Joe Gerstandt brings his unique perspectives and trademark energy to conferences nationwide, and facilitates training workshops for corporate and professional groups. Joe also helps organizations find successful solutions to the challenges they face by facilitating conversations and designing processes that lead them to their goals.
Joe is available to companies and organizations of any size for:
- Keynote Speaking
- Corporate Training
- Facilitation & Process Design
Joe combines artful storytelling with the latest research and science to successfully illustrate the importance of diversity and inclusion. His work is not about tolerance, sensitivity, or compliance — it’s about letting the dog off the leash.
Joe creates his workshops and presentations around four major principles that build, one upon the next, to help individuals and organizations better deliver on their promises.
Authenticity: Fly your freak flag! Joe exhibits the significance of being true to yourself; as an individual, group, team, organization, community, or nation. Welcoming authenticity allows our relationships to flourish, as we learn to appreciate the inner freak in everyone. Discover the value of awareness, honesty, and courage.
Difference: “Diversity is Difference” is a message that resonates greatly with Joe’s audiences. Resulting from authenticity, difference is a social mechanism that can undoubtedly bring tension. But, how we deal with this tension is vital to our success as individuals and as a nation. Supporting positive change, innovation, and evolution is part of what creates difference in its most valuable form. And, while many leaders and organizations realize the importance of difference, few have an understanding of the dynamics that can get in the way.
Inclusion: While difference is a property of relationships, inclusion is what we do with it. How do we respond to the difference that we’ve created? Do we allow it in? And, how do we utilize it? Our actions and reactions can shape our personal and professional networks.
Innovation: Including difference leads to innovation and, subsequently, better results in both life and business. Implementing new strategies in the way we communicate, socialize, and build communities is an increasingly significant part of creating diversity. Joe provides his audiences with innovative tools and methodologies, including: social technology and Web 2.0, appreciative inquiry, and open space. As Joe explains, “innovation is vital to capturing the potential that is generated through the inclusion of difference.”
With a passion for helping people interact differently in the world, Joe Gerstandt is dedicated to throwing out old rules and replacing them with creative new strategies that better serve today’s society. By helping his audiences remove false barriers, Joe is able to liberate the unrealized potential that exists in individuals, groups, and organizations.
Social Gravity:
Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships
Authored by Joe Gerstandt, Jason Lauritsen
“I had the privilege of spending a weekend participating in a retreat facilitated by Joe. The sessions were always interesting, entertaining, and pushed us to the next level. Joe is a dynamic and articulate speaker who does a wonderful job of helping his audience ‘connect all the dots’.”
Valda Ford
CEO, Center for Human Diversity
“You always wonder when you take time way from the office to attend a workshop if it will be worth it. Joe’s session absolutely was! It is grounded in research and interspersed with interactive and though-provoking exercises. Joe's presentation made the topic of diversity a relevant, personal, and business focused issue. This is the best content I have seen on diversity.”