Leadership practices that help you soar to new heights.

Your leadership skills are infinitely upgradable. All you need are curiosity, effort, and the right inspiration.

No one needs another rah-rah “motivational” talk.

You need inspiring stories with practical steps to becoming ever-better

Boost performance and joy. Inspire people to contribute their best to your team’s success.

Reduce turnover. Stop the revolving door and give people reasons to say no to talent poachers.

Build an Inspiring Culture® so your employees work together and do what’s right without you having to watch.

Life is too short for constant friction and frustration.

1,000’s

Thousands of lives saved by motivating Afghan insurgents to stop fighting and start working together with Chris’s unit.

10,000’s

Tens of Thousands of leaders implementing behaviors and habits that inspire people to contribute their best.

100’s

Hundreds of businesses are more joyful and productive places to work.

The 1 Millimeter Rule:

The irresistible power of making the right adjustments.

The shift from steady progress to volatility and uncertainty has businesses scrambling for traction. High levels of disengagement, the ongoing Great Resignation, frequent burnout, and mental health crises undermine productivity. Many companies fear losing their top talent and get frustrated that they cannot attract new hires, so they retain poor performers, making their top talent more likely to vote with their feet. Businesses and leaders at all levels try to attract, engage, and retain employees who expect more. Is there a secret weapon? No. The answer is making the right adjustments to find and retain a custom fit.

Drawing inspiration from his 1700-mile fallen hero bicycle ride, Chris Kolenda distills the transformative power of 1mm adjustments to important matters, which equips you for success in a dynamic economy. No jargon, no consultant-speak, no fluff. Chris’s insights are immediately actionable, so you leave inspired to attract, hire, engage, grow, and retain the right talent.

Actionable Objectives

  • Understand the leverage of 1mm adjustments and how to take advantage of them.
  • Learn how to engage the superpowers of each individual so they contribute their best to your organization’s success.
  • Breakdown the cognitive diversity process so you build the most powerful team.
  • Determine who to put in your inner circle and who to keep away from it.
  • Gain clarity on how to custom-fit roles to people.
  • Discover the biggest culture mistake and how to avoid it.
  • Develop action steps for boosting people’s psychological confidence.

The ABCs of Building an Inspiring Culture®:

Imagine the impact when people voluntarily advance your Common Good.

Your company only excels when people buy-in to your common good. In today’s hyper-polarized environment, workplace friction is the norm, with 68% of American employees saying they are unengaged at work and some actively disrupting or undermining your success. Companies report losing nearly eight hours per employee per week to miscommunication. Managers often let problems slide rather than holding people accountable. With four generations in many workplaces, it’s become a short walk from misunderstanding to conflict.

Chris knows a few things about working with challenging audiences. The key to cooperation, he found, was building trust through the ABCs: Accountability, Buy-in, and Clarity: set clear expectations, gain buy-in, and use accountability to improve future performance. Using the ABCs, Chris’s unit motivated a large Afghan insurgent group to stop fighting and switch sides. He later negotiated so successfully with the Taliban that they wrote a letter to the American people asking for talks.

Your company soars to new heights when you use the ABCs to Build and Inspiring Culture(R), because people contribute their best to your Common Good.

Learning Objectives

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Gain actionable, memorable ways to understand before you try to be understood.

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Understand the three critical elements of Buy-in and practical ways to get them working together.

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Discover the empowering technique for accountability that gains joyful traction and avoids making you feel like a jerk.

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Install a powerful feed-forward approach to improving performance.

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Develop action steps that build psychological confidence, so people are willing to flag problems, offer new ideas, and try new things.

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Implement the three elements of collaboration so you can create lasting solutions.

Leading in an AI World: Repairing the Trust Crisis

We live in an era where AI isn't just a tool—it's becoming a team member. But as organizations soar into this brave new world, a glaring gap is emerging: the trust crisis between leaders and employees. AI exposes contradictions, say-do gaps, and potential unfairness while creating deep anxiety and uncertainty. This crisis is corroding relationships, impeding performance, and souring the culture that makes a company thrive.

Why should you care? High-trust companies outperform their rivals by nearly 300%. How do you sustain trust as AI takes on more roles and raises troubling questions about credibility, agency, and employee value?

As a retired Army Colonel who's led troops in combat, negotiated successfully with the Taliban, and advised top U.S. military officials, Chris brings unmatched real-world experience to the complex challenges of building trust in the most challenging environments. Leading in an AI World is the next frontier. Chris’s actionable strategies will empower you to build trust, improve collaboration, and achieve breakthrough performance in your billion-dollar enterprise.

Join me for insights crafted for CEOs and senior leaders who want the behaviors that inspire their employees to contribute their best even as AI’s role expands:

1

Empowering Transparent AI Integration: Remove the enigma surrounding AI. Educate your team on extracting the best from AI while recognizing its limitations. This way, AI becomes an ally in your mission, not a mystery.

2

Boosting Human-AI Innovation:
AI can crunch numbers but can't think outside the box. Marry AI’s efficiency with human creativity to reduce risk and improve innovation.

3

Building Trust for Ever-Better Personal Interaction: Relationships become more important with remote work and distributed teams. You have a reduced margin for error, making every human touchpoint critical for building trust and unity.

4

Gaining Buy-In & Proactive Accountability: Move away from AI as a surveillance tool. Build a culture where leaders help employees improve future performance while sparking their discretionary effort.

This keynote gives you actionable tools and behaviors that enhance clarity, inspire buy-in, and boost accountability, thereby reducing AI-amplified tensions and maximizing performance.

Get your superpowers working for you today.

Your employees want a joyful, productive workplace free from the animosity drag that sucks the life from your best talent. Inspire your employees to contribute their best, to disagree agreeably, and embrace accountability, and you will lead your organization to new heights.

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Your leadership skills are infinitely upgradable

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