Professional Development Archives - Jeff Havens | Keynote Speaker | Leadership Keynote Speaker

What Story Are You Telling Yourself About Aging?

Jeff Havens — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 15:41:45 +0000

This month I read a news article about aging that I found interesting enough to want to share. Long story short, an increasing body of research suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, it is actually possible to improve both physically and mentally as we age into our 60s, 70s, and 80s. There are a lot…

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How to Negotiate Like a Child

Jeff Havens — Wed, 06 May 2026 13:08:51 +0000

In case you didn’t already know, children are the pinnacle of negotiation. World leaders, hostage negotiators, and VC folks have absolutely nothing on your average 3-year-old. What makes kids such crack negotiators? A few simple techniques. Ask For Everything Kids don’t just ask for what they want. They also ask for everything else they can…

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How to Improve Your Professional Relationships

Jeff Havens — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:19:15 +0000

Over the years I’ve developed several different keynote presentations on a variety of topics. And over the years, those presentations have changed and evolved so much that the current versions look very different from the original versions. But one piece of information that has remained consistent in my “Unleash Your Inner Tyrant” leadership presentation involves…

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How to Handle Difficult Changes

Jeff Havens — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 18:00:33 +0000

Sometimes life doesn’t turn out the way we expect it to. At least, that’s the phrase we use, which is at least a little dramatic. Life? Like, all of it, the entirety of our existence, just somehow went entirely the opposite direction from what we wanted? That’s probably not the case. What’s actually happening is…

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Why You Should Ask Dumb Questions

Jeff Havens — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 19:46:24 +0000

Recently my 8-year-old son came home from school and asked me if I knew how many uses for the peanut George Washington Carver had discovered. After silently thanking his teachers for encouraging his love of random information, I admitted that all I knew was that it was a lot. “More than 300,” he told me…

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How to Think Productively About Luck

Jeff Havens — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 17:09:01 +0000

In almost everything we accomplish in life, there are three contributing factors to our success – the work we put into achieving the thing, the intelligence and creativity we apply in pursuit of our goal, and the blind fortune of dumb luck. Most of us spend most of our time thinking about how to improve…

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What Does the Future of Work Look Like?

Jeff Havens — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:53:02 +0000

People are always trying to predict what the world is going to be like in the future. Doing so sometimes involves imagining how current trends might affect the cost of doing business a few years from now, or how new and emerging technologies will impact the way we work and interact with our colleagues and…

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The Two Essential Types of Marketing

Jeff Havens — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 14:13:37 +0000

Marketing. The very word has the potential to send shivers down the spine. Most of us just want to do whatever it is we do, not spend our lives telling people about it. And yes, I’m saying this despite the reality of social media, which is almost exclusively people telling other people about the stuff…

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What Is the Most Effective Type of Communication?

Jeff Havens — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 14:03:21 +0000

Since the title of this article is slightly ambiguous, let me elaborate. If your question is, “What’s the best way to win an argument – loud angry shouting, or calm reasoned discourse?” then I can answer that right now. Do the latter. Problem solved. But what we’re talking about here is the method by which…

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What Does “Good” Constructive Feedback Look Like?

Jeff Havens — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 20:27:32 +0000

So, the people you work with and employ could stand to improve in various ways. That fair, since it’s true about all of us. But talking to people about the mistakes they make or the ways they might improve is a delicate and often difficult task. So here we’re going to discuss how to provide…

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