Steve Farber
About
About Steve Farber - Best-selling Author, Expert and Speaker on Extreme Leadership & Business Management:
Steve Farber was named by Huffington Post as the "#1 Business Speaker to See." Listed as one of Inc.’s global "Top 50 Leadership and Management Experts" - Farber is a leadership pioneer, strategist, keynote speaker and best-selling author on extreme leadership and business management.
His expertise is in creating organizational cultures where leadership is not just an opportunity and obligation for those in authority, but for everyone at all levels.
Former Vice President of the Tom Peters Company, Steve is the President of Extreme Leadership, Inc., and founder of The Extreme Leadership Institute - organizations devoted to the cultivation and development of extreme leaders around the world. His accessible, deeply inspirational, and eminently practical Radical LEAP framework is widely used across the business, non-profit and education spectrum. Farber has been credited with redefining leadership in deeply personal yet practical terms - and re-energizing thousands of people to make a significant difference in their businesses, lives, and the world around them.
Steve is author of his upcoming book Love is Just Damn Good Business (McGraw-Hill Education; 1 edition - September 6, 2019). His third book, Greater Than Yourself, was a Wall Street Journal® and USA Today® best-seller. His second book, The Radical Edge, was hailed as “a playbook for harnessing the power of the human spirit.” And his first book, The Radical Leap, is already considered a classic in the leadership field. It received Fast Company Magazine’s Readers’ Choice Award - and was recently named "one of the 100 Best Business Books of All Time." His column, The Extreme Leadership Chronicles, runs frequently on Inc.com.
Organizations hire Steve to:
- Deliver practical, inspiring and entertaining keynote speeches
- Embed the practices of Extreme Leadership in the DNA of the organization
- Provide significant on-going leadership learning and development
- Create and amplify deep employee engagement
- Work personally with executives or teams as an Advisor, Coach, Guide & Confidant
Steve has worked with Johns Hopkins, Cisco, Intel, TriNet, Hyatt - and hundreds of other organizations large and small. He has spoken to or worked with virtually every industry there is - from the tech sector to financial services, manufacturing, health care, hospitality, entertainment, public education, retail, and government.
Topics
What Steve Farber Talks About:
Extreme Leadership – Your Radical Leap Forward at Work and Beyond
Based on The Radical Leap, which was named as one of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.
In this chaotic and extreme age, business leaders must demonstrate an unprecedented level of passion, determination, foresight, dedication and fearlessness. In this wildly popular speech, Steve Farber shows you how to use the LEAP framework – Love, Energy, Audacity and Proof – to radically improve your organization and your life.
In this energetic and insightful program, you will discover how to:
- Inspire yourself and others to achieve extraordinary results
- Earn your customers’ and employees’ love and loyalty
- Engage yourself and others – even in troubled or transitional times
(Ideal audience: current, next generation and high potential managers and leaders at all organizational levels)
Extreme Leadership from the C-Suite – Creating a Culture of Leadership at Every Level
C-Suite executives have a unique leadership challenge: they live under a microscope; people watch everything they do. So much so that their decisions, actions, behaviors and communications have a direct effect on the entire culture of the organization. That’s the good news. And, of course, it can also be the bad news.
There are two sure-fire ways to change an organization’s culture. One, do nothing. And, two, do anything. That’s the very nature of a culture – it’s always evolving. For that reason, developing a good culture is like developing a good relationship – it requires constant attention and never-ending awareness from the C-Suite on down.
In Extreme Leadership From the C-Suite, Farber draws on his proven methodology and multi-industry experience – to help officers and executives inspire and energize the entire enterprise. The result? A corporate culture that attracts and retains the best talent, creates innovative products and services, and yields radical results.
(Ideal audience: C-Suite officers and high-level executives)
Love is Just Damn Good Business – A New Strategic Advantage for Today’s Hyper-competitive World
From the best-selling author of The Radical Leap, The Radical Edge and Greater Than Yourself comes the first keynote to directly address love as a hard-core business principle that generates measurable results.
Over the last 10 years alone, the business world has spent close to a trillion dollars on leadership development; yet, 73% of people are still disengaged in their work. 10 years ago, that number was 70%.
Something is dreadfully wrong.
Steve Farber has learned that the solution is to do something more radical, something extreme:
Operationalize love as a core business practice
To be clear, this isn’t about group hugs in the elevator. This isn’t about love as a sentiment; it’s about love as a discipline, as a practice.
When love is part of an organization’s framework and operationalized in its culture, employees and customers feel genuinely valued. Employees who are passionate about the work that they do are more loyal, innovative, creative, and inspired – and that translates to great customer experience. They don’t serve others out of obligation, but because of a genuine desire to improve people’s lives. And when customers reciprocate by loving your products, your services, and your people – that’s when something great happens. That’s when you get loyalty. That’s when you get raving fans, and that’s where the money comes from. It’s a refreshingly human way of doing business.
Drawing on his work with a wide variety of companies – from the Fortune 100 to smaller, entrepreneurial ventures – renowned leadership expert Steve Farber shows you proven strategies, shares inspiring case studies and teaches practical steps on how to build a corporate culture that operationalizes love as a significant competitive advantage.
(Ideal audience: current, next generation, and high potential managers and leaders at all organizational levels)
Greater than Yourself – The New Gold Standard for Mentoring and Talent Development
The greatest leaders become so by causing others to be greater than themselves. In this program – based on his Wall Street Journal best-seller, Greater Than Yourself – Farber shows that dedicating yourself to bringing others along so that they can achieve more than you is the ultimate way to boost talent, ramp productivity, and create truly significant current and future leaders. You will be challenged to aspire to the new gold standard in leadership with a powerful, three-step method:
- Expand Yourself – deepen and expand your personal capabilities
- Give Yourself – share your knowledge, network, and experience to help others grow
- Replicate Yourself – create a culture of coaching and mentorship
(Ideal audience: current, next generation and high potential managers and leaders at all organizational levels)
The Personal Side of Innovation – Managing Risk from the Inside Out
Every business book will tell you that it’s important to take risks and learn from your mistakes. But intellectual understanding of that truth usually isn’t enough to compel people to act, to try – to make the leap necessary for creating innovative products or services. In this interactive keynote session, Farber teaches a new perspective on what it means to try, fail, learn from mistakes – and then succeed in the end.
Participants will:
- Increase their personal capacity for risk
- View their challenges as positive adventures vs frightening obstacles
- Become more innovative in their approach to work
- Learn from mistakes and apply what they’ve learned
- Try new things more readily and enthusiastically
(Ideal audience: front-line, executive or mixed-level)
Radical Accountability – A Guide to Uncommon Achievement in Every Aspect of Life
In this provocative keynote, Steve Farber redefines the conventional meaning of the word, “accountability,” and takes you to an audacious level of leadership – by showing how a successful business, a rewarding personal life, and a world-changing legacy are not mutually exclusive ambitions.
Create remarkable legacies at work and at home by learning how to:
- Determine and clarify your personal focus as a leader
- Use a simple technique to create and bring innovative ideas to your business
- Anticipate and respond to the unspoken needs of people and markets
- Hold yourself and others to an unprecedented level of personal accountability
Leadership, ultimately, has nothing to do with the title on your business card or your position on the organizational chart. It’s about who you are and what you do to change things for the better – regardless of your “place” in the company.
(Ideal audience: front-line employees or mixed level groups)
The Extreme Leadership Jam Session – On-the-Spot Group Coaching
For over 25 years, Steve Farber’s been in the business trenches with thousands of leaders in all kinds of industries. And much of his experience has revolved around having open, honest and powerful conversations about the nature of leadership with his clients – and then helping them to apply new ideas to their specific challenges.
The Extreme Leadership Jam Session is a departure from the “speaker” norm. The audience will determine the agenda – right on the spot – according to the participant’s most pressing leadership needs and questions. This allows Farber to be a coach-in- residence and offer very specific advice and counsel in the moment.
Here’s how it works:
- Farber sets the stage and proposes a few challenging ideas to the group. He briefly defines Extreme Leadership and talks about the importance of open dialogue
- The audience – which could be as small as 10 people or as large as several thousand – forms into small groups, has a quick discussion according to Farber’s guidelines and then generates One Important Question about leadership as it relates to their current needs
- Farber fields the questions (as many as possible giving the amount of available time and the size of the group), and, when appropriate, facilitates a discussion with the entire audience
- And away we go! Learning about the Extreme Leadership actions that people need to take right now
(Ideal audience: front-line employees or mixed level groups. Often used as a breakout session following a keynote presentation)
Recent Publications
Steve helps us remember why we are here and the difference we each can make. Thank you for not only bringing your energy and passion to the session - but also for working with us ahead of time to understand what was really critical for this group. You listened on all fronts, and you delivered as you always do.