Gary Heil

Choose Love Not Fear: How the Best Leaders Build Cultures of Engagement and Innovation

Innovation requires a more inclusive and human approach to leadership. Yet despite decades of investment in leadership development, many organizations still struggle to create engaged teams and cultures that support creativity.

Why are only 31% of U.S. employees engaged at work, while 18% are actively disengaged? What separates exemplary leaders and teams from the merely good? And why do organizations champion innovation while often discouraging the very behaviors that make it possible?

For more than a decade, Gary Heil has led a study of more than 700 leaders across three continents to explore these questions. The findings form the foundation of his book, Choose Love Not Fear, and reveal what successful leaders do differently.

In this session, attendees will learn practical ways to:

• Create a cause worthy of people’s commitment
• Ensure the right people are on the team
• Build a culture where people’s best is the standard
• Foster mutual accountability
• Value different perspectives
• Seek commitment, not compliance
• Embrace vulnerability

Leaders are in the Opportunity Business: Inviting Employees to Engage

Today, few would disagree that employee engagement is fundamental to the future success of any organization. Yet, despite widespread agreement about the need for greater engagement, many organizations do not share a common definition of the term, a method for assessing engagement, or a theory for increasing engagement among the people on their teams.

In this session, Heil will share his experiences working with exemplary teams and discuss:

• How high levels of engagement correlate with organizational success
• How engagement relates to intrinsic motivation
• Why and how current people practices can undermine engagement
• Why engaged people and teams are almost always actively learning
• How engagement is a prerequisite for innovation and creative contribution
• How SMART goals can inhibit engagement and innovation

Attendees will leave this session with practical ideas about how to increase individual and team engagement and how effective leadership will need to innovate in the future.

Leadership in an Age of Accelerating Technology: How Great Leaders Thrive When Leaders Are Less Powerful and More Necessary

If there is one trend in the study of leadership that has remained consistent over the past half century, it is the transfer of power from those who traditionally held it to those who, in the past, had little.

Technology-driven change has accelerated in recent years, making it nearly impossible to lead effectively by simply imitating the leadership practices of generations past. For those who have advocated for people practices that are both more human and more effective, their time has come. The final chapter of command-and-control leadership is being written, and the future belongs to leaders who learn to influence through the power of their relationships rather than their positions.

In this session, Heil will share his experiences coaching leaders for more than four decades and discuss:

• How accelerating technology is changing the way we must think about effective leadership
• How traditional notions of leadership have been too hierarchical and leader-centric
• How generational changes are reshaping the organizational cultures required to sustain future success
• How there is a leadership role for everyone in an organization
• Why all influence is relational and how this will transform future leadership practices
• Why our leadership talk has rarely matched our leadership actions and what we can do about it

Heil proposes a series of leadership ideas that we have known for decades but can no longer afford to ignore. Especially relevant for leaders of young and changing companies, attendees will leave with a better understanding of what is required to influence in a world where people can connect with anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Creating Culture Change One Person and One Habit at a Time

The culture of an organization is the result of the shared values and beliefs of the group. Except in times of crisis, culture change is almost always more difficult than most people think. Culture is sticky. It does not change easily. Culture resists change that runs contrary to the existing culture. Culture rarely changes from the top down. Culture changes when a group of people summons the courage to take a different route into the future.

In this session, Heil will share his experiences working with organizations committed to changing their existing cultures and explain how every person shares responsibility for helping to transform the cultures in which they work. He will discuss:

• Why we often underestimate the pressures inherent in the existing culture
• Why the most impactful aspects of culture are often tacit, unarticulated, and underappreciated, making them harder to change
• Why culture change is messy and requires conflict that must be anticipated and managed
• Why it is difficult to understand an organization’s culture while living within it
• How culture can be measured quickly and inexpensively
• How culture can be transformed by leaders, regardless of position, who are willing to change current practices in pursuit of a shared cause

Attendees will leave this presentation with a framework for creating culture change, regardless of their position in the organization.

The Future of Human Resources: Taking a New Road Less Traveled

In a world where innovation is the most valuable currency and engagement is fundamental to future success, it is time for people practices to become more consistent with what we know about why people make commitments and why they do not.

The future will require HR practices that are fair and less fear-based while fostering higher levels of learning and growth.

In this session, Heil will discuss:

• How HR professionals can more effectively measure and manage culture
• How to develop performance management processes that are more effective and more equitable
• How to redesign recruiting practices to help accelerate an organization’s ability to become more adaptive and creative
• How leadership development must innovate to remain effective
• Why most organizations need to develop a new theory of employee engagement that can be measured and managed, along with takeaways for putting a plan in place