Business Communication Expert and New York Times Bestselling Author

Joseph Grenny has consulted with thousands of leaders on every major continent from the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies to the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Over the past twenty years, he has advised CEOs and senior executives on more than a dozen major change initiatives. Joseph was formerly president of California Computer Corporation and an executive for the Covey Leadership Center.

Joseph is coauthor and contributor to eight books, including three New York Times bestsellers, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when Stakes are High and Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior. An expert in topics ranging from leadership and interpersonal communication to organizational change and effectiveness, Joseph has been cited in dozens of newspapers including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. He has also appeared on more than one hundred radio and television programs including CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, and the Today Show.

Joseph is President of VitalSmarts, L.C., an innovator in best practice training and consulting research, that delivers significant improvements to the results companies care about most. For more than twenty-five years, company principals have researched methods for bringing about systematic and lasting change. Based on this ongoing research, VitalSmarts has helped thousands of organizations, including more than three hundred of the Fortune 500, realize quick, hard-hitting results through its award-winning training programs using a method that no other training company yet offers.

VitalSmarts currently has two training initiatives: Crucial Conversations® and Crucial Confrontations™. Each delivers a powerful set of influence tools that builds teams, enriches relationships and improves end results. VitalSmarts also offers keynote speaking, on-site consulting, customized development, and executive mastery retreats.

SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS

MIT Sloan named Influencer the Change Management Approach of the Year.

Human Resource Executive Magazine named Influencer the Top Training Product of the Year.

Soundview Executive Summaries names Influencer the 2008 Business Book of the Year.

Workforce Vitality at Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin’s CEO credited Joseph's work with enabling their winning of the $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter contract by improving behaviors critical to winning the program. Research conducted on site showed not only substantial changes in behavior, but improvements in quality and productivity linked to the change.

Culture Transformation at Sprint
With Joseph’s help, the IT organization of Sprint successfully brought about significant improvements in trust and employee engagement within nine months. Research demonstrated dramatic behavior changes with significant impact in improving quality, productivity, and application availability.

Leadership Development at IBM
Joseph developed, piloted, and implemented a four-day leadership development program for executives and managers of IBM. The course was IBM’s highest rated training program in years, and leaders reported that their increased skills translated to significant improvements in manufacturing efficiency, innovation, and interorganizational cooperation.

Leadership and Executive Coaching
Joseph has been a personal coach to the presidents and senior executives of dozens of organizations. His services have helped these leaders identify and improve key areas that many credit with significantly advancing in their careers.