Ron McMillan
Ron McMillan is the best-selling author of Crucial Conversations and Influencer and a leading social scientist for organizational change.
Ron McMillan is a New York Times bestselling author, keynote speaker, and leading social scientist for organizational change. For thirty years, Ron has delivered engaging keynotes at major conferences including the American Society of Training and Development and the Society for Human Resource Management. Ron’s work has been translated into 28 languages, is available in 36 countries, and has generated results for 300 of the Fortune 500.
Ron has spoken at hundreds of conferences, conventions, and management retreats as well as delivered keynote addresses for Fortune 500 organizations including:
• Association for Change Management Professionals
Ron is the coauthor of four immediate New York Times bestsellers: Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything.
Recognized as a subject-matter expert in influence, leadership, and workplace communication, Ron has been featured widely in the national media including on NPR and CNN as well as in the New York Times, Inc. magazine, T&D Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune.
For the past thirty years, Ron has conducted social science research to help leaders and organizations achieve new levels of performance. Specifically, he has focused on human behavior—the underlying written and unwritten rules that shape what employees do every day.
A protégé of Albert Bandura, the world’s greatest living psychologist, Ron’s internationally published research led to the development of his four books and award-winning training solutions of the same titles. These tools have helped more than one million people and 300 of the Fortune 500 companies- change human behavior.-
10x Your Influence
Create Sustainable Change with Six Sources of Influence. Leaders who use all Six Sources of Influence when approaching resistant problems are ten times more likely to succeed.
In a recent study published in MIT Sloan Management Review, VitalSmarts researchers found that those who combine all Six Sources of Influence are ten times more likely to succeed at producing substantial and sustainable change. These results held true across areas of:
- C-Level concerns—bureaucratic infighting, silo thinking, and lack of accountability
- Corporate change initiatives—internal restructurings, quality and productivity improvements, new product launches
- Personal challenges—overeating, smoking, overspending, binge drinking
- Learn a step-by-step strategy for exponentially increasing your power to change your greatest and most persistent challenges.
Four Crucial Skills of a High Performance Cultural Operating System
Similar to our modern gadgets, organizations have operating systems—cultural operating systems. Both electronic and cultural operating systems (COS) provide a set of rules that guide behavior. But while electronic intelligence is processed using written coded rules, a COS is also driven by unwritten rules. For example, executives may write cultural mandates that direct employees to take initiative, speak candidly, and act as a team. Yet when you watch what employees actually do, you realize the unwritten rules are avoid risk, defer to the boss, and stay in your silo. So what makes a powerful COS?
This engaging presentation will use case study examples to identify the four key skills of a high performance COS. Our research shows organizations need these skills to enable world-class execution. Each skill addresses a critical competency for personal, interpersonal, team or organizational effectiveness. The skills are found in four categories:
- Personal: Self-directed change
- Interpersonal: Open dialogue
- Team: Universal accountability
- Organizational: Influential leadership
When these crucial skills are present, things run smoothly and improve routinely. When these crucial skills are absent, the system bogs down and gets mired in mediocrity—or worse. Participants will learn how to build a high performance cultural operating system that will help their organization increase growth, profitability, and other bottom-line results.
Crucial Accountability
Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations and Broken Commitments
Imagine your colleague misses deadlines despite your repeated crucial conversations with him about the negative impact of his behavior? After each conversation, he commits to change. He has good intentions. And yet, day in and day out, he fails to deliver on time. So what’s getting in the way? How do you hold him accountable in a manner that produces better results and improves your relationship?
Top performers are gifted at holding others accountable. They know how to diagnose the underlying causes behind broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior.
In this engaging speech, participants will learn a high-leverage skill set that lies at the heart of problem solving and execution. They’ll learn how to:
- Diagnose the Underlying Cause. Identify the underlying cause behind every problem using a six-source model of possible influences.
- Make It Motivating. Motivate others without resorting to threats or power and instead, search for and explain natural consequences of noncompliance.
- Make It Easy. Involve others in coming up with a solution to their ability barriers.
- Stay Focused and Flexible. Skillfully attend to the problem of choice rather than getting sidetracked.
When you teach your employees the skills of Crucial Accountability, you are teaching them a vital behavior of top performers, leaders, and influencers.
Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change
Learn to Create Change Strategies that Work
Creating sustainable change is a constant struggle for organizations and individuals. We often lack the skills to influence the behaviors behind issues like:
- Failed initiatives
- Short-lived change efforts
- Unproductive corporate cultures
- Entrenched bad habits
Influencer draws on the best practices of many of the world’s leading change agents and on five decades of social-science research to create a powerful model for changing behavior.
Speak up to Prevent Medical Mistakes and Save Lives
Every year, 195,000 people die in U.S. hospitals because of medical mistakes. Often, well-intentioned professionals in healthcare organizations choose not to speak up when they’re concerned with the behavior, decisions, or actions of a colleague.
The study, Silence Kills: The Seven Crucial Conversations for Healthcare, conducted by VitalSmarts, in conjunction with the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, links people’s ability to discuss emotionally and politically risky topics in a healthcare setting with key results such as:
- Patient safety
- Quality of care
- Nursing turnover
The study suggests that creating a culture where healthcare workers speak up before problems occur is a vital part of saving lives. Learn to step up to these seven crucial conversations and drastically transform your healthcare organization.
In this engaging presentation, you’ll learn to speak up skillfully and respectfully when it matters most, and in so doing, will decrease medical errors, improve patient satisfaction, and save lives.