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Merrick Rosenberg
Entrepreneur & Leading Expert on How Personality Drives Behavior & Success
Merrick Rosenberg
Entrepreneur & Leading Expert on How Personality Drives Behavior & Success
Biography
Merrick Rosenberg is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and the leading expert on how personality drives behavior and success. He co-founded Team Builders Plus in 1991 and Take Flight Learning in 2012. He is the author of four award-winning books about tapping into the power of your personality: The Chameleon, Taking Flight!, Personality Wins, and Which Bird Are You?.
In Merrick’s first job out of college, he worked as a management consultant. He quickly realized that you can change the process, but nothing great happens in a dysfunctional work environment. So, back to school he went to earn an M.B.A. specializing in Organizational Development. While working on his degree, he discovered team building and he was hooked. The day after he graduated, he started Team Builders Plus, one of the first team building companies in the United States.
As he began leading team building events, it became clear that personality conflicts significantly impacted team dynamics. He discovered the DISC styles in 1994 and began leading training programs to help people understand themselves and enable them to create an engaging culture.
It was at this point that he began to innovate the personality styles world. By infusing team building activities into DISC training programs, he made the training more interactive and he brought the styles to life. But he felt that this was not enough, and the styles could have an even greater impact…if people could only remember them.
In 2012, Merrick reinvented the DISC world by swapping out the classic letters for more visual and memorable birds that symbolized the styles. In his first book, Taking Flight!, he introduced the Eagle, Parrot, Dove and Owl styles and he changed the entire industry.
With the vision to reinvent how people learn about themselves, build better relationships, and create positive work environments, Merrick founded Take Flight Learning where he certifies trainers around the world to deliver the content he and his team create. Merrick now spends his time writing, speaking, and advancing the world of increasing self-awareness and improving team dynamics by tapping into the power of the four styles.
Merrick has worked with more than half of the Fortune 100 companies and has reached more than 100,000 people around the world through his speaking engagements. He has been named the CEO of the Year for New Jersey, and his company, Take Flight Learning, has been selected as the New Jersey Business of the Year, one of the Best Places to Work, and one of the Fastest Growing Companies in the Philadelphia area.
Merrick is a sought-after media guest on television, radio, and podcasts. He has shared his personality wisdom on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, SiriusXM, iHeart Radio, and Radio Disney. Merrick has been interviewed by: New York Times, Fast Company, Inc. magazine, Fortune, HuffPost, Forbes, Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Parents, and Glamour.
In addition to speaking at conferences and events for companies, Merrick has spoken to groups, such as: TEDx, Association for Talent Development, Society for Human Resource Management, Project Management Institute, International Society for Performance Improvement, DisruptHR, Employers Council, American Society for Quality, Vistage International, President’s Club, Pharma Forum, and Young Associates.
Merrick has worked with people at all levels, from line staff to senior managers in the U.S. and abroad. Some of his clients include: AAA, Adidas, Alstom Power, Aramark, Bank of America, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Campbell Soup Company, Colgate Palmolive, Comcast, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, GlaxoSmithKline, Hewlett-Packard, InterContinental Hotels Group, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oreal, Lockheed Martin, Lufthansa, Nabisco, NBCUniversal, Nestle Purina, Novartis, PECO Energy, Pepsi, Philadelphia Eagles, Reliance Standard Life, Roche, Samaritan Hospice, Temple University, UnitedHealthcare, and Verizon. Merrick has also worked with government agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Interpol, the Social Security Administration, and the U.S. Forest Service, as well as the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.
Merrick earned a B.A in Political Communications from George Washington University and an MBA from Drexel University, which selected Merrick as its Entrepreneur of the Year. Look for Merrick on news and talk shows discussing how personality plays out in our relationships, careers, and presidential elections.
Speaker Videos
A Keynote Speaker with Personality
What If Everything You Know About Personality Styles Training is Wrong
Speech Topics
The Personality of Success
Merrick Rosenberg guides audience members to discover the most interesting topic of all - themselves! Using his reimagined version of how people learn about personality, Merrick teaches people how to tap into the power of their personality to build stronger relationships and get results. In Merrick’s relatable way of linking who we are to Eagles, Parrots, Doves, and Owls, you will see yourself in his stories. This often humorous and always insightful talk will teach you how to instantly read and connect with others. Instead of reflexively imposing your personality on the people in your life, you will gain the skills to anticipate what people needs and adapt with chameleon-like flexibility. From the insights gained in this talk, you will become a stronger communicator, a more impactful team member, and a better leader.
Key takeaways:
- Discover why we click with some and clank with others
- Learn how to communicate with and influence anyone in any situation
- Reveal the key ingredients to creating an engaging, innovative and productive work environment
- Gain the emotional intelligence to tap into your core strengths rather than overuse them and turn them into weaknesses
- Learn how to harness the power of diverse styles to build a strong and connected team
Leading with Personality
Your personality either drives your effectiveness or steers you off-track. If you’re like most people, it’s a little of both. You’ll explore whether you create an environment in which only someone with your personality thrives or one in which each of your team members feels valued, respected, and engaged. Do you communicate in your style, or do you meet the needs of your people? Do you give feedback in the way you’d like to hear it, or do you deliver it in the way your team members need to hear it?
You will develop chameleon-like flexibility to motivate your people by unleashing each team member’s natural gifts. You will learn how to adapt to your people instead of making them flex to you. This session will help you become a leader that people will follow anywhere.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Reimagine leadership as an adaptive process that engages every team member
- Create an enduring culture that grows committed and effective teams
- Advance core leadership skills, such as communication, vision, delegating work, and providing feedback
- Improve results by tapping into the power of your innate personality
- Create a career trajectory based not only on what you do, but also who you are
Creating Culture with Personality
Organizations spend time, money, and energy on an array of behavioral assessments and training. But does it make a difference? Discover why these sessions get rave reviews, yet overwhelmingly fail to create a lasting impact. You will learn how to infuse personality into your culture and transform the way people work together and lead others.
From meaningless alphabet soup to the training methodology itself, we will deconstruct today’s current model and reinvent a new one for the future. Instead of styles and types that reside in short-term memory and create only momentary ahas!, this session reveals a brain-friendly approach to rewire your employees so the styles trigger at the exact moment they are needed. Reimagine how you can drive engagement with personality.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Bridge the gap between personality assessment and culture change
- Turn self-awareness into long-term application, not short-term fascination
- Utilize the personality styles as a catalyst for cultural revolution
- Unleash a new way to create an attractive culture that inspires commitment and inclusiveness
- Heighten organizational emotional intelligence
Personality as a Sales Advantage
Sales are won and lost for a variety of reasons, but few sales professionals are self-aware enough to realize that their own personality is impacting their effectiveness. Most salespeople sell how they like to buy. If you need details to make a buying decision, you probably provide a lot of details to your prospects. If you like a salesperson who cuts through the clutter and advances quickly to the bottom line, you likely do the same. But what if your prospects aren’t anything like you? Rather than imposing your selling style on others, discover how to infuse personality into everything you do. From building rapport to closing the deal and beyond, adaptability can be the greatest weapon in your sales arsenal. Develop chameleon-like flexibility and transform your sales in a way you never dreamed possible!
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Reimagine each phase of the sales process to instantly connect to any prospect
- Uncover how your selling style is working against you in unimagined ways
- More deeply resonate with your customers to engender loyalty and increase sales
- Creatively unleash the power of your personality into many aspects of the selling process, such as team selling, pitching to a diverse group of styles, and flexing to a company’s culture
- Rejuvenate your approach with prospects you find difficult to close
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