Jonathan Raymond Speaking Topics

• Employee Retention: How to Keep Your People … and Keep Them Happy

  Your most vital team members are burned out and looking for new opportunities. Your culture surveys show that leaders aren’t holding underperformers accountable. And the pandemic has proven that employees will leave a job if it doesn’t connect to their values and goals. With fierce competition for talent and people more frequently resigning, you need to act quickly and thoughtfully. Perks and raises alone won’t cut it. You have to give people a meaningful reason to stay. That reason is a manager who doesn’t see themselves as a taskmaster but rather as a facilitator. And a facilitator of personal growth and development knows that if their people are happier, more engaged, and challenged, the business results will follow.

  This session will describe a proven approach to get managers to stop tracking task lists and start developing people, resulting in a high-performance culture with happy employees. Learn the three steps to improve retention • one conversation at a time • while you do the following:

  • Shift your mindset from micromanager to coach
  • Create a compelling mission for each role that reports to you
  • Give developmental feedback that sparks motivation and not defensiveness
  • Bring it all together in simple, human conversations during one-on-ones

• How to Create a High-Performance Culture

  These days, it seems that every organization is struggling with how to create a high-performance culture that doesn’t burn people out. With talented employees moving around more than ever, the rapid shift to remote and hybrid work, and people everywhere demanding more autonomy and control over how they work, it’s never been more challenging. All of these factors make reaching ambitious business goals even harder than they already are. What if your organization could do it differently?

  This session will walk you through the three primary frameworks you need to create a culture that doesn’t burn people out but engages them instead and results in high performance:

  • More Yoda, Less Superhero: How to be a people leader that creates space for growth, where people want to invest.
  • Agreements that Spark Ownership: How to create role agreements that go beyond the job description to create a mission that people can feel inspired by
  • The Accountability Dial: How to start and guide conversations about growth and development based on curiosity, challenge, and personal care, so people have the experience of a manager invested in them.

Personal and Professional Development: One and The Same

If you gain self-confidence at work, did you develop personally or professionally? What if you learned how to manage your time better, have healthy conflict, or become a better listener? It turns out that the line between personal and professional development is an illusion. And, with the workforce looking for opportunities for learning and development as a condition to not quitting their job, it’s never been more critical to let go of that illusion. In this session, you will explore how to shift the conversation in your organization and talk about growth in a way that moves the conversation forward.

By learning how to speak with people, and how to train managers and leaders, how to have conversations with people that focus on behaviors rather than outcomes, you’ll learn how to create a culture that people want to be a part of because it’s a place where they’re learning and growing in a way that’s meaningful to them.

Should I Stay or Should I Go? — How To Become Your Best Self Through Work

When you’re not happy at work, it’s easy to think that things will be better elsewhere. That’s the decision most people make. It turns out that while that might be the right decision in some ways, it’s the exact wrong one in another. Because we often leave a situation when it’s uncomfortable instead of using that discomfort to catapult us into the next stage of our personal growth and career development.

In this session, Jonathan Raymond, author of the book Good Authority and the forthcoming book Should I Stay or Should I Go?, will share stories — both from clients and his own — of the life-changing power of staying. You’ll see the value of not leaving your job until you’ve gotten what you came for, how to deal with your emotions — frustration, anxiety, and even feeling like a victim — in a productive way, and how to live your values no matter what is happening around you.

In this session, you will learn how to:

• Use your current situation for your growth no matter how challenging the circumstances
• Influence positive change, no matter where you are on the org chart
• Decide when to leave and how to do it aligned with your values

More Yoda, Less Superhero – The Secret to High Performing Leaders

You got promoted to lead a team because you’re great at what you do. Leading a team of people is an entirely different thing. Whether you’re an engineer, marketer, or sales leader, to get the most out of your team in the modern world requires a different mindset. You have to learn how to create space for others to have a voice, solve big problems, and stretch outside their comfort zone.

Through stories, thought-provoking questions, and practical examples, you will learn the three key behaviors that modern people leaders need to reach their business goals and give people the personal growth they’re hungry for at the same time.

In this session, you will learn how to:

• Get out of firefighting mode and free up space on your calendar for strategic and creative work
• Set clear expectations that inspire people to take ownership
• Give developmental feedback using The Accountability Dial