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The Bellwether Effect

Stop Following. Start Inspiring!

In the more than two decades of knowing Lance, he has been my teacher, mentor, and friend. He has helped me transform organizations into great healthcare organizations and great employers. Time and again, he reminded me of the stupid things organizations do and what I should be doing instead – and he did so with love and dignity and grace. Lance is the best the world has to offer, and he has shown me how to be the inspirational leader I have always wanted to be.

Scott Regan, Strategy Consultant and Former Executive Vice President and COO, Memorial Health, Savannah, GA

Lance Secretan does it again. He takes the world as we know it and turns it upside down to give us the opportunity to actively seek to live in a world we WANT to know. Dr. Secretan leads the field in change leadership by inspiring new ways of organizational living. This book is a life-changing blueprint for how to treat others as well as ourselves. I highly recommend everyone who considers themselves a leader to read and apply the concepts and ideas so beautifully presented. Then, watch how your definition of leadership changes!

Penny Cowden, President, Philanthropy212

Lance has once again shown the world he is at the leading edge of inspiring leaders to show care, compassion and love in the workplace. That is the only way to truly inspire Team Members to do what they do best every day.

Stephen Heise, Director of Human Resources, Desert Diamond Casinos & Entertainment

Lance Secretan's latest book, The Bellwether Effect, is filled with transformational practices and a must read for leaders and HR professionals. This book is overflowing with popular organizational exercises that must be challenged and replaced by more effective approaches to help employees reach their full potential. Dr. Secretan's candid work pushes the boundaries of our thinking by inspiring us to integrate new approaches that will positively influence culture change. This is an excellent resource for human resource professionals to introduce in their organization with many chapters of notable practices that need updating and rich content on how to move forward. This is another outstanding business book written by Lance Secretan to share and discuss key principles with other leaders.

Deanna Hatmaker, Managing Director, Midwest People Development

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What is the Bellwether Effect?

In The Bellwether Effect, Dr. Secretan first proposes a theory that explains how and why leaders are attracted to, and seduced by, trendy ideas, and the process by which these ideas then become mainstream. He calls the originators of these trends, “bellwethers”, hence the book’s title. He then goes on to describe eight examples of counterproductive business practices, among them, fear-based management, motivation, separateness and silos, employee engagement surveys, performance appraisals, salary grades and pay scales, mission, vision, and values statements, and the use of war as a metaphor for business. In each case, Dr. Secretan proposes a novel and inspiring alternative that could lead to transformation and an inspiring culture.
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“This is one of those rare books that look you in the eye and touch your heart and mind. It is brilliantly simple, very pragmatic, absolutely real, and profound at the same time. This book will be a wonderful, conscientious companion to many, including me!”

Raja Rajamannar

Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Mastercard

Why Inspiration is important

Life is about relationships—with each other, and with everything around us. Every choice we make, and everyone with whom we choose to connect, is the result of our searching for a relationship that inspires. We join companies that inspire us and quit them when they no longer do so. We fall in love with people who inspire us and end the relationship when they no longer do so. We smell a flower, go to a movie, listen to our favorite music and eat at our favorite restaurants, all because we have a relationship with each of these things that inspire us. When this is no longer true, and we become uninspired, we end the relationship. We pursue inspiring relationships and we distance ourselves from uninspiring ones. This is the key to our relationships with people. It’s true in business, and it’s true in the rest of our lives.

  • People do not look forward to going to work on Monday morning. 80% 80%
  • Current employees are looking for another job. 65% 65%
  • Employees say that their boss is the most stressful part of their job. 70% 70%
  • Employees say they would take a new boss over a pay raise 65% 65%
  • Employees quit because they can’t get along with their boss. 40% 40%

Higher Ground Leadership®

Higher Ground Leadership® is the beating heart of our work at The Secretan Center Inc. Its goal is inspiration—of people, organizations, communities and the world.

It is a breakthrough leadership philosophy that seeks to transform organizations through personal development and cultural transformation.

Get Started with Higher Ground Leadership®

How a Fortune 100 Company (and a city) Created Thier Dream

Mike McCallister, Humana Inc.’s former Chairman and CEO, knew that new healthcare legislation would upend the health insurance industry, but he wasn’t certain where that might lead or how significant the changes would be. And he knew that the scale of uncertainty posed by the anticipated overhaul of America’s healthcare system would unnerve his (then) 25,000 employees and 17 million health plan members. So, with the help of The Secretan Center, he created a dream for Humana. It was so successful, he paid to create a dream for Louisville, Kentucky, the city in which their headquarters is located.
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Keynote Presentations

The Bellwether Effect

Deeply researched, highly praised and radically innovative, this presentation is a manifesto for a new movement (#thebellwethereffect) that seeks to remove long-endured and uninspiring business practices in the workplace, thus enabling us to create a clear runway for building inspiring corporate cultures.
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The Spark, the Flame, the and Torch

Forget leadership. It’s broken everywhere and unteachable. What we need instead is to be inspired. In this presentation, Lance explains how to get there.
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One: The Art and Practice of Conscious Leadership

We have become experts at motivation—a fear-based system that drives leadership theory and human resource policy, but is alienating people and wearing them out. Instead, we are all yearning to be inspired. Inspiration is the heart of every great experience in life including work.
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A Grand Theory of Corporate Vitality

This is the anti-MBA philosophy. There is much to be learned about leading great organizations from disparate fields such as movies, literature, romance, nature, science, which, carefully curated, reveals an inspiring alternative to the way we achieve high performance and inspiring organizations.
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Meet Lance Secretan

Dr. Lance Secretan is the world’s top authority on inspirational leadership, a trailblazing teacher, advisor and expert on corporate culture, whose bestselling books, inspirational talks, and life-changing retreats have touched the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. He is the author of 21 books about leadership, inspiration, corporate culture and entrepreneurship as well as an award-winning memoir, A Love Story. His latest book is The Bellwether Effect.
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