Tommy Spaulding

Biography

Tommy Spaulding is president of the Spaulding Companies LLC, a national leadership development, speaking, training, consulting, and executive coaching organization. A world-renowned speaker on leadership, Spaulding has spoken to hundreds of organizations, associations, schools, and corporations around the globe. His new book, It's Not Just Who You Know (Transform Your Life and Your Organization by Turning Colleagues and Contacts into Lasting, Genuine Relationships) , published by Random House in the Fall of 2010, is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today national bestseller.

Spaulding rose to become the youngest president and CEO of the world-renowned leadership organization, Up with People (2005-2008). In 2000, Tommy Spaulding founded Leader's Challenge, which grew to become the largest high school civic and leadership program in the state of Colorado. He is also the founder & president of the Spaulding Leadership Institute, a non-profit leadership development organization which runs the National Leadership Academy, a national high school summer leadership academy, as well as Kid's Challenge, Global Challenge and Colorado Close-Up.

Previously, Spaulding was the Business Partner Sales Manager at IBM/Lotus Development and a member of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program.

Spaulding received a BA in Political Science from East Carolina University (1992); an MBA from Bond University in Australia (1998), where he was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar; and an MA in Non-Profit Management from Regis University (2005), where he was a Colorado Trust Fellow. In 2007, Spaulding received an Honorary PhD in Humanities from the Art Institute of Colorado. In 2002, he received the Denver Business Journal's "Forty under 40 Award."

In 2006, Spaulding was awarded East Carolina University's "Outstanding Alumni Award," the highest distinction awarded to an alumnus of the university. Spaulding is the Chairman of East Carolina University's External Leadership Advisory Board and is the university's first "Leader in Residence."

He and his family reside in the Denver metropolitan area.

Publications

It`s Not Just Who You Know

It is impossible to build a successful organization or career in a silo. You need authentic relationships - human connections built on trust, generosity, and the authentic desire to put others first. Most leaders recognize the importance of this relational competence. But they do not know how to translate its values into on-the-job actions and behaviors that generate measurable results. As a consequence, their organizations suffer from an undercurrent of cynicism, unhappiness, distrust, and underperformance. And their careers leave them unfulfilled.

In It`s Not Just Who You Know, leadership-development expert Tommy Spaulding provides a roadmap for addressing these challenges. He shows how investing in the lives of others benefits not only the recipient but also the giver - enriching leaders lives as well as their companies' bottom lines.

Titles

The Give/Get Principle: Relationships are the currency of the modern economy
In this keynote presentation, Spaulding shows how both profits and relationships are essential for building successful companies. Yet most people treat workplace relationships as transactional - "What can you give me for what I can give you?" Relationships begin and end with transactions, making them lifeless and hollow. Result? Lifeless and hollow organizations.

Customer Service Essentials: Putting the customer first - and meaning it
Giving unconditionally always benefits the giver - personally and professionally. And the more we practice this principle, the deeper we embed it in our organizations' culture. In this keynote address, Spaulding explains how a selfless attitude in the workplace can - and should - extend to a company's customers and clients.

When leaders and employees genuinely put customers first, they earn their respect, their love, and eventually their loyal business. That translates into a healthier bottom line in the form of lower customer acquisition and retention costs and higher revenues. Spaulding teaches his audiences how to transform customer service from a mandated "program" or "department" into an integral part of everyone's job in the organization.

What Corporations Can Learn from Non-Profits: Building a culture of giving to improve the bottom line
Drawing on his long track record of success in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors, Spaulding discusses what it takes to create a meaningful and profitable corporate culture in the 21st century. To drive transformational change inside an organization, leaders and employees must shift their focus outward to other people and to the community.

Message to Young People: Tap the Power of Authentic Relationships
Spaulding has been the keynote speaker at dozens of high school and college graduations and has presented to hundreds of youth organizations around the world. His powerful, personal stories about how he has overcome obstacles and his message of servant leadership have captured the imaginations of the young people in his audiences and inspired them to make their own contribution in the world.

Spaulding has long tapped the power of relationships not only to surmount personal challenges but also to help young people from all walks of life achieve new heights of success. His childhood dream was to go to law school and become governor of New York. But after struggling in high school with dyslexia, he was advised by his high-school guidance counselor to attend a trade school and forgo higher education. Undaunted, he completed a degree at East Carolina University and then applied to 37 law schools - only to be rejected by all of them.