Heather R Younger
Heather R Younger is the Founder and CEO of Employee Fanatix, a leading employee engagement and consulting firm. She is a sought-after keynote speaker who brings revealing insights to the stage from over 25,000 employee experiences. A diversity, equity and inclusion strategist, and the world’s leading expert on listening at work, she is the host of the Leadership with Heart Podcast.
Heather R Younger, J.D. is a trusted contributor to leading news outlets, like Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg, NBC and ABC and one of the world’s leading experts on Caring Leadership® and active listening at work. She is the visionary Founder and CEO of Employee Fanatix, a preeminent employee engagement and workplace culture consulting firm to Fortune 100 companies. Employee Fanatix conducts annual research on workplace culture, relying on employee voices for what is relevant now, to help companies redefine their culture strategy. Heather has personally read over 30,000 employee surveys and facilitated over 100 employee focus groups, including her signature “Art of Active Listening Sessions.”
With over 25 years of successfully managing teams, she has worked in customer experience, sales, and large account management for multi-million dollar accounts within multiple industries such as tech, staffing, healthcare, professional services, the public sector, and the financial sector. She's a renowned keynote speaker, drawing insights from current data and putting into practice what she teaches in her Caring Leadership Transformation Model™.
Heather’s strategies yield tangible business results, including heightened employee engagement, unwavering loyalty, seamless collaboration, and robust connectivity. One of her clients, a leader at a bank, continues to win Top Workplace awards, and the feedback from employees is that they are connecting the dots and making employees feel informed and engaged. Another one of her clients, a leader at an oil and gas company, says employee feedback shows an increased sense of trust about voicing concerns without fear of negative consequences. This all results in better outcomes in our everyday work.
Heather is a former practicing attorney turned award-winning leader in the area of Employee Engagement as recognized by Inspiring Workplaces, is a LinkedIn Learning course partner, 3-time best-selling author, TEDX speaker and host of the popular, Leadership with Heart podcast. She is also an Adjunct Organizational Leadership Professor at University College at Denver University.
Her accolades include being a best-selling author of three books: "The 7 Intuitive Laws of Employee Loyalty," a Forbes Must-Read List topper for HR professionals, "The Art of Caring Leadership," wherein she shines a spotlight on the radical potential of compassionate leadership, and her latest best-selling book, "The Art of Active Listening," through which she equips individuals with the interpersonal skills required to make others feel seen, heard, and valued.
Heather's personal journey, rooted in her challenging experiences growing up as the only child of an interfaith and interracial marriage and being excluded because of her race, fueled her unwavering determination to ensure that workplaces around the world make both employees and customers alike feel heard, valued and seen.
The Art of Caring Leadership®: The Key to Unleashing The Full Potential in Your People
The four Caring Leadership principles delivered in this interactive experience serve as a powerful reminder of every leader’s responsibility to uplift their team and organization and drive real business results. Built around the framework of Lead Yourself, Lead Your Team, Lead Your Industry, this keynote will develop leaders who inspire loyalty and retention.
The audience will leave with:
- Strategies to inspire loyalty by becoming more present, caring, and compassionate
- A practical understanding of the concrete actions they can take to uplift and engage those they lead
- Deep insights into the positive power they possess to create a culture of caring at work
Perfect for: organizational change, leadership development and employee engagement
The Art of Active Listening: The Key to Making Anyone Feel Valued and Engaged
Active listening is the doorway to increased belonging, loyalty, profitability and innovation. It is the difference between thinking we understand what people want and knowing what they want.
For the last 12 years, Heather has reviewed over 25,000 employee engagement surveys as well as facilitated numerous listening sessions. She has distilled that knowledge into actionable insights that equip your people with the interpersonal skills they need to make others feel seen, heard, and valued in every interaction.
In this keynote, Heather introduces a new change model for organizational listening which she illustrates in five steps through an interactive experience. The audience will leave with:
- The understanding of how to practice active listening with those who look to them for guidance
- A listening process that will unlock valuable insights and deliver desired outcomes
- The one success characteristic they need to reach their goals and create win-win scenarios at work
Perfect for: cultural change, interpersonal skills, workplace engagement
The Art of Belonging at Work: How to Create Magnetic Cultures Where People Feel Included
This keynote draws from Heather’s personal experiences as the only child of an interfaith and interracial marriage to inspire leaders to flex their empathy muscles. Through this interactive experience, attendees master the art of active listening to ensure every employee feels valued, respected and like they belong.
The audience will leave with:
- A practical method to elicit feedback and unlock change and growth
- A greater understanding of the role they have to play in creating cultures of belonging at work
- The inspiration to show up each workday as their most authentic selves
Perfect for: inclusion, belonging, change, inspiration
Thank you for participating in the Engineer Employee Engagement for All Managers at our DDOT. Your profound message on The Art of Caring Leadership will continue to inspire our leaders as we continue the spirit of engaging our teams across the agency. Caring for those we lead will be key to our reentering workforce and for those who have been on the front lines without having the option to fully retreat to the “stay at home” order. Managers who provide guidance for those brave men and women will need to provide a spirit of leadership with care and compassion.
Stephanie Clark | Interim, HR Manager, Chief Learning and Development Officer | District Department of Transportation
I just had the pleasure of listening to Heather’s talk about Resilience Through Change. While the message of the talk was strong and encouraging, it was Heather’s charisma and presentation that really made the topic resonate with me. Heather’s humor and personal experiences kept the presentation fresh and exciting. In addition, while facing the limitations of a virtual platform, Heather was able to engage the viewers and allow for audience participation; helping us (the audience) connect with each other through our responses and experiences. At the end of the discussion, I felt optimistic and enthusiastic to implement and share what she had taught me.
Tammy Salazar, Forensic Scientist, Idaho State Police
The Art of Caring Leadership
The Art of Active Listening
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