Dick Ruhe, Ph.D.

Dick Ruhe is a compelling and sought-after motivational speaker, consultant, trainer, and businessperson. Having had extensive management and supervisory experience in the private and public sectors, Dick has a myriad of entertaining, humorous, and inspiring stories that lend themselves well to his presentations on the important and popular topics of productivity improvement, change, and execution. Razor-sharp humor and anecdotes are used to get audiences to improve skills. He provides "stuff, not fluff" ... real things to say and do. He believes "people are the ultimate high technology."

Dick is currently a Senior Consulting Partner withThe Ken Blanchard Companies and has worked with Tom Peters, Gordon Lippitt, and Paul Hersey. With Ken Blanchard and Paul J. Meyer, he is a coauthor of the best seller, Know Can Do! released in 2007 through Berrett-Koehler. He has served as a regular columnist for Sales and Marketing Training magazine and has been published in Training and Development, Western Business Systems Journal, Proceedings of the Academy of Management, and Executive Excellence. A past chapter President of Sales and Marketing Executives, Dick is also a member of the International Customer Service Association, The National Speakers Association, The International Platform Association, the American Society for Training and Development, and the American Society of Quality Control. He received his MBA from the University of Haven and his doctorate in Human Resource Development from George Washington University.

MOST REQUESTED TOPICS:
Performance Management That Gets Results
Getting desired performance is becoming more challenging, and organizations have to be resilient to deal with it. Managers and employees have to take advantage of opportunities, recover from disruptions and problems, and then move forward. Some people juggle too many balls and don't get the important things done. But excellent performers stay laser-focused and act as role models. It is critical to stay on top of the important things, but more critical to keep everybody on board. In this program, attendees will learn specific behaviors that move beyond mere understanding, and take the organization to sustained action. To optimize customer service, employee motivation, and business results, participants will learn how to:

1. Set standards
2. Measure performance
3. Sustain behavior.

Attendees will walk out with a specific tool for each skill.  This engaging and fun presentation will help you get there. Dick Ruhe's style is action-driven and motivating. He will offer humor, stories and examples to inspire and arm people with ideas they can use immediately.

Execution Through Team Performance
Organizations are struggling with doing more with less; the requirement for maintaining outputs and service levels continues. The research is clear: a good way to become both more effective and more efficient is through teamwork. Yet, organizations that value individual performance frequently encounter difficulties because otherwise productive people are on teams that struggle with complex working relationships. Sometimes the relationships of people are only quasi-team driven. This session will share how organizations can overcome the obstacles to results-driven teamwork. Participants will get four proven tools to insure that their team focuses on performance, rather than on paying lip-service to teamwork.

How to accomplish the mission while maintaining team spirit

1. The Communications-Support-Trust triangle.
2. The PAVES model to get people to work together.
   • Passion
   • Accountability
   • Values
   • Empowerment
   • Support
3. Getting execution: "Nothing happens until something moves."

This engaging and fun presentation will help you get there. Dick Ruhe's style is action-driven and motivating. He will offer humor, stories and examples to inspire and arm people with ideas they can use immediately.

Driving Performance Through Feedback
Giving and getting feedback can improve performance and make you look better as a leader. Receiving feedback can enhance your career and make your job more rewarding. But there is often a two-way conspiracy of silence that subverts honest feedback and creates a downward spiral of behaviors: procrastination, denial, confusion, blame, and self-sabotage. Dick Ruhe details a road map for moving out of the fear and anger that lie beneath these behaviors, and into a mode that encourages open communication. He provides a four-step process for actively engaging in feedback, and specific methods for giving feedback and allow you to feel comfortable and in control, whether the message is negative or positive.

1. Transform a feedback-aversive environment.
2. Use your own power to affect giving and receiving feedback.
3. Stop guessing about what people want and need.

People will walk out with a specific tool for each skill.  This engaging and fun presentation will help you get there. Dick Ruhe's style is action-driven and motivating. He will offer humor, stories and examples to inspire and arm people with ideas they can use immediately.

Thinking Strategically
Clear, Informed, Effective Decisions
This program is about organizing and managing decision making. The research shows that people can improve their ability to think logically, mobilize performance, consider numerous issues simultaneously, and enhance implementation. This session will help attendees to adapt their own management style to organizational progress. They will learn to:

1. Focus on desired outcomes
2. Identify and weigh key issues
3. Determine what information is needed and how to get it.
4. Develop and assess options
5. Include the right people in the process.

They will walk out with a specific tool for each skill.  This engaging and fun presentation will help you get there. Dick Ruhe's style is action-driven and motivating. He will offer humor, stories and examples to inspire and arm people with ideas they can use immediately.

Motivational Leadership
There are big benefits to having energy and commitment, in life and at work. The level of engagement directly affects key results such as productivity, continuous improvement, customer satisfaction, and turnover. The challenge is that engagement is self-driven. To raise motivation, people must understand its drivers. This presentation offers a comprehensive approach to this vital topic. It will provide a thorough understanding of what works and doesn't work. Participants will walk out with a clear action plan to engage themselves and each other. This session will cover the following topics:

1. What people want from their jobs 
2. How to engage people into organizational goals
3. The difference between high performers and average performers
4. Balancing short term productivity and long term engagement
5. Rewarding and recognizing performance.

Attendees will get a specific tool for each skill.  This engaging and fun presentation will help you get there. Dick Ruhe's style is action-driven and motivating. He will offer humor, stories and examples to inspire and arm people with ideas they can use immediately.

Dealing With Change
Change is inevitable. Relying on yesterday's ideas, services and assumptions can spell failure. But when we try to manage it, many employees don't understand why new systems and structures are necessary. What we need is a new blueprint for progress. Leaders and team members must partner together and help organizations get it right. This presentation covers:

1. Communicating to get commitment 
2. Leading change initiatives that create success
3. Using a proven six-step change management process
4. Managing typical impacts of change
5. Assessing the impact of change, and keeping it going.

Attendees will walk out with a specific tool for each skill.  This engaging and fun presentation will help you get there. Dick Ruhe's style is action-driven and motivating. He will offer humor, stories and examples to inspire and arm people with ideas they can use immediately.

Organization In White Water
Many change efforts get off track because they are introduced without regard for people's concerns. This session will draw on years of research on how to deal with the most common reactions to change, why people respond the way they do, and how to get others' cooperation.

Service In The Trenches
Everybody seems to agree that customer service is a competitive advantage, but why is it so difficult to deliver? This program gets at how to do it, and make sure it continues.

Motivation As A Business Strategy
It really isn't all that difficult. This program is based on common-sense ways to foster high morale in the workplace. The fact is that staying on top is all about keeping people turned on and focused on the essentials. The challenge is to create the conditions that drive peak performance.

Staying Competitive In The New Marketplace
How can organizations maintain the energy and drive that creates innovation and growth? This program offers down-to-earth ways for systems to work without slowing people down in short, how to unleash our best.

Hyper-Change: A Steady Diet
In today's world, organizations are changing so rapidly that they are ready to implode because of a lack of systems. How can you do it without becoming bureaucratic?

Managing By Principle
Today's business world is characterized by rapid change, to the point of chaos. This presentation emphasizes short-term results with long-term commitment to organizational and ethical values.

Teamwork That Works
Teamwork should be a lot more than feeling good and increasing morale. The critical thing is doing jobs better and faster.