Shawn Achor

Harvard Researcher and Positive Psychology Expert

Expert on

  • Innovation
  • Change
  • Employees / Workforce
  • Psychology
  • Leadership
  • Performance Improvement

Fee Range

$40,000–$60,000

Travels from

MA, US

Biography

Shawn Achor is the winner of over a dozen distinguished teaching awards at Harvard University, where he delivered lectures in the most popular class at Harvard.

In 2009 alone, Shawn was invited to lecture in 36 different countries on how positive psychology can raise happiness and performance. His work received attention in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes and BusinessWeek.

Shawn graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and earned a Masters from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics. In 2006, he served as Head Teaching Fellow with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar of “Positive Psychology,” a class that enrolled 1 out of every 7 Harvard undergraduates.

For seven years, Shawn served as an Officer of Harvard, living in Harvard Yard studying and counseling Harvard students. Shawn now travels around the world giving talks on this research. When the economy collapsed, the world’s largest banks sent Shawn on a tour of banking crisis centers to restore confidence and forward progress.

He has worked with doctors in Dubai, farmers in Zimbabwe, CEOs in Hong Kong and students in South Africa. Shawn is currently collaborating with Yale University on researching the link between happiness and performance and his most recent book on his research and travels is entitled The Happiness Advantage: How Positive Brains Raise Performance.

Client Testimonials:

“Shawn’s message was refreshing and fun; he made a significant impact in building a more positive workplace culture in our organization. His words impacted people at all levels of our organization and many of us are still talking about his message months later. It was a terrific day for our employees.”

Grand View College, Iowa

“The happiness seminar was outstanding. The speaker was articulate, informative and entertaining. A follow-up presentation would be highly recommended. You know that a presentation is good when the entire audience is still attentive even though you have crossed into lunch.”

Teacher, West Morris Public School District, New Jersey

Speaker Videos

THE HAPPINESS ADVANTAGE: LINKING POSITIVE BRAINS TO PERFORMANCE

Most companies and schools follow this formula: if you work harder, you will be more successful, and then you will be happy. This formula is scientifically backward. A decade of research shows that training your brain to be positive at work first actually fuels greater success second. In fact, 75% of our job success is predicted not by intelligence, but by your optimism, social support network and the ability to manage energy and stress in a positive way. By researching top performers at Harvard, the world’s largest banks, and Fortune 500 companies, Shawn discovered patterns which create a happiness advantage for positive outliers-the highest performers at the company. Based on his new book, The Happiness Advantage (September 2010 from Random House), Shawn explains what positive psychology is, how much we can change, and practical applications for reaping the Happiness Advantage in the midst of change and challenge.

BIG POTENTIAL: HOW TRANSFORMING THE PURSUIT OF SUCCESS RAISES OUR ACHIEVEMENT, HAPPINESS, AND WELL-B

Until now, we’ve been taught that to be successful, we must better ourselves and rise above others. The pursuit of fulfilling our potential has been individual and isolated.  Research now clearly shows that this self-focused approach to achievement puts a cap on our happiness and success. It is only by pursuing potential in an interconnected way that we are able to achieve the heights of our potential in business and education. Only by making others better as we grow, can we see what we are truly capable of.  Based on Shawn’s research, new findings using Big Data revealing the ripple effect of our actions, and his work in 50 countries, he outlines a five stage strategy for achieving interconnected success and how to apply them to your work and home life for greater energy, productivity, and success.

POSITIVE GENIUS: THE KEY TO RAISING SUCCESS, SPREADING HAPPINESS, AND SUSTAINING POSITIVE CHANGE

What is more important than IQ and emotional intelligence combined? Based on the research in Before Happiness, Shawn Achor takes us to the beginning of human potential to explain why some people are able to make great changes while others remain the same. Before you can make a change at work or home, your brain first constructs a picture of reality; this mental picture already determines your likelihood of success and your ability to harness your brain’s IQ, emotional and social intelligence. In this exciting talk, Shawn takes the audience to the cutting edge of positive psychology and neuroscience to clearly demonstrate how one can become a “positive genius”: one who can continually architect successful, positive realities based upon true facts then transfer those realities to others. Using his signature humor, new case studies and interactive experiments that engage the audience, Shawn makes this research come alive. Shawn illuminates new research he did in collaboration with Yale published in the top psychology journal this year showing step by step how a leader can change their mindset about stress to increase productivity by 30% and lower health problems and fatigue by 23%. Audiences leave with five clear, practical takeaways, which can immediately start to transform their life, raising both happiness and success rates. In this program, participants will learn how to navigate multiple realities at work, cancel internal and external noise, add vantage points to planning, use success accelerants to speed goal completion and use meaning markers to spread positive genius throughout a team, family and an entire organization.

POSITIVE LEADERSHIP: RESTORING A CULTURE OF CONFIDENCE

Confidence, trust and job satisfaction are at historic lows. When the economic collapse began, the world’s largest banks called in Shawn Achor to research how to restore confidence and forward progress. While many managers succumb to helplessness, with their teams and clients quickly following suit, Shawn researched those who maintained high levels of success and leadership during the challenge. He found that our brains create confidence based on the belief that our behavior matters to the outcome we desire. To develop this trust, we must create “wins” for our brain necessary to overcome learned helplessness and must train our brains for rational optimism. Based on the science of positive psychology and case studies of working with companies in the midst of an economic collapse, Shawn provides practical applications for raising the belief that individual behavior matters and helping leaders to keep teams motivated and engaged.