Larry Johnson

Let’s face it. Straight, honest, no nonsense communication in organizations today is more rare than common. Whether it’s fear of reprisal, natural timidity, or not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings, many of us avoid telling the truth when the truth needs to be told. The same applies to many of those who work for us.

The cost of such reticence can be high. If managers can’t get honest feedback from their associates, they, like the emperor in the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes, will make foolish decisions. If associates can’t get honest feedback from their managers, they don’t improve, and their poor performance devalues the organization.

In this dynamic, fast-moving and delightfully humorous presentation, Larry shows you how to enhance your leadership skills by establishing a new standard of communication – a standard that encourages honest and candid discussions, frank expression of opinions, and healthy debate. A standard that does not mince words, insists on accountability, respects the dignity of others and is guided by a clear sense of ethics.

Takeaways

• You will walk away with practical takeaway tools for:
• Creating a culture of accountability and responsibility
• Conducting difficult conversations without fracturing relationships
• Correcting performance problems and other tricky issues
• Listening for understanding so you can speak to be understood
• Managing conflict between yourself and others
• Dealing with anger in healthy, productive ways
• Establishing balance between work and home life

Based on Larry Johnson’s top selling Absolute Honesty: Building A Corporate Culture That Values Straight Talk and Rewards Integrity

Right now, while some organizations are seeing improvement in their economic outlook, many are still facing falling revenues, restricted budgets, and reduced growth. Like past fluctuations in the economy, this downturn will eventually pass. In the meantime, those who survive, both organizationally and individually will be those who keep their spirits up and never stop looking for new ways to perform more efficiently, effectively and creatively. Drawing on 30 years of investigation and consulting experience with some of the world’s foremost corporations and governmental organizations, Larry Johnson will show you how to make the most of these difficult times through leadership and change management.

Takeaways

• Adapt to new roles and organizational changes so you stay ahead of the curve
• Deliver the best service to customers, even those you’d like to punch
• Stay positive even when you’re feeling down
• Enhance your chances for job security (not an oxymoron)
• Enjoy your job more and have fun in the face of doing more with less
• Identify the differences between things you can change and things you cannot
• Replace whining and pity parties with proactive, positive performance
• Move forward with your life by creating your own pocket of excellence
• Manage the psychological roller coaster that is a natural part of change
• Apply a three step process for selecting your healthiest options in stressful situations
• Become a black belt change master for your company and for your own life
• Play the hand that’s dealt and move forward

First: Make sure your customers DON’T like you.

That’s right. Research at the University of Texas found that customer satisfaction is no guarantee of customer loyalty. Customers who indicated on questionnaires that they were simply “happy” with a product or service were as likely as those who had no opinion at all to abandon the vendor. The only indicator that predicted long-term loyalty was when customers used emotional words like “love” and “adore” to describe the vendor. In other words, if you want your customers to stay with you, they are more likely to do so if they LOVE YOU.

So the question is, how to you get your customers to LOVE YOU? More to the point, how does staff that will be attending this presentation with you get your customers to LOVE YOU?

Larry Johnson will show you how to make customers become your loyal fan by providing outrageous customer service.

In this fast-paced, entertaining and informative session, you will learn:

• The “5/11 Squared Formula” as it applies to word of mouth advertising
• Creating positive customer perception from the first point of contact
• The importance of timely responses to customer requests
• How to manage customer expectations so you don’t disappoint them
• Five bonding behaviors that will put customers on your side
• The Lagniappe principle that will keep customers on your side
• Five critical questions to empower staff to solve customer complaints
• Turning complaints into opportunities to shine
• Twelve “no no’s” guaranteed to get rid of customers
• How to deal with customer anger in a win/win way
• How to keep your cool when customers are nasty, impolite and rude
• Why delivering great customer service is good for your heart and soul

How you can increase productivity, spur innovation, enhance customer satisfaction and reduce employee turnover.

Year after year, companies like Google, Johnson & Johnson, and Zappos.com are consistently listed in Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Companies To Work For. How do they do it? It’s more than onsite health centers and gourmet cafeterias. It’s management practices that inspire employees to contribute their best and then some.

In this presentation, Larry shows how you can apply the same principles to create a great work culture for your own team.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• The advantages and limitations of perks & benefits
• The six most important actions a manager can take to keep associates motivated
• Proven tactics to improve productivity and engagement
• Strategies to build morale and increase excitement
• Highlights
• Lessons learned from Google and other Best Places to Work
• How to motivate your team without money
• How to become the manager everyone wants to work for
• Lessons learned from the worst manager you ever had
• Getting bad apple employees back on the company bandwagon
• Recruiting strategies to maintain, grow & develop your office culture
• Performance feedback do’s and don’ts: strategies to maintain morale
• The biggest killers of employee trust and how to avoid them

The Bottom Line: In Creating a Positive workplace culture, you’ll learn new ways to help your associates innovate more, produce more, and have more fun.

“It’s not my fault.” “It’s not my job.” “I didn’t know.”

“My car broke down.” “I’m not to blame.” “He did it.”

Excuses. We’ve heard them all. Wouldn’t you love to have all your employees see what needs to be done, take the necessary actions to do it and accept responsibility for the results? Larry Johnson offers you practical strategies to raise the odds everyone behaves responsibly and enthusiastically.

Takeaways include:

• Three techniques for instilling in employees a sense of ownership for their jobs.
• A conversational road map for tough conversations with non-performers.
• Five strategies for changing the culture to be more accountable.
• An approach to giving feedback that changes behavior and gets results.
• How to keep employees from shifting thier work back on to you.
• A key indicator that tells you when to let an employee go.

Session Outline

• Identify one person who made you want to attend this presentation.
• Exercise that help audience see who has the responsibility to do something about the problem.
• Clarify expectations. If you want people to be responsible, you need to communicate that you ex­pect them to be so.
• Three types of expectations: Duties, Goals & Professional Practices.
• Five actions you can take to create a culture of accountability.
• Things to condider before taking corrective action
• A conversational roadmap for conducting a difficult discussion.

A presentation of the good, the bad, and the wonderful aspects of one family’s journey through the health care system

While on a bicycling vacation in 2003, CJ Johnson, wife of well-known author, speaker and corporate culture expert Larry Johnson was involved in an accident that changed their world. Despite wearing a helmet, CJ sustained a closed-head injury that put her in a coma for eight weeks, and a persistent vegetative state for seven months. Going from hospitalization in intensive care, to skilled nursing facilities to home health care, CJ and Larry experienced first-hand what it’s like to be served by care takers, technicians, nurses, doctors, therapists, administrators.

Inspirational:

This presentation is Larry’s personal story about that journey. It is guaranteed to touch the hearts of the audience and make them glad they have chosen their noble profession.

Informative:

It also shows the audience some of the flaws in the health care system as seen from his personal experience, and offers concrete suggestions to correct those flaws. It also celebrates the good that the tremendous good that health care offers to its clients and their families.

Audience takeaways

• A fresh commitment to providing superlative care.
• Scheduling suggestions that will improve patient/resident satisfaction scores.
• Techniques for motivating caretakers so they take even better care.
• Criteria for culling mediocre staff from your winners.
• A fresh approach for creating a culture of accountability, were everyone takes responsibility for excellent care.
• One critical idea for reducing employee turnover.
• A new awareness of the negative behavior patterns that staff can sometimes slip into and what to do about it.
• New energy for delivering care for residents, patients and clients.

Today there are five recognized generations with which we must get along:

Traditionals: born before 1945

Baby Boomers: born 1946 to 1965

Gen Xers: born between 1966 to 1980

Millennials: born between 1981 to 1990

Linksters: born after 1990

Anyone who has raised a teenager, lived with an older relative, or worked with someone significantly younger or older than they are will tell you that the differences between age groups often goes beyond hairstyles, tattoos or nose rings.

Whether you’re working on a committee with a Gen Xer, serving on a board with a Traditional, planning a party with a Baby Boomer, or receiving “customer service” from a Linkster, it is likely that if you and that person are from different generations, you and she will see the world quite differently. And though many of these differences can be attributed to the normal variations among all human beings, some can be traced to the time period in which each generation was raised and the common experiences it had. We call these events “generational signposts” and they influence how we think and behave long after our childhoods are over.

For example, you may be irritated when the Gen Y person on your committee fails to show you the deference that you, as an older, experienced Baby Boomer feel you deserve – until you realize that many Gen Yers were raised by Baby Boomer parents who believed in running their families like democracies – where children often had a say and being the parent did not mean you always had the final say. So is it any surprise that this youngster isn’t willing to bow down and recognize your grandeur?