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Shawn Achor Profile

  • Shawn Achor is the New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage and Big Potential.

  • Shawn has worked in 50 countries with nearly half the Fortune 100 and everywhere from Camp David and Harvard to shantytowns in Zimbabwe and children’s cancer wards in Boston.

  • Shawn’s TED talk, The Happy Secret to Better Work, has over 25 million views.

  • With a highly distinguished academic career, Shawn Achor, a teacher at Wharton Business School, is a leading expert on the ways in which success and happiness are interrelated. His research into positive psychology has profound implications for employee relationships and performance improvement.

    A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard and holder of a Masters degree from Harvard Divinity School, Shawn also served as an Officer of Harvard for seven years, helping students to cope with freshman stress. His lectures on positive psychology were the most popular class at Harvard and his research was a cover story for the Harvard Business Review.

    In order to propagate his views further, Shawn founded GoodThinkInc. Through this foundation he has spoken to greatly diverse audiences throughout the world in more than 50 countries, including Chinese CEOs, South African schoolchildren and Zimbabwean farmers as well as the Abu Dhabi Royal family and the US Department of Health. Joining with the National MS Society and Genzyme, he helps to lead the Everyday Matters campaign that helps those struggling with chronic illness to understand that they can still be happy.

    Shawn still actively conducts original research in collaboration with Yale University Institute for Applied Positive Research, and his books, The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness are both New York Times bestsellers. In addition, PBS has run a special on his work, The Happiness Advantage with Shawn Achor. His TED talk, “The Happiness Advantage,” has been viewed over four million times.

    • View Extended/Alternate Bio

      After spending twelve years at Harvard University, Shawn Achor has become one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness and success. His research on mindset made the cover of Harvard Business Review, his TED talk is one of the most popular of all time with over 25 million views, and his lecture airing on PBS has been seen by millions. Shawn’s talks have taken him to more than 50 countries to speak to a wide range of audiences including six battalions of Marines at Camp Pendleton, all the NBA team owners, CEOs in China, doctors in Dubai, school children in South Africa, farmers in Zimbabwe, leaders at the Pentagon, and to half of the Fortune 100 companies. Shawn is one of only two speakers to ever be invited to speak to the White House staff at Camp David.

      Shawn is the New York Times best-selling author of The Happiness Advantage and Big Potential. His Happiness Advantage training is one of the largest and most successful positive psychology corporate training programs in the world.

      Shawn’s research has been published in the top psychology journal for work he did at UBS in partnership with Yale University to transform how stress impacts the body. He also did a two-part series with Oprah at her house to discuss his mission to bring positive psychology to the world.

    Shawn Achor Speaking Videos

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    Shawn Achor's Speech Descriptions

    Shawn Achor presents his groundbreaking research, based on study of top performers at Harvard, in the world’s largest banks and Fortune 500 companies, which demonstrates that rather than happiness springing from success, success comes from happiness. His philosophy of positive psychology has far-reaching implications for the ways in which we approach our work.

    Shawn’s studies have shown that in times of record low confidence in our leaders, those leaders need to put a stop to feelings of helplessness by making their teams feel that their behavior is essential to the desired outcome. His approach will provide you with many new ideas for keeping your team members motivated and engaged.

    Using the latest scientific research on mirror neurons and mental priming, Shawn demonstrates how changes within our own minds can ripple out across an organization to create an atmosphere in which positive change becomes not only easier but almost inevitable.

    THE HAPPINESS ADVANTAGE: Linking Positive Brains to Performance

    Most business is done under the guideline that: if you work harder, you will be more successful, and then you will be happy. This formula is scientifically backward. What over a decade of research shows is that training your brain to be positive first actually leads to greater success at work. In fact, only 25% of job success is predicted by intelligence, the rest is determined by your optimism, social support network and the ability to manage energy and stress in a positive way. Based on Shawn’s book,The Happiness Advantage (2010) and research studying top performers at Harvard, the world’s largest banks and Fortune 500 companies, Shawn explains what positive psychology is, how much we can change, and practical applications and strategies for reaping the Happiness Advantage in the midst of change and challenge.

    THE RIPPLE EFFECT: How to Make Positive Change Easier

    Common sense is not common action. This is because awareness does not necessarily equal transformation because we require a certain level of “activation energy” to start a change. Shawn’s research in the field of positive psychology reveals how small shifts in our mindset and behavior can ripple out to a team and even an entire organization. Audiences will learn about the latest scientific research on mirror neurons and mental priming to explain how positivity and negativity spread, case studies on how to become a lightning rod for change, and findings on how a positive ripple effect profoundly affects an organization’s ability to transition and change.

    RESILIENT OPTIMISM: Restoring A Culture of Confidence

    Confidence, trust and job satisfaction are at historic lows. At the start of the economic collapse, Shawn worked with the world’s largest banks to restore confidence and forward progress. By researching the managers who maintained high levels of success and leadership during this challenging time, he found that our brains develop confidence based on the belief that our behavior matters towards creating the outcomes we desire. To overcome learned helplessness, we must create “wins” for our brain and train ourselves to be rational optimists. Based on the science of positive psychology and case studies of working with companies in the midst of an economic collapse, Shawn provides practical applications for raising the belief that individual behavior matters and strategies to help leaders to keep teams motivated and engaged.

    RETHINKING THE FORMULA FOR SUCCESS: The Power of Positive Education

    At schools and companies alike, we often are taught: “If I work harder, then I will be successful, and then I will be happy.” This formula is scientifically backwards. Shawn explains how when we flip the formula, and focus on being positive first, we raise nearly every educational and business outcome. By demonstrating how happiness is a choice, we can help students not only cultivate positive habits and mindsets, but achieve higher levels of success as a result. Based on Shawn’s study of 1600 Harvard students, his seven years as a Freshmen Proctor, and his subsequent work at schools and companies in over 50 countries, Shawn uses the latest research, interactive experiments, and humorous stories, to show how simple changes to our mindset and habits can bring this research to life and create happiness and success for our schools and for ourselves.

    POSITIVE GENIUS: The Key to Raising Success, Spreading Happiness & Sustaining Positive Change

    Why are some people able to make great changes, while others stay the same? Based on the research in Before Happiness (2013) and cutting edge of positive psychology and neuroscience, Shawn takes us to the beginning of human potential. Each of us has a picture of reality, and this mental picture determines our likelihood of success and our ability to harness our brain’s IQ, emotional and social intelligence. Using his signature humor, new case studies and interactive experiments that engage the audience, Shawn clearly demonstrate how each of us can become a “positive genius,” someone who can continually use true facts to see the most helpful and positive reality and then share this reality with others. In this program, participants will learn how to harness the latest research on managing stress that Shawn did with Yale University, how to navigate multiple realities at work, cancel internal and external noise, add vantage points to planning, use success accelerants to speed goal completion and use meaning markers to spread positive genius throughout a team, family and an entire organization.

    Shawn Achor on Speaking

    Change is possible, and when we make that choice not only do we give ourselves the greatest competitive advantage…we make others’ lives better.

    SPEAKING.COM: What do you want people to learn/take away from your presentations?

    ACHOR: The real message in my talk is that change is possible, and when we make that choice not only do we give ourselves the greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy, we make others’ lives better.

    SPEAKING.COM: What kind of special prep work do you do prior to an event? How do you prepare for your speaking engagements?

    ACHOR: I do due diligence on the company to find out which research studies I should apply, and which interactive activities will best help them meet their goals. I emphasize the language that the company’s using and tie my message to their mission statement to ensure that my content will not be “a flash in the pan,” but rather part of their goals.

    SPEAKING.COM: Have you had any particularly memorable speaking engagements / unusual situations arise while on the road?

    ACHOR: One time at a large Swiss bank, the HR leader had a senior leader introduce me, and she didn’t realize how disgruntled he was in the midst of the banking crisis. So instead of reading my bio, he got up in the room in Zürich and said, “We don’t have bonuses for everyone, but here’s a talk on happiness from a guy from America.”

    You can imagine the cold response. But within five minutes of listening to the research and data, people started picking up and taking notes. At the midway point I couldn’t even get to the coffee machine because people had so many questions about how to bring this research back to their teams. After that talk they invited me to go to all their banking centers worldwide (twice) in the middle of the banking crisis.

    SPEAKING.COM: What types of audiences would most benefit from your message?

    ACHOR: Most of my talks have been for sales leaders, high performers, or senior leaders, but I’ve given over 700 talks throughout the past seven years to a wide range of audiences in diverse locations, from impoverished students in South Africa to bankers at the Federal Reserve Board, from farmers in Zimbabwe to the Obama administration at Camp David. What I find most incredible about this research is how universal its appeal is.

    SPEAKING.COM: Which of your keynote speaking topics are your favorites and why?

    ACHOR: I find myself doing a hybrid of my talks every time because there are home runs in each one that I want everyone to take with them when they walk away from the talk.

    I did not want this research to remain in the lab; I wanted it to be lived.

    SPEAKING.COM: What inspired you to start doing speaking engagements?

    ACHOR: I fell backwards into speaking. I didn’t even know this profession existed. I planned on being an academic, but I did not want this research to remain in the lab; I wanted it to be lived.

    SPEAKING.COM: How much do case studies, personal stories and/or humor factor into your keynote speech content?

    ACHOR: Every minute of my 60-minute talk contains humor, research, or practical takeaways. I’ve cut everything else out. That is because those three things raise the likelihood of encouraging people to apply the principles and keep learning.

    The most valuable part of my talk is the research and I hope to make it practical.

    Happiness is a choice, happiness is an advantage, and happiness spreads.

    SPEAKING.COM: What are some of the successes you’ve helped clients achieve?

    ACHOR: Through this research (each of these is a separate study/company) we have raised productivity by 31%, raised promotion rate by 40%, raised sales by 37%, tripled revenue, increased pain tolerance by 50%, decreased negative effects of stress by 23%, improved the quality of medical care, tripled creativity, and improved the levels of optimism for people who potentially had genes for pessimism or who were going through difficult times.

    I work with soldiers coming back from combat services, depressed bankers, enthusiastic sales leaders, nervous students, and overworked government officials, and I have been privileged to learn things from each of them that I could in turn teach to audiences from completely different backgrounds. Everyone has been able to apply my primary message: happiness is a choice, happiness is an advantage, and happiness spreads.

    SPEAKING.com Exclusive Interview with Shawn Achor
    Happiness and Competitive Advantage with Shawn Achor
    In this interview, Shawn Achor discusses:
  • Scientific findings on the relationship between happiness and success.
  • How organizations are using positive change to drive productivity.
  • Proven strategies to make goals more attainable.
    Read the Full Interview
  • "...Change is possible, and…happiness is ultimately a choice."
    - Shawn Achor

    What People are Saying about Seeing Shawn Speak

    Rating Entries

    “An amazing event! It was such fun and so stimulating to have Shawn at Facebook! As we strive to help the world become more open and connected, remaining positive and grateful for meaningful and productive relationships is essential! Shawn’s ideas and research is very insightful to us as we think about our mission. Thank you!”
    – Facebook

    “We can’t thank Shawn enough for making this year’s Johnson & Johnson OCMO Leadership Team meeting such a success. His presentation was a highlight of our event. Our meeting objectives focused on audience engagement, leadership skills, structured networking and fun – Shawn helped us achieve all of these and then some. I’ve already witnessed my colleagues engaging in the happiness habits, and I’m practicing them myself!”
    – Johnson&Johnson

    “Our expectations for Shawn’s talk at our recent H.R. Conference was quite high, given what I had seen of his TED talk and having read much of The Happiness Advantage = and all those expectations were exceeded! While I knew the content would be powerful and anticipated the delivery would be engaging, I underestimated the positive impact it would have on the audience beyond the conference. The attendees have been quite energized and have begun taking actions to be happier and more grateful in their own lives. Further, while the learning will be applicable at our workplace, I think the attendees felt he impact was transferable to all aspects of their lives (and their families).”
    – Wendy’s

    “Rave reviews all around! Homerun! Way out of the park! We were enriched, refreshed and left wanting more. Discussion continues and will, I’m sure for some time.”
    -Carlos Hoyt, Associate Dean of Students, Phillips Academy Andover

    “Shawn′s message was refreshing and fun; he made a significant impact in building a more positive workplace culture in our organization. His words impacted people at all levels of our organization and many of us are still talking about his message months later. It was a terrific day for our employees.”
    -Pam Milloy, Grand View College, Iowa

    “The happiness seminar was outstanding. The speaker was articulate, informative and entertaining. A follow-up presentation would be highly recommended. You know that a presentation is good when the entire audience is still attentive even though you have crossed into lunch.”
    -Teacher, West Morris Public School District, New Jersey

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    Books by Shawn Achor:

    The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work

    Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe.

    In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG—to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work.

    Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential. Among the principles he outlines:

    • The Tetris Effect: how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see—and seize—opportunities wherever we look.
    • The Zorro Circle: how to channel our efforts on small, manageable goals, to gain the leverage to gradually conquer bigger and bigger ones.
    • Social Investment: how to reap the dividends of investing in one of the greatest predictors of success and happiness—our social support network

    A must-read for everyone trying to excel in a world of increasing workloads, stress, and negativity, The Happiness Advantage isn’t only about how to become happier at work. It’s about how to reap the benefits of a happier and more positive mind-set to achieve the extraordinary in our work and in our lives.

    Order Here




    Big Potential: How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Raises Our Achievement, Happiness, and Well-Being

    In a world that thrives on competition and individual achievement, we’re measuring and pursuing potential incorrectly. Pursuing success in isolation—pushing others away as we push ourselves too hard—not only limits our potential but makes us more stressed and disconnected than ever.

    Harvard-trained researcher Shawn Achor reveals a better approach. With exciting new research combining neuroscience and psychology with Big Data, Achor shows that our potential is not limited by what we alone can achieve. Instead, it is determined by how we complement, contribute to, and benefit from the abilities and achievements of people around us.

    When we—as individuals, leaders, and parents—chase only individual achievement, we leave vast sources of potential untapped. But once we put “others” back into the equation, and work to make others better, we ignite a Virtuous Cycle of cascading successes that amplify our own.

    The dramatic shifts in how we approach work today demand an equally dramatic shift in our approach to success. In Big Potential, Achor draws on cutting-edge original research as well as his work with nearly half of the Fortune 100 and with places like NASA, the NFL and the NBA, and offers a new path to thriving in the modern world.




    Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

    Why are some people able to make positive change while others remain the same?

    In his international bestseller, The Happiness Advantage, Harvard-trained researcher Shawn Achor described why happiness is the precursor to greater success. Before Happiness is about what comes before both. Because before we can be happy or successful, we need to first develop the ability to see that positive change is possible. Only once we learn to see the world through a more positive lens can we summon all our motivation, emotion, and intelligence to achieve our personal and professional goals.

    In Before Happiness, Achor reveals five actionable, proven strategies for changing our lens to positive:

    The Most Valuable Reality: See a broader range of ideas and solutions by changing the details on which your brain chooses to focus
    Success Mapping: Set goals oriented around the things in life that matter to you most, whether career advancement or family or making a difference in the world
    The X-spot: Use success accelerants to propel you more quickly towards those goals, whether finishing a marathon, reaching a sales target, learning a language, or losing ten pounds
    Noise-Canceling: Boost the signal pointing you to opportunities and possibilities that others miss
    Positive Inception: Transfer these skills to your team, your employees, and everyone around you

    By mastering these strategies, you’ll create a renewable source of positivity, motivation, and engagement that will allow you to reach your fullest potential in everything you do.

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