A: I want you to enjoy a more successful, lucrative, and fulfilling career than you thought possible. I want you to flourish now, so we’ll go to work immediately to build your business, grow your career, and increase your fulfillment.
A: Through two best-selling books in 13 languages, thousands of subscribers to my newsletter, hundreds of executive coaching clients, and millions of people who have either read or heard me tell my original story and philosophy, The Law of the Garbage TruckÒ, I am committed to helping people around the world see what’s truly possible in their life and career, that they can live a life of joy, authentic self-expression, significance, and that they can face, and survive life’s greatest heartbreaks, disappointments and upsets.
A: I’m more than a skilled coach, I am a recognized thought leader in the science of Positive Psychology, an expert in personal and organizational performance strategies, an original thinker with two best-selling books, a valued thinking partner with extensive experience as an executive myself, and because of the values that underpin my work (see my manifesto).
A: I come from a business background. My corporate experience ranges from working at the Internet pioneer Yahoo! as its first director of customer care and its first director of learning and development, to serving as the chief of staff to the general manager of MasterCard’s most profitable division, to serving as president of AIESEC in the United States, the U.S. national organization of the world’s largest university-based leadership development program in the world.
My work is endorsed by executives who have served in top leadership roles at Coca-Cola, Southwest Airlines, DHL, Yahoo!, General Electric, Logitech, VMWare, Keller Williams, and Hilton.
My degree is in economics from Yale University. My graduate degree is in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.
A: Former president of the American Psychological Association (APA), Ray Fowler, and the editor of the Journal of Positive Psychology, Robert Emmons, have endorsed my books, as have Ed Diener (the world’s leading happiness researcher), Sonja Lyubomirsky (famed researcher known for translating scientific findings into practical applications), Barbara Fredrickson (president of the International Positive Psychology Association), and Tal Ben-Shahar, best-selling author most famously known for leading the largest class at Harvard (the class was on positive psychology).
A: I coined the phrase, “The Relationship Bottom Line ™,” to capture what I see as the key to business and career success: Our relationships.
In the battle against disengagement, fear, and burnout in organizations worldwide, I focus on helping you accelerate your achievement and ignite your organization’s performance through the power of phenomenal relationships.
The central theme that runs through all my writing is that successful, sustainable business performance is driven by relationships at all levels. When we improve The Relationship Bottom Line ™, we improve our company’s financial bottom line and we increase our employees’ level of fulfillment.
I’m interested in the habits, practices, and strategies executives use to strengthen their relationships with others and themselves. I’m committed to helping my clients get promoted more, paid more, and rewarded with more freedom, responsibility and exciting work. I’m just as committed to sharing how my clients can be professionally fulfilled and happy professionally and personally, even in the face of uncertain economic circumstances, tough competition, difficult bosses, toxic coworkers, and demanding customers.
A: Our business relationships have important bottom line measures: Increased employee engagement, sales, job satisfaction, scope of responsibility, personal fulfillment, employee retention, pay and productivity.
A: The Relationship Bottom Line is the measurable impact that our communication, coordination, and cooperation has on the performance of our companies. The way we work together determines how successful we will be in business.
Most of us are familiar with the Gallup organization’s finding that the number one reason people leave their companies is due to a bad boss. Said another way, people don’t leave companies, they leave their managers. The research bears this out in my experience as an executive coach. Many of my clients first come to me frustrated, disappointed, and simply fed up with the negative impact of their boss.
The more positive, productive, and authentic we are, the more employees want to stay with their companies. Improve The Relationship Bottom Line and you increase retention.
Make your work speak for itself. Be the best at what you love. Give unmatched effort. Surpass the results expected of you. Your career success depends on it.
Yet, that is not enough. Your success in business depends on your relationship with your boss, peers, employees, partners, and customers.
It’s unavoidable. There is no escape. There is a Relationship Bottom Line in every part of our lives. When a Relationship Bottom Line is healthy, thriving, and growing, we prosper.
A: The ripple effect of leadership is enormous.
In the early to mid 1990s I worked for Heidi Goff, the general manager of the most profitable division of MasterCard. She saw the impact – positive and negative – leaders have on their organizations. Heidi described it to me one day with a piece of paper and a pen. She drew one gear at the top of the page with two gears connected to it below, followed by three gears connected on the next level, four more below that, until there was a pyramid of gears connected to each other. Then, Heidi explained her drawing.
“The leader of the organization is the one represented by the top gear, followed by the next level of management, until we reach the front lines of an organization. Everyone is connected.
Heidi continued, “So when the executive says or does something, not only does their gear start spinning, the gears below it spin too, but even faster, and so it goes that the farther down the pyramid you go, the faster everyone spins.”
Now if you consider Heidi’s pyramid further, each gear in the pyramid has its own pyramid. In addition to potentially having a large work organization they lead themselves, each leader has a family, set of friends, and neighbors. When they spin, so often do the rest. When you inject positive and constructive energy into the pyramid, the increase in corporate performance and personal fulfillment is significant.
A: “I cannot work with that person.”
I’m determined to help you avoid that career limiting belief.
A: For nearly a decade I have served as the on-air host of the Positive Psychology Leader Series of the International Positive Psychology Association. While serving as a co-founding Associate Executive Director of IPPA, I founded this educational program to bring the top scientists in Positive Psychology together with the IPPA membership for presentations and discussions on the latest research findings and applications in the field. I have welcomed and interviewed dozens of the top scientists in Positive Psychology including Martin Seligman, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Angela Duckworth, Ed Diener, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Barbara Fredrickson, and dozens more.
A: I’m best known internationally for creating and writing The Law of the Garbage Truck®, a personal and professional strategy for combating the enormous power of negativity in the world. After the publication of The Law of the Garbage Truck® in my 2006 syndicated newspaper column, “The Law” has been read or viewed by an estimated 250 million people, becoming an enduring Internet phenomenon. My best-selling book by the same name has been translated into 13 languages. When people collect and fill up on other people’s rumors, gossip, criticism, and complaints, I refer to them as Garbage Trucks. These Garbage Trucks also increase their burden by adding their own regrets, fears, resentments, and toxic worries to the load they’re carrying. Then, they turn around and dump all of this emotional garbage on other people.
I am committed to helping millions no longer accept, create, and dump emotional garbage every day at work, at home, and on the street. People from more than 100 countries have taken my No Garbage Trucks! Pledge, a ten-line guide to living The Law of the Garbage TruckÒ principles everyday.
A: My second book, The 3 Promises ™, teaches people how to create daily personal and professional fulfillment. According to three studies I conducted with business professionals, 92.5% of participants increased their levels of fulfillment in just three days after taking The 3 Promises, 3-Day Fulfillment Challenge.
The 3 Promises has been translated into multiple languages, most recently into Spanish (Las Tres Promesas).
Whenever I discover something great that you should know about or when I have a new product or service for you, I reach out to you first, my newsletter subscribers. You get the first look. You have first access.
This is my invitation to you. I’m going to write and share new articles on how to improve your personal and organizational performance, increase your fulfillment, triumph over negativity, craft story-rich speeches, get your best-selling book published, and more. I help you strengthen your relationships.
It’s going to be fun, meaningful and transformational.