Lance Secretan

Lance Secretan's Speech Descriptions

The Spark, the Flame, and the Torch:
Inspire Self. Inspire Others. Inspire the World.

What makes some people so unique that they become a beacon for the rest of us? How do they achieve breakthroughs and unique accomplishments that others merely hope for? How do they inspire us to do things we would not otherwise be able to do on our own? In other words, what makes a great leader, and how do they inspire us and change the world?

In this keynote, Dr. Lance Secretan takes us on an invigorating, radical and inspiring journey in which he asks a question: “Given all the investments we have made with leadership experts, consultants, books and workshops, why is our contemporary leadership paradigm so broken—in politics, business, academia, healthcare, law, religion and elsewhere?” He’ll share an entirely fresh approach that breaks away from the pack—a reset—that has been successfully proven by corporations, cities, states and provinces and countries.

Secretan challenges current thinking about mission, vision and values statements, leadership theory, brand management theory, motivation techniques, psychometric profiling, performance management systems and coaching—to name a few, and then describes, based on his own experience and success, how alternatives to these ideas—called Higher Ground Leadership®—have been successfully implemented by some of the greatest organizations in the world.

Secretan’s presentation will reveal the results of 35 years of research, teaching and working with great leaders globally. This is a message that unlocks the answers to challenging questions and defines a leadership path that will forever change your thinking—and change your life.

He shows us how everyone can be an inspiring leader, create inspiring organizations and change the world. He presents these ideas in his trademark style, enriched by dazzling multimedia, fascinating stories and metaphors, and a unique engagement with his audience. Secretan distills complex and original ideas into simple, easy-to-implement concepts, processes, and exercises that explain how to inspire a team, organization, or country—or your family and friends.

ONE Dream™:
The Journey to Corporate Transformation

The role of the leader is to inspire by identifying, realizing, and sustaining a dream.

Over the last 50 years of business theorizing and academic and professional development, we have succeeded in expanding our capacity to quantify, measure, and analyze, but we have stifled our capacity to dream. It has become conventional thinking that dreaming is too “out there” for a business environment. As a result, we shy away from talking about dreams in organizations. Instead, we have created “mission, vision, and values” statements. But the currency of mission, vision, and values statements has been devalued, their indiscriminate use and homogeneity rendering them feeble, uninspiring, and indistinguishable from everyone else’s. Great organizations have a dream—it is the heartbeat of their greatness.

ONE:
The Art and Practice of Conscious Leadership

Six thousand years ago we were one—we shared the same stories and myths, mysteries and magic. The classical Greek philosophers began the process of separate thinking. The great Renaissance thinkers picked up the pace and the genius of our modern scientific and technical era has unraveled this precious human asset. If we continue to separate ourselves—liberal/conservative, parent/child, Muslim/Christian, labor/management, black/white, young/old, rich/poor—we will wither as a society, perhaps as a species.

Conscious Leadership inspires self and others to reframe what we see by making the connections between all the parts—countries as kin, corporations as communities, employees as whole humans, religions as partners rather than competitors. In this knowing we gain a greater understanding of how all our actions touch and connect with everything else.

Dr. Lance Secretan shares the practice of Conscious Leadership through the transformative CASTLE® principles for you to experience:

1. How to regain personal Courage
2. How to live and lead Authentically
3. The importance of Serving
4. The power of Truthfulness
5. Why we must live in Love
6. How to radically improve our Effectiveness.

!nspire! What Great Leaders Do

The need to inspire has never been greater than it is today, when many people feel afraid, cynical, and resigned. Inspiring people in the 1990s was an entirely different proposition; people were lighter, more optimistic, filled with a sense of abundance. Yet people yearn to be inspired more than ever; the need for inspiration has never been greater, especially at work—but where can you find it? The best that most companies can do is try to motivate their people with traditional leadership models. In !nspire! What Great Leaders Do, Dr. Lance Secretan offers an inspiring alternative, a tested way to learn how to inspire from within one’s self and use this self-knowledge to inspire others. It starts with the individual and it does transform organizations. This transformational process is Higher Ground Leadership®.

Inspire! What Great Leaders Do teaches business leaders how to inspire superior performance by speaking to the inner lives and deeper needs of employees and anyone with whom you have a business relationship, and by aligning their desires with your organization’s cause—rather than seducing them with carrots that speak only to their outer lives and superficial selves. Secretan’s goals are lofty, but the approach is practical. Inspire! is full of proven methods for connecting with the soul, the real self. It provides valuable guidance for awakening the passion of others and a host of stories that illustrate how inspiring leaders have transformed their business environment from places of fear and resignation to powerhouses of effective performance.

Reclaiming Higher Ground®

Based on Lance Secretan’s worldwide bestseller, Reclaiming Higher Ground: Creating Organizations that Inspire the Soul, this presentation inspires a new way to think about leadership and work. The vast majority of people are deeply dissatisfied with their work lives and this affects the bottom line. Lance Secretan describes how leaders can serve the needs of their employees and how this improves performance.

Loyal, productive, creative employees inspire profits. Employees are eager to bring more than their bodies to work, and because work and the company represent such a huge commitment in a person’s life, they don’t want to bring stress and unhappiness home. There is a lot of productive common ground here—Higher Ground, Secretan calls it, when organizations answer this eagerness and desire with Higher Ground Leadership®.

He lays out a detailed and pragmatic process for organizational transformation that goes much deeper than compensation to address the hearts and minds of individuals, and their vision and goals for their organization. He talks about the inner life, trust, courage, values and community as indispensable to the health of a business. And he sets the record straight about competition, profit, teams and structure in ways that inspire leaders and employees alike.

Here are some examples:

• New models for organizational culture and values
• Guidelines for more effective communications, written and verbal
• Methods for realigning relationships with associates, customers and suppliers
• Ways to replace the negative energy of fear, competition and hostility with compassion, excellence and service
• Ways to deepen a leader’s ability to romance outstanding performances from colleagues and loyalty from customers and suppliers
• Innovative approaches to decision making, employee equity, learning and creativity, workplace design, and a host of other leadership issues

This is a collection of breakthrough ideas, delivered in Lance Secretan’s legendary storytelling style with one of the best multimedia presentations you will see anywhere.

Values-centered Leadership®

The key to leadership lies in timeless values that help us to be of service to others. Think of your organization as though it were a bicycle with the back wheel providing the power and the front wheel providing the direction. From the back wheel, we derive the life skill Values that are the source of personal and organizational power. These Primary Values help us kick-start personal growth and change corporate culture:

• Mastery: Undertaking whatever you do to the highest standards of which you are capable.
• Chemistry: Relating so well with others that they actively seek to associate themselves with you.
• Delivery: Identifying the needs of others and meeting them with respect and a passion for being of service.

To become proficient in Mastery, Chemistry and Delivery, we must adopt three Accelerators that drive these Primary Values:

• Learning: Seeking and practicing knowledge and wisdom.
• Empathizing: Considering the thoughts, feelings and perspectives of others.
• Listening: Hearing and understanding the communications of others.

Powered by these Values and their Accelerators, our organizations then seek new Direction through Shifts from old values to new ones:

• From me to you
• From things to people
• Kaizen—continual improvement
• From weakness to strength
• From hostility, competition and fear to love

Values-centered Leadership® is one of the most powerful coaching models in the world, and a leadership model used by thousands of organizations worldwide.

The New Story of Leadership

An established trend is gathering momentum: the hunger to experience spirit in the workplace is gaining the force of a movement. The old story of leadership will no longer satisfy this hunger. Followers—employees—are leaving their leaders behind as more and more of them come to work with a new set of expectations.

Fortunately, some leaders—like Lance Secretan—are answering this hunger with a New Story of Leadership that connects employee fulfillment to the bottom-line in concrete ways. In this presentation, Lance proves that the trend is, in fact, mounting, why it matters, and how you can become a New Story Leader.

Here are the harbingers of the New Story of Leadership in business:

• Leadership. Many of us are yearning for an alternative to business-as-war and leaders-as-warriors. We yearn for spirit in the workplace and for servant-leaders—people who lead with their hearts as well as their heads and wills.
• Values. Business has more opportunity to influence the future than any other institution in the world. New Story Leaders choose to make business an instrument for positive change.
• The End of Competition. The root meaning of ‘compete’ is to strive together—exactly the opposite of its usual meaning. The New Story Leader respects our interdependence—our oneness—and sees how it opens opportunities for growth, both within the organization and out in the marketplace.
• The Cause. People want to work for a Cause that inspires the soul. A Cause acts as a magnet for passion. It articulates the higher purpose of an organization, it describes how we serve.
• The New Customer. The New Story Leader devotes even greater attention to meeting the needs of employees as they do for customers. This goes beyond the usual incentive and reward systems —to practices that awaken passion and satisfy the soul. The result is a dramatic improvement in profitability.
  Integration. The New Story Leader creates an environment in which “work” and “life” are not just “balanced,” but blended into an integrated, seamless whole.

• The Calling. People are looking for more than a paycheck. They seek joy, meaning and fulfillment from their work. A Calling results in work that engages, nourishes and expresses our souls. The leader’s mission is to enable each follower to find, grow and excel in her or his Calling.
• Soulspace. We ask people to contribute to the highest standards of which they are capable while putting them in the dreariest, most uncreative environments in their lives. Imagine the extraordinary work that could flow from sacred workspaces designed to inspire the soul.
• Technology. The Internet, as an example—can be a medium for the web of human consciousness, described by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as the noosphere. New Story Leaders will reinvent their organizations within this context.
• Learning. The most important ‘fringe benefit’ is no longer healthcare or a pension; it is the right to learn. Learning inoculates against irrelevance and positively feeds the soul.
• Inspiration. The role of the New Story Leader is to inspire others. This ability grows organically from one’s own inspiration.