Printable Biography of John Spence

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Driven by an insatiable curiosity to understand the fundamental aspects of what it takes to achieve and sustain excellence in business and life, John Spence has earned a reputation as a leading authority in the areas of Strategic Planning, High Performance Teams, Leadership Development, Advanced Interpersonal Communications, Consultative Sales and Life Management Skills, making him one of the most highly sought after executive educators and professional speakers in America.

Respected and trusted as a knowledgeable advisor, John is the author of Excellence by Design--Leadership  and has delivered workshops, speeches and consulting worldwide including dozens of private companies, government offices and not-for-profits. John has also been a guest lecturer on the topics of leadership and life success at over 80 colleges and universities across the United States.

After an initial rocky start to his college career, John Spence eventually graduated from the University of Florida, where he was recognized in his senior year by the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) as the top public relations student in the Southeastern US and in the top three in the entire nation.

John’s business career began as Director of Development for a fledgling non-profit group. In just three years John was named Executive Director of that organization. At the age of 27, Spence was nominated as one of the top CEO’s in Florida under the age of 40 and was also recognized by Inc. Magazine’s “Zinc Online” as one of America’s up and coming young business leaders. Looking for new challenges, Spence left the foundation in 1994 to form his own consulting and corporate training firm. Since that time John has let his passion for learning drive his work, which has literally taken him around the world assisting his clients with critical business issues and often working on projects in excess of $100 million dollars.

Each year Spence sets aside a portion of his busy consulting and workshop schedule to share his insights and lessons learned with select audiences as a keynote speaker and seminar leader. In 1999, the Florida Employees Advisory Council, an organization representing more than 3,000 businesses in that state, named John Spence “Outstanding Speaker of the Year.” He has also received the “Highest Award for Achievement” from the Dale Carnegie Institute for his professional speaking skills.

Currently, John serves as Executive in Residence for the University of Central Florida’s Technology Incubator, as an adjunct professor for the University of North Florida’s Division of Continuing Education in their Executive Education Series and as a Special Advisor to the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University.

Most Requested Topics:

Five Ways to Run or Ruin a Great Company: As a high-level management consultant for the past decade, John Spence has had the rare opportunity to “crawl around” in almost 300 companies across the globe. From the top of the Fortune 500, to tiny start-ups, John has observed a distinct pattern of behavior and focus that, when adhered to, catapulted firms to greatness--when ignored led to their demise. During this eye-opening presentation John will describe in detail the specific elements he has documented to running and sustaining a successful enterprise. He will also pose a number of “Leadership Questions” to help audience members do a quick reality check and determine if they are on the right track, or headed for disaster.

Outstanding Business Leaders: Based on the work in his book, Excellence by Design--Leadership , John will present the six key characteristics of all outstanding business leaders. Drawn from more than 10 years of research, and John’s personal experience as a leadership consultant and executive educator to hundreds of organizations worldwide, this speech delivers a clear, actionable and powerful overview of the specific skills, abilities and attitudes necessary to become a great leader. Dealing with issues such as vision, honesty, integrity, empowerment, risk-taking, trust and self awareness, audience members will leave this talk with deep understanding of the challenges and rewards of committing to being a living example of outstanding leadership.

Building a High Performance Team: Based on John’s hands-on experience in leading advanced team building retreats for more than 100 companies worldwide, this speech will describe the key elements that all high performance teams must exhibit to function at peak levels. Incorporating extensive research, “Best in the World” team benchmarks and numerous personal anecdotes and real-life examples, John will clearly outline the fundamental aspects of high performance teams and teach the essential skills necessary to build these teams. The audience will leave this speech with a thorough understanding and respect for the challenges of creating and sustaining truly great teams and a specific framework for implementing advanced teambuilding in their organization.

Excellence by Design: One of John’s top clients came to with a challenge. They wanted a presentation for 1,600 of their people that would clearly show them a specific process for “designing a future of excellence” for the organization that could take them to number one in the world in their industry. After several months of research and study John put together what has now become his most popular keynote speech. “Excellence By Design” is a powerful, insightful and potentially life-changing look at what it truly takes to achieve excellence in business and life. Full of quotes, anecdotes and real-life examples, this speech lays out, step-by-step, precisely what an individual or organization must do to achieve uncommon success. This is a highly motivational presentation that is firmly grounded in research and common sense.

Strategies for Success: Over the past ten years John Spence has had the opportunity to speak with literally thousands of people in his workshops and seminars about the hurdles they face in trying to live a more happy, joyful balanced and successful life. From CEO’s to college students, John has discovered that there are a relatively limited number of reoccurring problems and self-imposed obstacles that seem to cause about 90 percent of the pain and disappointment in the average person’s life. Shockingly, most of these issues are completely avoidable (or at the least can be drastically reduced)once you clearly understand what they are and why they happen. In this speech, John will uncover these specific life satisfaction issues and teach a number of realistic and practical tools to overcome those hurdles and move in the direction of a much more satisfying and rewarding life.

Achieving Business Excellence: Based on more than seven years of in-depth research, combined with benchmarking studies of the best practices at top corporations around the world, this intensive one-day workshop is designed specifically to “shake up the thinking” of senior managers by exposing them to the most innovative ideas, tools and methods for dramatically improving business success. This fast paced and engaging program is taught as a mixture of lecture, group discussion, and both individual and group workshops; all focused on understanding the fundamentals of achieving excellence in business. Using a custom workbook full of clear examples and proven processes from companies such as Microsoft, Dell, GE, IBM, Apple, Wal-Mart, Intel, Disney, Allied Signal, Royal Dutch Shell, Toyota, Porsche and many other respected firms, attendees will delve into exactly how these organizations pursue, achieve and sustain competitive superiority. Prior to the workshop, a customized “Organizational Effectiveness Audit” will be deployed through an Internet-based survey tool. This brief but focused instrument will help identify specific areas of strength or weakness within your organization and also offer the opportunity for participants to give frank feedback in a completely confidential format. In addition, throughout the seminar the group will be asked to take several more short audits to directly compare the current performance of your company against the key success factors of the benchmark companies. The results are typically startling and help your managers to realize that there is a significant performance gap and ample room for improvement within the organization. At the close of the first part of the session, each participant completes and “Personal Action Plan” to take the ideas and techniques they have learned and apply them directly to how they operate as managers and leaders on a daily basis. In the next stage of the program, a report summarizing the findings of the Organizational Effectiveness Audit will be given to each participant. The group will then be broken up into several smaller teams and told to go page-by-page through the report, all of the audits and strategy lessons of the program to search for patterns and key ideas. In most cases, this workshop is very intense, with heated debate and serious discussion. The last activity of the day is for each team to answer a series of pointed questions about your organization and then present their best ideas and recommendations to the rest of the group. During this phase John will facilitate the dialogue and keep working to uncover correlated themes and build consensus. To close the session John will assist the group in creating a summary of all the key points identified throughout the day and develop a specific list of realistic action steps to implement what has been learned.