guru in Leadership and #3 in the world in Organizational Culture.

As an executive coach, he is a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s MG100 ‘Pay it Forward’ Coaching Cohort. His consulting clients include Danaher, Bank of America, Cisco, Rolls Royce, and Procter & Gamble.

Speaker Videos

Speaking Reel

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Speech Topics

The Best TEAM Wins: The 5 Disciplines of Today’s Most Effective Team Leaders

The Dilemma. The vast majority of employees’ days are now spent working collaboratively, but still 96 percent of executives cite poor teamwork as the main source of workplace failures in their organizations. It might be the most-pressing question organizations must address: How can managers lead their teams to improved performance given the volatility and challenges we face today.

The Research. Based on an 850,000-person study of the most profitable, innovative work teams, New York Times bestselling author Adrian Gostick introduces his audiences to the new science of teamwork—helping leaders deal with the increased speed of change in business, global and remote employees, the rise of the Millennials, the need to work more cross-functionally across departments, and more.

The Result. Gostick’s research has discovered a set of leadership disciplines that make the biggest difference in building today’s best teams. He helps leaders:

  • Manage to the One—Identify the drivers of each team member for maximum engagement
  • Speed Productivity—Help new people and teams work faster & smarter
  • Challenge Everything—Inspire greater innovation through healthy debate
  • Focus on Customers—Build bridges across functions, cultures, and distance

The Audience. Designed for senior leaders and managers (although often tailored to include all employees), Adrian Gostick has presented The Best Team Wins to corporate audiences and association conferences worldwide.

All In: How the Best Leaders Develop a Culture of Belief & Drive Big Results

The Dilemma: While most leaders understand their most reliable competitive advantage comes from their people, few know how to get their teams “all in”—convincing employees to buy into the strategy they’ve put forward. If a culture is clear, positive, and strong, then people will believe what they do matters and that they can make a difference. If a culture is dysfunctional—chaotic, combative or indifferent—employees will spend more time thinking about why the people sitting next to them should be fired than getting fired up themselves.

The Research: Teaming up with research giant Towers Watson, #1 bestselling author Adrian Gostick presents the findings of an unprecedented 300,000-person study conducted in the worst of the recession for his book All In. Based on this breakthrough research and his extensive consulting experience with a who’s-who of successful organizations, he presents a simple roadmap that all managers can follow to create a high-achieving culture in their own teams where employees are engaged, enabled and energized.

The Result: Gostick offers specific how-tos for each step, and tells fascinating stories of leaders in action that vividly depict just how these powerful methods can be implemented. Audiences will learn: the 3 research-based characteristics of the world’s most profitable, productive organizational and team cultures; the 7 steps today’s most successful leaders use to generate buy-in; and how managers at any level can build a productive workgroup culture of their own where employees commit to the culture and give an extra push of effort.

The Audience: Designed for senior leaders and managers (although sometimes tailored to include all employees), Adrian Gostick has presented “All In” to corporate audiences and association conferences worldwide. The session is typically customized to an organization’s specific culture challenges.

The Engagement Effect: How the Best Managers are Engaging Employees to Meet the Needs of a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex & Ambiguous World

The Dilemma: Financial performance in high-engagement organizations is 44 percent higher than in low engagement organizations. Some 90 percent of senior leaders believe employee engagement is a key driver of business performance. But only 24 percent think their employees are engaged enough to move their businesses forward.

The Research: New York Times bestselling author and leadership expert Adrian Gostick presents findings from 20 years of research, with a total of 850,000-people now surveyed, to illustrate the steps today’s most successful organizations use to generate superior levels of employee engagement to drive energy, focus and innovation. His work shows exactly which leadership behaviors move engagement and which don’t.

The Result: In this practical and thought-provoking keynote, Gostick introduces a practical guide for leaders, showing them exactly how to move the needle on employee engagement. The author drills deep with case studies of real managers in action and practical examples of proven drivers of engagement such as 1) alignment with future vision, 2) enhanced trust and innovation, 3) transparent communication, 4) career development, and 5) strategic recognition of contributions.

The Audience: Designed for senior leaders and managers, Adrian Gostick has presented “The Engagement Effect” to corporate audiences and associations worldwide. The session is typically customized to an organization’s specific engagement challenges. 

Carrots 2.0: How Today’s Managers Use Recognition to Engage their People, Retain Talent & Accelerate Performance

The Dilemma: Most managers want to create cultures where their teams achieve above-and-beyond results, but for a culture to really take off teammates must encourage each other on a daily basis. The answer is in rooting for each other: having each other’s backs, appreciating strengths, and recognizing strategic behaviors.

The Research: Based his #1 bestselling book The Carrot Principle, which unveiled a 10-year, 200,000- person survey, Gostick has become the preeminent authority on employee recognition. Now, he introduces us to Carrots 2.0—showing incontrovertible evidence that today’s employees respond best when they are recognized for things they are good at and for those actions where they had to stretch.

The Result: Gostick introduces audiences to new generational and industry-specific data from his 2016 proprietary survey of 14,000 working adults—helping managers link recognition to what is most meaningful to their employees. He introduces practical concepts that help managers encourage excellence, including ideas such as appreciation vs. recognition, effort vs. achievement, and praise vs. rewards.

The Audience: Designed for managers, Adrian Gostick has presented “Carrots 2.0” to corporate audiences and associations worldwide. The session is typically customized to an organization’s specific recognition needs and can also include the organization’s available R&R tools.

The Anxiety Solution: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

Even before the pandemic of 2020, anxiety was crippling the performance of workers - especially young employees. Today it is affecting productivity and leading to ghosting and burnout.

When the Wall Street Journal covered the anxiety epidemic at work, the first experts featured were New York Times bestselling authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton. In their major new spring 2021 release for Harper Business, "Anxiety at Work," they offer 8 tactics for managers to help their employees build resilience.

They offer strategies to:
• Spot the signs of employees hiding anxiety
• Alleviate stress
• Manage uncertainty
• Have people speak up when feeling overwhelmed
• Beat perfectionism and get things done
• Instill an ethic of inclusion and support

The Future of Work

What are managers to do now that operations seem headed toward a new way of working? How do they build and maintain culture, ensure accountability, and focus their people on the right behaviors in this new future of work?

New York Times best selling authors and top-ten global leadership experts Adrain Gostick & Chester Elton help organizations learn to work more effectively in multidimensional cultures.

They teach leaders to:
• Communicate more effectively in a hybrid environment
• Build stronger cultures with diverse, global, remote team members
• Enhance innovation and give people a voice
• Tackle growing anxiety and mental health issues
• Help team members deal with uncertainty
• Build resilience in times of change

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