Leadership Experts Worth Knowing


Harvey Mackay

Leadership Expert, Business Leader and Author


Harvey Mackay is the author of the New York Times #1 bestsellers Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive and Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt. Both books are among the top 15 inspirational business books of all time, according to the New York Times. In total, Harvey's books have sold 10 million copies worldwide, been translated into 37 languages and sold in 80 countries.

Harvey is a nationally syndicated columnist for United Feature Syndicate, whose weekly articles appear in 52 newspapers around the country, including the Chicago Sun Times, Rocky Mountain News, Orange County Register, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Arizona Republic.

He also is one of America's most popular and entertaining business speakers. Toastmasters International named him one of the top five speakers in the world.

At age 26, he purchased a small, failing envelope company in 1959 which has grown to a $100 million business employing over 600 people. MackayMitchell Envelope Company is one of the nation's major envelope manufacturers, producing 25 million envelopes a day. As chairman, Harvey's philosophy is engrained in the company, beginning with its motto: Do what you love, love what you do and deliver more than you promise.

Harvey is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and the Stanford University Graduate School of Business Executive Program. He is an avid runner and marathoner, and former #1 ranked tennis player in Minnesota.

He currently sits on the board of the Minnesota Orchestra and is a former director on Robert Redford's Sundance Institute and the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management. He has been a guest lecturer at various universities and business schools, including Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Cornell, Wharton and Penn State.

Central to Harvey's business, and to his books, is the ability to stay competitive in the often cut-throat world of business, to 'swim with the sharks', without sacrificing one's personal integrity or doing it at the expense of other people. He does this by focusing on building strong relationships with both customers and employees.

He and his wife, Carol Ann, have been married over 45 years, and enjoy spending time with their nine grandchildren. They are avid travelers, taking an annual trip to Italy, and planning upcoming tours of China and Africa.

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John Maxwell

Leadership Expert, Speaker and Author


John C. Maxwell is an internationally recognized leadership expert, speaker, and author who has sold over 16 million books. His organizations have trained more than 2 million leaders worldwide.

Dr. Maxwell is the founder of EQUIP and INJOY Stewardship Services. Every year he speaks to Fortune 500 companies, international government leaders, and audiences as diverse as the United States Military Academy at West Point, the National Football League, and ambassadors at the United Nations. A New York Times , Wall Street Journal , and Business Week best-selling author, Maxwell was named the World's Top Leadership Guru by Leadershipgurus.net.

He was also one of only 25 authors and artists named to Amazon.com's 10th Anniversary Hall of Fame. Three of his books, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership , Developing the Leader Within You , and The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader have each sold over a million copies.

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Ken Blanchard

Leadership Expert, Speaker and Author


Few people have influenced the day-to-day management of people and companies more than Ken Blanchard. A prominent, sought-after author, speaker, and business consultant, Dr. Blanchard is universally characterized by his friends, colleagues, and clients as one of the most insightful, powerful, and compassionate individuals in business today. Ken is one of the most influential leadership experts in the world and is respected for his years of groundbreaking work in the fields of leadership and management.

When Ken speaks, he speaks from the heart with warmth and humor. He is able to speak to an audience and communicate with each person as if they were alone and talking one-on-one. Ken is a sophisticated storyteller with a knack for making the seemingly complex easy to understand.

Dr. Ken Blanchard is the cofounder and Chief Spiritual Officer of The Ken Blanchard Companies, an international management training and consulting firm that he and his wife, Margie Blanchard, began in 1979 in San Diego, California. In addition to being a renowned speaker and consultant, Ken also spends time as a visiting lecturer at his alma mater, Cornell University, where he is a trustee emeritus of the Board of Trustees.

Starting with his phenomenal best-selling book, The One Minute Manager, coauthored with Spencer Johnson, which has sold more than 13 million copies and remains on best-seller lists, to Raving Fans, Gung Ho!, and Whale Done!, Ken’s impact as a writer is far reaching. His books have combined sales of more than 18 million copies in more than 25 languages. Leading at a Higher Level, published in 2006, Know Can Do!, published in 2007, and The One Minute Entrepreneur, published in 2008, have been received with much critical acclaim.

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Mark Sanborn

Leadership Expert, Author and Motivator

Mark Sanborn, CSP, CPAE, is president of Sanborn & Associates, Inc., an idea studio dedicated to developing leaders in business and in life. Mark is an international bestselling author and noted authority on leadership, team building, customer service and change.

Mark Sanborn graduated cum laude from The Ohio State University. In 1978-79 he served as the National President of the FFA, a youth organization of 500,000 members. In addition to his work as a business educator and author, Mark continues to be an active leadership practitioner. Most recently he served as the president of the National Speakers Association.

Mark holds the Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association (NSA) and is a member of the Speaker Hall of Fame. He was recently honored with the Cavett Award, the highest honor the NSA bestows on its members, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the speaking profession. Mark is also a member of the exclusive Speakers Roundtable, made up of 20 of the top speakers in America.

Mark Sanborn is the author of seven books, including TeamBuilt: Making Teamwork Work, Sanborn on Success and Upgrade: Proven Strategies for Dramatically Increasing Personal and Professional Success. Mark’s book The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Make the Ordinary Extraordinary is an international bestseller. His most recent release, You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader, is making an impact on leadership development at every level.

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Tom Peters

Leadership Expert and Author


Without much doubt, Peter Drucker and Tom Peters have shaped the idea of modern management more than any others over the last six decades. Drucker is said to have "invented" management as a discipline worthy of study—in particular, he gave management of large firms the essential tools to deal with their post-World War II enormity, complexity, and growing global reach. Tom Peters, in turn, led the way in preparing management for the current era of staggering change, starting in the mid-1970s.

The likes of Fortune, the Economist, the New Yorker and the Los Angeles Times have said Tom is the "uber-guru" of management and inventor of the enormous "management guru industry," that "in no small part, what American corporations have become is what Peters has encouraged them to be," that Tom is "the father of the post-modern corporation," and that "we live in a Tom Peters world."

In particular, in 1982, with the publication of In Search of Excellence, Tom and Bob Waterman helped American firms deal with a crushing competitive challenge to their primacy by getting them away from strategies based on just the numbers, and re-focused on the basic drivers of all successful businesses throughout time: people, customers, values-"culture" ("the way we do things around here"), action-execution, a perpetual self-renewing entrepreneurial spirit.

As "obvious" as these ideas are, they were, are, and always will be the bedrock and differentiator of excellent enterprise—and subject to constant and remarkably rapid slippage if left untended for even a moment. As a result, Tom in 2008 still unabashedly hammers and hammers and hammers again on these always fresh ideas. If anything, he is more adamant than ever, in a "flat world," that the "eternal basics" must be kept front and center—must be any leader's abiding obsession.

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Anthony Robbins

World Authority on Leadership Psychology


For the past three decades, Anthony Robbins has served as an advisor to leaders around the world. A recognized authority on the psychology of leadership, negotiations, organizational turnaround, and peak performance, he has been honored consistently for his strategic intellect and humanitarian endeavors. His nonprofit Anthony Robbins Foundation provides assistance to inner-city youth, senior citizens, and the homeless, and feeds more than two million people in 56 countries every year through its international holiday “Basket Brigade.” Robbins has directly impacted the lives of more than 50 million people from over 100 countries with his best-selling books, multimedia and health products, public speaking engagements, and live events.

What began as a young person’s desire to help individuals transform the quality of their lives has grown into Robbins’ lifelong crusade as he is called on by leaders from every walk of life—presidents, political leaders, advocates for humanity, CEOs of multinational corporations, psychologists, peak performance athletes, world-class entertainers, teachers, and parents. Since fathering the life coaching industry, Robbins has produced the #1-selling audio coaching system of all time. He also is a corporate Vice Chairman, and Chairman overseeing five private companies. Robbins has been honored by Accenture as one of the “Top 50 Business Intellectuals in the World”; by Harvard Business Press as one of the “Top 200 Business Gurus”; by American Express as one of the “Top Six Business Leaders in the World” to coach its entrepreneurial clients; by Forbes as a Top 100 Celebrity; by Justice Byron White as one of the world’s “Outstanding Humanitarians”; and by the International Chamber of Commerce as one of the top 10 “Outstanding People of World.”

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