AGL 145: Respectful Leadership with Gregg Ward

About Gregg

Gregg Ward is the CEO of the Gregg Ward Group, a management consulting, training and coaching firm that focuses on helping leaders develop their Respectful Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, and Executive Presence skills. For over 25 years, Gregg has worked with Fortune 100 and 500 organizations around the world to inspire respect and leadership, emphasizing the measurable, bottom-line benefits they bring to leaders and their The Respectful Leaderorganizations. Gregg is also the Founder & Executive Director of the non-profit Center for Respectful Leadership.

After graduating from Boston University and working as a theatre professional around the U.S., Gregg started his career in the 1980s as a specialist trainer for the New York City Police Department. Collaborating with a team of experts, he developed a powerful experiential learning program for police officers based on Live Theatre Training techniques and the performance, improv, and facilitation skills that Gregg was incorporating into his onstage performances. This program was considered a huge success by NYPD’s leadership, and was featured in major media including The New York Times and CNN.

Since then, Gregg has developed, delivered, and facilitated thousands of keynote addresses, experiential learning programs, and executive coaching sessions for a wide range of global clients including ADP, Booz Allen Hamilton, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Harley-Davidson, InterContinental Hotels Group, Kaiser Permanente, Kraft Foods, Novartis, Qualcomm, Raytheon, Siemens, the University of California, the US Navy, and Warner Brothers Studios.

A former journalist on assignment throughout Europe for BBC Radio, Scotland on Sunday, and other UK media, Gregg is also the author of the best-selling, award-winning business book The Respectful Leader.


Today we talked about

  • Gregg’s history
  • Coaching and Leadership
  • Respect in Leadership
  • You don’t have to be nice to be respectful
  • Respect is the golden rule working with the platinum rule
  • Feedback
  • One-on-Ones
  • Take care of the person, but deliver the feedback in a way that addresses the problem, not the person
  • Handling Defensiveness
  • Respectful Remarks
  • Acknowledge Reality
  • “I wouldn’t be doing my job if…”
  • Contrasting comparison
  • Reptilian brain
  • Brain Chemicals
  • We are not thinking beings with emotions… we are emotional beings who think
  • Self-awareness

Connect with Gregg


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