Leadership, vision and change.

Highlights

Robert E. Quinn has one of the highest rates of repeat engagements in the speaking industry. Audiences regularly describe the experience as personal, powerful and practical and they leave the event knowing better who they are and the result they want to create. Instead of just talking about change, Robert Quinn actually helps people change.

Bob enjoys such extraordinary success with customers because he helps people and organizations transform themselves in the moment he is working with them.

He has a talent for generating mutual trust with the audience and then getting at the kind of real issues that all people and organizations face.

He has a real gift for inspiring courage, creativity and a strong sense of purpose for action.

And he applies cutting-edge ideas, illustrated with useful, real-life cases, to the customer’s real-life situation.

Professor Quinn is the author of many books on leadership and change. His most recent book is Lift. Combining scientific research in positive psychology with powerful stories, Bob offers both inspiration and practical help in becoming a positive force in any situation—achieving the psychological equivalent of aerodynamic lift.

Robert E. Quinn is Margaret Elliot Tracy Collegiate Professor in Business Administration and Professor of Management and Organizations at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

Robert is one of the co-founders of its Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship, which researches the drivers of positive behavior in workplace.

Lift: Becoming a Positive Force in Any Situation

Tools and inspiration for becoming a transformative influence in your business (or any) environment.

Robert Quinn and coauthor Ryan Quinn (his son and assistant professor of business administration at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business) combine experience with research to identify four mindsets that can elevate ourselves and the situations and people around us to greater heights of integrity, openness and achievement—to achieve the psychological equivalent of aerodynamic life. With a special focus on recent advances in the study of positive psychology and strength-based leadership and his groundbreaking work on organizational effectiveness, Robert Quinn illustrates this practical, scientific approach with compelling stories of real people being a positive influence in their environment. This is an inspiring presentation with transformative potential for change in business situations, home life and the wider community.

Leadership

Robert has an unmatched talent for awakening the inner leader within his listeners. The key to such an awakening—to know thyself—has been a central theme of Robert’s work.

Fundamental leadership. His most recent book, Building the Bridge as You Walk on It, describes what he calls "fundamental leadership"—change leadership that begins with changing one’s self. Named one of the best business books of the year, Building the Bridge shows how anyone can become a leader, not by learning techniques, but by learning who we are through eight principles that lie at the heart of both personal and organizational transformation.

Robert has written several other significant books on leadership, including A Company of Leaders, Beyond Rational Management, and Becoming a Master Manager.

His topics in this area include Building the Bridge As You Walk on It: The Fundamental State of Leadership and Building a Company of Leaders: The Road to Initiative and Innovation.

Change management

Robert offers decades of research and expertise in organizational transformation.

Deep Change. We’re talking deep change, fundamental and lasting transformation of the self and the organization.

He’s written several books on change management, including Deep Change, Change the World, and Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture.

He’s also developed a leading change management tool, the Competing Values Framework, that has been named one of the fifty most important models in the history of business. Thousands of organizations have used his Framework to align people, structures and strategies for effective transformation. Having worked closely with several hospital and healthcare systems, Robert brings special value to change management in healthcare.
His topics in this area include:
• The Essence of Change: How to Make a Difference in Your Organization;
• Sustainable Change: How to Diagnose and Change Your Organizational Culture;
• Positive Organizing: Radical Principles from a New Field of Research, and
• The Right Way to Manage Healthcare.

Positive Organizational Scholarship

Robert is a pioneer Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS), a groundbreaking new movement in organizational studies that seeks to understand and promote the real sources of exceptional performance in individuals and their organizations. Drawing from the full spectrum of organizational and social sciences, POS investigates "positive deviance"—how organizations and their members flourish in extraordinary ways.

Books

Lift: Becoming a Positive Force in Any Situation (Ryan W. Quinn, coauthor)

Building the Bridge as You Walk on It: A Guide for Leading Change

Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within

Change the World: How Ordinary People Can Achieve Extraordinary Results

A Company of Leaders: Five Disciplines for Unleashing the Power in Your Workforce(with Gretchen Spreitzer)

Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture (with Kim Cameron)

Beyond Rational Management: Mastering the Paradoxes and Competing Demands of High Performance

Becoming a Master Manager: A Competency Based Framework (with S.R. Faerman, M.P. Thompson and M.R. McGrath)

Letters to Garrett: Stories of Change, Power and Possibility (with Garrett T. Quinn)

Topics

• Lift: How to Become a Positive Force in Any Situation
• The Essence of Change: How to Make a Difference in Your Organization;
• Sustainable Change: How to Diagnose and Change Your Organizational Culture
• Positive Organizing: Radical Principles from a New Field of Research
• The Right Way to Manage Healthcare
• Building the Bridge As You Walk on It: The Fundamental State of Leadership
• Building a Company of Leaders: The Road to Initiative and Innovation

Credentials

The Margaret Elliot Tracy Collegiate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, University of Michigan Graduate School of Business

Director, U of Michigan Management of Managers Program

Director, Ford–University of Michigan LEAD Program

Articles many journals: Organizational Dynamics, Journal of Consulting Psychology, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Management Inquiry, Organization Science, Academy of Management Executive, Journal of Human Resource Management, Human

Founding partner, Wholonics Leadership Group, a management consultancy helping individuals and organizations reach their full potential

Editorial board, Journal of Organizational Behavior and Journal of Management Inquiry