Brian Gareau

Brian Gareau Speaking Topics

• COACHING

  During his career, Brian spent time in Manufacturing, Logistics, Parts & Service Sales, Public Relations, and OD Consulting. He led 9 new plant start-ups and has managed both union and non-union workforces. He also managed a global OD staff located in the U.K., Europe, Asia, and U.S. He is effective in helping coach Executives, middle management, and first line supervisors.

• CONSULTING

  Brian has successfully consulted on over 200 projects in 16 different countries on 5 continents. Most projects involved significant elements of change and improved alignment of human capital to strategy, initiatives, and continuous improvement efforts. Clients have included Operations (union and non-union); Service organizations; start-ups; and mature businesses. His background in Operations, Logistics, Customer Service, PR, and HR give him a broad portfolio of practical and tactical lessons learned & best practices. He continually listens to practitioners, reads, and researches to stay abreast of new developments.

I Wish Someone Would Communicate Around Here! Gain simple and easy techniques for improving communication in your organization.

Ineffective communication costs businesses big bucks – research estimates over $3B annually in the U.S. and U.K. alone. Communication is a simple, but definitely not easy, concept to consistently execute. Inconsistent, mixed messages create inefficiency. New technology increases speed and accessibility but not necessarily understanding. It’s very frustrating, as a leader, to continually hear comments from employees like:

• “The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.”
• “Nobody communicates around here.”
• “That’s the first time I heard that.”
• “Why doesn’t anybody listen?”
• “We simply don’t walk our talk.”

The famous Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw once said, “The single, biggest problem in communication is the illusion it has taken place.” *Let’s create better understanding through more effective communication – and help employees “get it!” *

After attending this session, you’ll be able to:

• Minimize the impact of some major barriers that make effective communication difficult.
• Expand your understanding of why effective communication requires three key steps and how to effectively use each.
• Pull from research findings that can help you influence change in your organization’s communication activities and employee behaviors.
• Improve your own communications immediately by applying powerful, practical communication techniques gained.

IDEAL AUDIENCE: All leaders

FORMAT: Keynote, 75-90 minute breakout or four-hour workshop

The Accidental Boss

Often individuals find themselves in leadership roles without a true understanding of how to succeed. Many are “good doers” misplaced, misinformed or misguided. And they find themselves struggling to balance the many demands of leadership. Now more than ever, these Accidental Bosses must effectively wear multiple hats (managerial, company advocate and employee advocate) to be successful and sustain organizational performance.

In this session, attendees will explore tactical and practical reminders on “blind spots,” “the signs all around us,” and “hazards” to effective leadership and sustainable high performance. As well, they will gain basic techniques that can significantly improve the commitment, effort, and loyalty of your workforce. Remember, people are the only asset an organization has that can appreciate over time … if we truly appreciate them.

Tap into strategic, tactical, and practical solutions that have come from more than 30 years of corporate experience and 200 consulting projects worldwide.

KEY LEARNING OBJECTIVES include:

• Gain a clear understanding of a leader’s role and its impact on your workforce
• Discover techniques to mitigate the risk of four influencers of leader’s actions and decisions
• Understand how to drive employee engagement and create a high performing team
• Be brilliant in the 12 basics of a successful leader

A Sustainable Fuel for High Performance

Many businesses today struggle with “people issues” including: the ability to attract and retain the best talent, employee resistance to change, absenteeism, and individual accountability. All these create frustration, waste and lost performance.

So, how do you unleash the engagement “sustainable fuel” (commitment, effort, loyalty) of your workforce? Engagement is more than an employee survey score – it must be an integrated element of your people and business strategy. It must be a critical competency that leaders master. And, it must be a priority to improve and sustain high performance.

Tap into strategic, tactical, and practical solutions that have come from more than 30 years of corporate experience and 200 consulting projects worldwide.

KEY LEARNING OBJECTIVES include:

• Maximize a new high performance culture model:
• Explain and use key drivers of engagement and “4 Rights” model
• Gain examples of key external business metric – engagement correlation findings for credibility back on the job
• Develop a list of tactical and practical ways to implement and keep your organization’s sustainable fuel tank full

Customer Service - From The Inside Out

Research shows that “poor” Customer Service costs U.S. businesses over $80B annually. Are the behaviors and attitudes impacting these losses actually “reflections” of how leaders and employees are treating each other internally? External customers don’t care about an organization’s internal issues. But, internal issues can and do have a huge impact on delivering a competitive advantage of excellent external customer experience. Is your business culture safe or dangerous for customers inside and out?

In this session, participants will:

• Rethink accountability for internal customer service and gain ideas to maximize mutual responsibility
• Leverage the three critical “I’s” of employee engagement for improved customer service
• Discover four ways to assess if there is “unconscious conditioning” in how employees are treated internally that impacts external customer service
• Learn and apply ways to maximize “internal” Word of Mouth (WOM) to energize external customers
• Gain checklists for auditing workplace internal customer service effectiveness