John Canfield

John Canfield is an experienced business executive and coach who has successfully implemented planning, improvement, and innovation processes in a wide variety of teams, organizations, industries, and cultures.

John has 30+ years of experience speaking to a wide variety of audiences, from large conventions to executive board rooms. John has spoken to more than one thousand audiences around the world.

The core of John’s work is around Leadership Development, and specifically Collaboration Skills. There are few (any?) other leadership speakers or authors who support collaboration skills the way John does.

The big difference in John’s work is helping company leaders learn how to work with conflict constructively. John teaches audiences to think of conflict as a manageable and a surprisingly desirable advantage. When conflict is thought of as an indication that options are present, and not just nasty interpersonal skirmishes, leaders then can learn to manage the options available when conflict exists. Having options is a good thing. Learning to work with options impersonally and deliberately can help teams actively work to eliminate their frequent dysfunction. Without collaboration, someone often “wins”, while others “lose”. With productive collaboration, the best ideas win.

John’s four-part Good Thinking Series (available on Amazon) presents solid strategies and tools to improve an organization’s performance by deliberately supporting more effective thinking with all leaders and employees. Topics include collaboration skills, problem solving, creative thinking skills, strategic planning, and scenario planning.

Presentation sites in recent years include Albuquerque, Ann Arbor, Boston, Brunei, Chicago, Fort Worth, Frankfurt, Ghana, Hong Kong, Houston, Indianapolis, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Malta, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Shanghai, Singapore, Toronto, and Washington DC.

John has earned a B.S. in Mechanical & Industrial Engineering from the University of Minnesota and a B.A. in Political Science and Psychology from Williams College. Prior to 1990 John was a Senior Engineering Manager for Intel Corporation and later Director of Corporate Quality and Design Research for Herman Miller.