Dr. John Izzo

Speaking topics

Presentations listed below include in-person and virtual keynotes, as well as workshops, fireside chats, and other presentation formats.

• The Power of Connection: Creating Belonging in the New World of Work

  The new world of work is changing rapidly. We have a more mobile, diverse, and hybrid workforce alongside a younger generation of workers who are willing to leave quickly if they don’t feel engaged. Belonging is a strong driver of engagement, innovation, retention, and productivity. Creating a sense of belonging and community has become more important but also more challenging given less face time, greater diversity, and a high expectation workforce.

  Through powerful storytelling, real world examples, and ideas you can use right away, discover why cultivating belonging is critical to engagement, retention, innovation, and productivity. Dr. John Izzo will share how team members define belonging, explore practical ideas on how to create belonging for teams/individuals, and distill strategies on how to tailor community to individual needs, create belonging in a hybrid world, and breakdown and overcome barriers to belonging.

  Key takeaways include:

  • Why creating a strong sense of belonging is a critical to engagement, retention, innovation, and productivity.
  • How team members define belonging.
  • Practical ideas on how to create belonging for teams and individuals.
  • How to tailor community to individual needs.
  • How to create community in a hybrid world.
  • Barriers to belonging and how to overcome them.

• The Secrets of Highly Engaging People Leaders

  Organizations and teams with high levels of employee engagement are significantly more profitable, have much higher customer loyalty, higher productivity, and a better reputation with customers than those with moderate engagement. In fact, the average highly engaged team member can be up to 40% more productive than a disengaged performer. But what are the secrets to highly engaged teams and highly engaging leaders? Why do some leaders consistently create highly engaged associates?

  Dr. John Izzo has spent a lifetime researching what separates truly passionate, high engagement teams and leaders from the rest of the pack. In this interactive session, he shares the four keys to creating high engagement teams and shows why some leaders are consistently able to get high levels of commitment from people. Izzo gives your attendees practices for how leaders can immediately drive engagement for better results.

  Based on his work with many of the best workplaces in the world, Izzo shows leaders how to implement simple disciplines and routines guaranteed to create highly engaged teams.

  Your leaders will not only see their role in driving engagement but will leave with ideas they can implement right away that will lead to significantly higher engagement. Izzo has a great track record of getting leaders to become engagement champions.

  Session outcomes include:

  • Learn the five secrets of engaging leaders.
  • Gain practical, simple to implement tips for becoming a more engaging people leader right away.
  • Find out why some leaders are routinely more admired (and how to become one of them).
  • Apply these principles and choose areas for personal improvement.
  • Learn how to check in every day to be amore engaging people leader.

  This session is available as a keynote or workshop.

• Future Proof Leadership: Why We Often Miss What’s Coming and How to Be Ready

  We all know the future is more uncertain, and that change will be more rapid. Major trends shaping tomorrow include a more diverse high-expectation workforce, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence, climate change, faster disruptive cycles, and converging international crises. While it’s helpful for a futurist to tell us what may be coming, it’s more important for leaders and organizations to be future proof — to learn how to anticipate future scenarios themselves and act NOW to be ready when change arrives.

  In this presentation, Dr. John Izzo will explore the major trends shaping the future of work and why we often miss what’s coming. He’ll share compelling stories of those who missed what was coming and those who prepared and thrived. He’ll also equip audiences with the power of foresight to identify future possible scenarios and explain why low plausibility outcomes are often the most disruptive and the power of backcasting to learn how to make changes today ahead of changes coming tomorrow.

  Key learning outcomes:

  • Discover some of the major trends shaping the future of business and work.
  • Understand why we often miss what’s coming next.
  • Hear compelling stories of those who missed what was coming and suffered the consequences and those who prepared and thrived.
  • Learn the power of using foresight to identify future possible scenarios.
  • Discover why low plausibility outcomes are often the most disruptive.
  • Gain skill at spotting trends, looking ahead and back casting to plan for what may be ahead.
  • Discover the power of backcasting to learn how to make changes today ahead of changes coming tomorrow.
  • Learn how to think with the future in mind from your customer base and industry to larger trends.
  • Discover how global leaders prepare for scenarios and how we can put that into practice.

• 100% Responsibility, 0% Excuses: Creating a Culture of Responsibility

  Taking responsibility means stepping up and seeing yourself as the agent of change, whether it is changing your company or changing the world — it starts with you.

  In this hard-hitting keynote Dr. John Izzo talks about a concept he calls 100-0 (100% responsibility, 0% excuses) and how each one of us can take greater accountability when we put our excuses aside by focusing on what we can do and the role we play. He gets leaders from the CEO to the front line thinking about what they can do personally to step up.

  Your leaders will leave knowing the main reasons why people don’t step up to take responsibility, the keys to getting people to take ownership, and how to influence people to create a culture of ownership.

  Izzo brings compelling examples of how leaders and companies achieved optimal results by creating true ownership. Your audience will get practical ideas and proven methods on how to see what’s in it for them personally when they step up, and how it improves their personal brand.

• Stepping Up

  Have you ever wondered why some people step up and create positive change in the world and in business? In this presentation, Dr. John Izzo shows audiences how “stepping up” creates positive change while improving satisfaction at work and in life. Based on his bestselling book, Stepping Up, he shares important principles such as:

  • Why only naïve people ever change the world.
  • The way each of us can step up every day in our lives to make a bigger difference.
  • Show how leadership is not a position but a decision.

  Filled with inspiring examples of how people have stepped up to make things better in their own world, audiences will leave feeling inspired that their individual actions can make a difference in the workplace, our lives, and for the greater good of the world. They will leave this keynote motivated to take action immediately by focusing on what they can do personally to drive change rather than relying on others.

• Leading for Purpose

  If you really want your people to be engaged and bring their best to work, then you need to make sure they have a deep sense of purpose. Research shows that people who see the purpose of their work are more productive, work longer hours and are more engaged.

  Dr. John Izzo first introduced the idea of higher purpose at work in his book, Awakening Corporate Soul, and he has been helping leaders and team members harness the power of purpose for over 25 years. In 2018, his ground-breaking book, The Purpose Revolution, showed how the emerging desire for purpose is reshaping the world of work.

  In this session, Izzo not only shows why purpose is so critical, but provides attendees proven methods to discover personal purpose and shows leaders how to drive purpose and the “why” with teams.

  By going through this program, you will:

  • Identify personal purpose.
  • Discover how to stay focused on purpose every day.
  • Learn how to help team members find purpose.
  • Gain the keys to coaching purpose.
  • Discover how leaders drive purpose with teams.

  This session is available as a keynote or workshop.

• Redefining Retirement: How Aging is Changing and What it Means for You and Your Company

  Traditional views of retirement conjure up images of grey-haired couples playing endless rounds of golf. Yet retirement and aging are undergoing a transformation. We are retiring younger but also working longer. The Baby Boomers, the last of whom turn 60 this year, see this next phase as a “new chapter” more than a time to “rest and relax” while 80% of them say it is more important to be “useful” than “youthful.”

  Redefining retirement impacts all generations. Many people are taking periods of retirement earlier in life creating a kind of “serial retirement” rather than a one-time event. Midlife has been extended as many achieve success by age 35 while people in their seventies (and even eighties) launch major new chapters. The workplace and most of us are not ready for this new way of aging.

  This keynote or workshop will help audiences explore how views of retirement and aging are changing, how to market to the emerging consumers over fifty-five, why serial retirement is changing our career pattern, and what the new dynamics of retiring mean for both companies and talent.

  Key learning outcomes include:

  • Explore how views of retirement and aging are changing.
  • Understand how to market to the emerging consumers over 55. Learn how to message to and engage them.
  • Discover why serial retirement is changing our career pattern and what it means for both companies and talent.
  • Find out how Boomers are changing retirement and how your organization can benefit from those shifts.

• The Purpose Revolution: Winning and Engaging Talent in an Age of Social Good

  Attracting, engaging, and keeping talent is a key driver of success for every enterprise. Although talent want the same things they have always desired, there is a shift happening that is changing the war for talent. Across every demographic of age and country, there is an emerging purpose-focused employee who wants to be a part of organizations that are creating social good both for customers and society.

  Over 50% of employees globally want to work for companies that have a purpose and half of millennials say they would take a pay cut to be at a company whose purpose they believe in. Research also shows that when employees believe in the purpose of the company, they are more productive, more engaged, and more willing to put in discretionary effort. This desire to be part of a purposeful company cuts across all demographic categories of age, gender, and country though it is most pronounced among millennials.

  This keynote will help leaders and companies see how this trend is changing the talent game and how to thrive with a workforce focused on doing good.

  Your audience will:

  • Understand the emerging purpose-focused employee and how different they are from every class of employees that have come before them.
  • Discover how team members define purpose and social good.
  • Learn practical ways to connect employees to your purpose and involve them in your efforts at social good.
  • Hear powerful examples of what leading companies are doing to win the war for talent in an age of social good.
  • Find out the three things leaders can do every day to connect team members to your purpose.
  • Know the three biggest mistakes organizations and leaders make in connecting with purpose-focused talent (and how to avoid them).
  • See how every team member can help their company become a force for good in society.

• Leading for Transformational Change: Turning Resistance into Results

  Would you like your people to consistently embrace change and create ongoing innovation? Almost every organization today is experiencing unprecedented change and a need to drive innovation and transformation to stay successful. Dr. John Izzo has spent an entire career helping leaders and organizations not only embrace change but inspiring them for transformational change.

  Your audience will discover proven methods for getting others to embrace change. Izzo explains the neuroscience behind change and how to use that knowledge to help others embrace change. The audience will discover the keys to personal resilience and learn how to create a climate for innovation and understand the true source of change resistance and how to overcome it in yourself and your organization.

  This talk is hard hitting, practical, and guaranteed to get your people stepping up to change.

  You will discover:

  • Why people don’t resist change, they resist being changed.
  • Find out the three keys to getting people to embrace change.
  • Learn to drive the why and empower people on the how.
  • Find out how to become more change hardy and able to embrace change.