NSB Logo Jim Reid Jim Reid

Jim Reid

Speaker

Toronto, ON, Canada

HR Executive & Author: Leading to Greatness

Jim Reid knows what it takes to build a high-performing culture and successfully lead organizations through tremendous growth. An accomplished executive and trusted advisor to six CEOs, Jim has navigated significant change and immense pressure to build winning teams that outperform competitors. He has coached, advised and developed thousands of aspiring leaders who have gone on to deliver extraordinary results and to make the world an even better place. 

Keynote Speeches

Leading to Greatness: 5 Principles to Transform Your Leadership and Build Great Teams

The most successful leaders think and act differently:

  1. They are values and purpose driven
  2. They play to their strengths and passion every day – and never deviate
  3. They make their signature qualities as a leader making the ‘right’ people decisions
  4. They are engaged, and build engaged teams
  5. They are disciplined

This keynote provides leaders with a playbook and development plan to take their leadership to the next level and their team to higher levels of performance. Higher performance in life is a choice, and Jim Reid will lay out a path to transform your impact at work and in life.

Key Takeaways

  • Understand what the best research and observation of the most talented leaders say about how to take your leadership to the next level
  • Identify 1-3 actions that can have immediate impact on your personal leadership at work and in life
  • Receive a coaching guide that provides practical tips and frameworks to help you build a personal playbook to improve your impact
  • Understand the 5 key elements of a high performing team, and map out a plan to strengthen your team to drive higher impact
Building Culture One Team at a Time

As leaders, we get tested. Our teams get tested, we are all looking for ways to do things better. To win in the market. To outperform. The team is the ultimate performance unit of any organization, and the magic of getting any organization, department or group of people to outperform is rooted in teamwork. A high performance team is characterized by the deep level of commitment team members have for one another. It requires the right people operating in the right environment with trust, psychological safety, a mission focus that is adaptable and disciplined. The building blocks for culture are teams. And culture gets strengthened one team at a time.

Key Takeaways

  • Building high-performance teams requires people to develop a level of commitment to their fellow team members that rivals the ones they have with their strongest relationships in life—their partners, best friends and families.
  • Putting together a high-performing team depends on two things: finding the right people and creating the right environment, where people feel valued and respected, for the team to flourish. When leaders are clear about what they believe and where they are going and why, it’s much easier to find the right people.
  • To build a high trust, high-performing team, the very best leaders have a framework they use to develop the team.
  • Dave Ulrich’s research suggests that the two primary roles of the leader are to create customer value and shape a winning culture.
  • At the organizational level, strong cultures are built one team at a time.
  • The value chain for building a high-performance organization begins with culture.
Leading Through a Crisis

A crisis tests a leader’s grit, strength, determination and purpose. It tests the leader’s ability to support their team, who are often under duress.

Coming out the other side of this kind of challenge requires skillful communication and compassion in order to connect with people at a human level. How leaders respond to crises goes a long way to determining their future and the culture of their organization. Although the best leaders don’t welcome a crisis any more than the next person, when they do come (because crises are inevitable) the +5 Leader responds with humility and grit, and clear purpose and action.

Key Takeaways

  • In facing a crisis, in the words of Admiral Stockdale, “You must never ever confuse, on the one
    hand, the need for absolute, unwavering faith that you can prevail in the end—with the need for
    the discipline to confront the brutal facts, whatever they are.
  • When you are experiencing a personal crisis, ask for help and support. The same goes for the
    workplace. Never ever feel you cannot ask for help.
  • How leaders respond to crises goes a long way to determining their future and the culture of
    their organization. Although +5 leaders don’t welcome crises any more than the next person,
    when they do come (because crises are inevitable) they respond with humility and grit, and clear
    purpose and action.
  • To follow a leader in a crisis, people need to trust that their leaders have their best interests at
    heart, and that there is a path forward they believe will get them to a better place. As the leader,
    you need a crisis playbook to be prepared for what can suddenly erupt in front of you.
  • No one playbook can cover every eventuality. You will be called up to be adaptable, innovative
    and creative. You can build this mindset through education. Building this mindset in your team is
    perhaps the most precious activity you can undertake.
Driving Successful Change

To truly understand how change succeeds, we first need to understand why change fails and that there is a framework for successful change. Change is less about strategy, and more about attitude and mindset. But by following a disciplined framework of 8 Stages you stack the odds in your favour for success.

The best research has also taught us that when faced with change, the first question is not ‘what to change’ – rather the first question is ‘what not to change’. This paradox of change provides an architecture for success, and a framework to ensure you change the right things, and keep the other key elements of success constant.

Key Takeaways

  • The world is moving too fast for leaders or an organization to think that the status quo is good
    enough. You either move forward and adapt or run the risk of being left behind. Virtually every
    leader will confront the prospect of wrenching change over their business lives, and how they
    manage it will largely define their careers.
  • No one is immune from change. Everyone can prepare a plan for adaptation, even
    transformation.
  • Communication is critical. But in times of change, it is even more critical to success. Think of
    increasing the pace and volume of communication by a factor of 10x as this will help stabilize those
    impacted by the change and keep them focused on what is most important.
  • Finally, people will only go along with the change if they feel heard and they feel safe. And, if they
    feel that the future will get them personally to a better place, it will again make them more likely to
    go along with change.
Leadership & The Great Resignation

Coming out of the pandemic, people are tired. And the tolerance for dealing with all of life’s challenges is at an all time low. As a result, many companies are seeing voluntary resignations rise dramatically, and leaders are scrambling to retain their best people.

When an organization cares for its people, people will care about their organization. By caring for people, we mean having people’s wellbeing, personal growth, career development and rewards and recognition baked into the culture.

Leadership is about empowering people, not over managing them. And while empowerment has become a bit of a buzzword, it perfectly encapsulates the modern, progressive leader. People not only want to grow, they need to grow and becoming a proficient coach is an essential building block of becoming a great leader.

Key Takeaways

  • To create a coaching culture within an organization requires developing a culture that is psychologically
    safe and committed to learning. The Association of Talent Development defines a coaching culture as
    meeting at least five of the following six criteria:
    • proof that employees value coaching
    • proof that senior executives value coaching
    • the organization has a dedicated line item budget for coaching
    • coaching is available to all employees
    • managers, leaders, and internal coaches receive accredited coach-specific training
    • coaching modalities for internal coach practitioners, external coach practitioners and managers
      or leaders using coaching skills are present in the organization
  • Coaching is no different than any other task or skill. It needs to be structured and systematic and
    built around a coaching framework.
  • Coaching is not about the answers you give, but rather it is about the questions you ask. The
    ultimate objective is to build ownership for the outcome in the person you are coaching.
  • Creating a coaching culture that gets fully behind the development of people and teams may be the
    single biggest decision you can make as a leader to drive high performance. The world is changing,
    and the demographic changes alone will result in millennials and Gen Z making up over 80 percent
    of the workforce in five years. And they will demand leaders who are skilled as coaches.
  • And the leaders who embrace coaching will see lower turnover and better team performance.

Audience reviews:

  • Jim exceeded my expectations. I was keen to attend this event due to knowing how engaging & thought-provoking he is, and he certainly delivered -
  • I really feel that I got a lot of good information out of these sessions - Jim is a great speaker -
  • Great speaker. Concise messaging and practical take always -

Speaker Biography

An accomplished executive and trusted advisor to six CEOs, Jim Reid has navigated significant change and immense pressure to build winning teams that outperform competitors. He has coached, advised and developed thousands of aspiring leaders who have gone on to deliver extraordinary results and to make the world an even better place. Originally trained as a military pilot, Jim built his expertise working alongside some of the best thinkers on leadership including Jim Collins, Jeffrey Pfeffer, John Kotter and Dave Ulrich.

Recognized in 2022 with the OC Tanner Award for Lifetime Achievement in Human Resources, and in 2021 as one of the 50 Best Executives in Canada by ROB Magazine, he brings credibility, insight and integrity to shape a framework for leadership based on five timeless principles that if understood and lived, are almost guaranteed to get you to a better place in your life. Jim’s new book, Leading to Greatness: 5 Principles to Transform Your Leadership and Build Great Teams, contains five core leadership principles for top-level executives who—after applying the principles—will be primed to take their organizations and teams successfully into the future.

“Jim Reid has dedicated his life’s work to coaching and developing leaders, and to being a leader himself, at high levels of organizations. What most impresses me is his unquenchable drive to learn and to apply his accumulated wisdom to help leaders become both more humane and more effective. He is a true artist of the leadership development craft.”

—Jim Collins

Jim Reid believes in Building Culture One Team at a Time: As leaders, we get tested. Our teams get tested, we are all looking for ways to do things better. To win in the market. To outperform. The team is the ultimate performance unit of any organization, and the magic of getting any organization, department or group of people to outperform is rooted in teamwork. A high performance team is characterized by the deep level of commitment team members have for one another. It requires the right people operating in the right environment with trust, psychological safety, a mission focus that is adaptable and disciplined. The building blocks for culture are teams. And culture gets strengthened one team at a time. 

Today, Jim splits his time between Toronto and Muskoka Canada with his wife Pattie, their children and growing group of grandchildren.