great business speakers

Today is International Women's Day, a day set aside to celebrate globally women and their economic, political, and social achievements around the world. It is also a time to focus on places and situations where women's rights, equality, health, and safety still have a long way to go. The work of BBC World News’ KATTY KAY is a perfect fit for the mission of International Women’s Day. Katty has had the privilege of speaking at many IWD events over the years. Interest was first driven by her bestselling book Womenomics and most recently by the groundbreaking work on confidence she and co-author Claire Shipman did for their bestselling book, The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know. Katty and Claire's latest book, The Confidence Code for Girls: Taking Risks, Messing Up, and Becoming Your Amazingly Imperfect, Totally Powerful Self is coming out on April 3, 2018. International Women's Day provides a great opportunity to focus a bit on confidence, since it’s such a vital ingredient for the issues that are the focus of this day.

BILL WALTON: A DIFFICULT JOURNEY OFF THE COURT It’s amazing how we look at celebrities and presume they’re living a charmed life.

Mike Abrashoff - "It Was All About the Culture" Imagine you’re put in charge of a new project. You’re given goals and objectives and a team of people to work with. This team, though, has a horrible performance history. In fact, they are among the worst teams in the organization, yet your job is to meet the objectives – no excuses. And – you can’t fire bad performers, or financially reward good performers, or hire new help. What would you do?

BASKETBALL COACH MAKES LIFELONG IMPRESSION ON NBA GREAT BILL WALTON, NBA legend, considers playing for legendary UCLA Bruins basketball coach John Wooden one of the greatest gifts of his life. “Coach Wooden was an English teacher who coached basketball to earn extra money,” said Bill. “He was about the most unlikely person to be coaching us. He never talked about winning and losing, but rather about the effort to win. He rarely talked about basketball, but generally about life. He never talked about strategy, statistics or plays, but rather about people and character. His words and ideas have inspired me my whole career. Coach Wooden never tired of telling us that once you become a good person, then you have a chance of becoming a good basketball player." Wooden is perhaps one of the most remarkable examples of sports leadership ever.

THE CONFIDENCE CODE: CLOSING THE CONFIDENCE GAP Women and confidence: KATTY KAY co-wrote the book on the subject. The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know (written with Claire Shipman), created quite a stir when it was released. The science part was rather sobering: women, even in top leadership roles, are more genetically predisposed to lack confidence than men...confidence and leadership don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. The art part was more reassuring: confidence is indeed a choice. The book launched a productive discussion about women and confidence that goes on to this day.

In today’s highly competitive, rapidly advancing business climate, there is an increased emphasis on organizational leadership tactics that will drive real results. And this is for good reason. Now, more than ever, business leaders are realizing that the true power in their organization lies within its employees, and creating an environment where they can succeed should be a top priority. For far too long, there has been a misconception that employee morale, motivation, and productivity are inherent traits to each individual. However, this has been shown to be far from the truth. In fact, the leadership approach an organization takes can make or break them. A prime example of a drastic shift based on an new approach to leading change in organizations is the remarkable turnaround story of USS Benfold Captain Mike Abrashoff.

--Geoff Colvin Video-- Will Free Trade Survive Politics?

“Grateful Red” NBA great BILL WALTON plays drums with Grateful Dead spin-off Dead & Company last week

A LEADERSHIP SPEAKER LIKE NO OTHER I saw MIKE ABRASHOFF, author of the bestselling leadership book It's Your Ship, speak to a group of state administrators from across the country in Orlando recently. One of the top business speakers, the message from this great leadership expert to the audience was simple: you can’t order excellence. You can tell people what they need to do but they don’t have to invest themselves in it. As a result, there's just no guarantee that things will get done the way they should. Instead, Mike offered a different vision of leadership – one that swaps command and control leadership for commitment and cohesion.

Improving confidence of women was the aim of KATTY KAY with her book, The Confidence Code