Everybody wants to talk about their strengths – especially leaders. The problem with this idea is the fact that most estimates put the number of incompetent leaders at over 50%! Focusing on strengths is not going to fix leadership incompetence, but there is hope.

Dr. Curphy opens this leadership keynote with his personal story about the minor runway crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 1495. Your team will be sitting on the edge of their seats in disbelief as Curphy recounts a truly comical episode of the dark side of leadership. He then dives into the three leading causes of managerial incompetence: Oh No, No Way, and The Wrong Way.

• Oh No: Sometimes stuff just happens that’s out of a person’s control that can cause them to be seen as a chronically incompetent manager.
• No Way: Real men of genius. Sometimes a lack of intelligence or relevant skills can lead to chronic managerial incompetence. Dr. Curphy uses examples from leading companies to drive home these points.
• The Wrong Way: Dark side traits and bad work values. Dr. Curphy describes in three sets of derailment behaviors and how they play out in everyday work life…
• Personality as a method of birth control: The moving away syndrome
• It’s all about me: The moving against syndrome
• The fine art of strategic sucking up: The moving towards syndrome

Curphy wraps up this leadership keynote with practical ways everyone can use to avoid the dark side of leadership.

Add-on Services
The Hogan Develop Survey (HDS) feedback report and the Dark Side handout for all participants. Participants take this on-line survey prior to the session and receive their feedback reports during the presentation. The cost of the HDS feedback reports and Dark Side handout is $75/participant plus $1,000 for an HDS group report, and this service adds another 60 minutes to the presentation.

There are over 8,000 books written on the subject of leadership. There are less than 10 on followership. The military understands that before one can become a leader one needs to know how to follow, but corporate America still has not figured this one out.

How you follow has big implications for how you lead. And followership is one of the most critical factors in getting an organization aligned, yet corporate leaders find it difficult to discuss because it might be perceived as self serving. In this one-of-a-kind leadership keynote, Dr. Curphy tackles this topic in a fun, but potent way. The leadership keynote opens with engaging stories about the four types of followers: The self-starter, yes person, slacker, and criticizer.

He describes the two dimensions of followership: critical thinking and involvement and then takes a deep dive into each type:

• Self starters: critical thinkers and high involvement: A players
• Yes people: uncritical thinkers and high involvement: Loyal lapdogs
• Slackers: uncritical thinkers and low involvement: Stealth employees
• Criticizers: critical thinkers and low involvement: Whiners of first resort.

Dr. Curphy's leadership keynote describes the underlying psychological issues with each of the four follower types and what leaders need to effectively manage each type and create teams of self-starters. He describes how people change their followership type-based on how they are led. In a very personal, engaging style Dr. Curphy's leadership keynote talks about his own followership style and how it has changed over time.

The keynote wraps up with a challenge to leaders to look at their teams, where people are at, and how they are performing as leaders. He challenges followers as well – but in the end, it’s all up to them to follow and lead to their highest potential.

Add-on services
Rather than a mere keynote speech and PowerPoint, this particular leadership keynote can be highly interactive. A handout that describes the two followership dimensions; the four followership types; the underlying psychological issues and recommended actions for managing each follower type; and a graph for plotting direct reports against the four followership types. This handout also allows participants to plot how their own followership style has changed over time. This is priced at $50/participant and adds 20 minutes to the leadership keynote presentation.

Polite teams get polite results, and dysfunctional teams get poor results. Unfortunately, these are the norm in most organizations, not the exception. One of the key reasons why this occurs is that team leaders do not have a road map or the tools they need to create high performing teams..

In his trademark matter-of-fact style, Dr. Curphy opens this leadership keynote with some engaging examples of sports teams and business teams. He takes your team through the seven success factors of high performing business teams, based on the Rocket Model. This model was developed by Curphy, and popularized in the book “Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience”. Dr. Curphy is a co-author of this book, which is the most widely used textbook on leadership in use today.

In this leadership keynote, Dr. Curphy takes your team through:

1. Mission — The team has a set of clear objectives, strategies, and metrics to track progress.
2. Talent — The team has the skills, experience and abilities it will need to succeed. It also systematically buys or builds the talent it needs for mission success.
3. Norms — To work effectively, good teams have an agreed upon set of rules for decision-making, communicating, work hand-offs and meeting structure and flow.
4. Buy-In — The team builds commitment and buy-in to the mission by having credible and trusted leadership, a compelling future picture, and team members who participate meaningfully in goal setting and decision-making.
5. Power — The team has the equipment, budget and decision-making authority it needs to accomplish its mission.
6. Morale — The team has identified areas that interfere with building cohesiveness and has developed effective countermeasures.
7. Results — The team achieves results and celebrates success.

There are plenty of people on the speaking circuit giving “touchy feely” keynotes about teamwork that have little practical application in the real world. Dr. Curphy’s leadership keynote will give your team fresh perspectives and a practical toolset they can use when they get to the office on Monday morning.

Add-on services
Participants can take the self-scoring version of the Team Assessment Survey (TAS) as part of the leadership keynote presentation. The corresponding TAS Feedback Report gives participants information about the current level of team functioning and what they can do to improve team performance. The cost of the TAS Survey and Feedback report is $50/participant and adds another 30 minutes to the presentation