- #1 Top Ranked Millennial Workplace Expert
- 3x Author
- 1.5 Million+ TEDx Views
- 500+ Speaking Engagements for organizations like Google, Verizon, Apple, Salesforce and Facebook.
- 100+ Virtual Speaking Engagements
- 50,000+ People Reached in a single Audience
- 20+ Countries
- 100+ Media Features
Smiley Poswolsky’s Speech Topics:
Friendship in the Age of Loneliness:
After a year of social distancing and lockdown measures during the pandemic, it’s more clear than ever that our friendships and social bonds are vital to our health and happiness. Smiley helps you take care of your people and form deep connections in the digital age.
Research has shown that people with close friends are happier, healthier, and live longer than people who lack strong social bonds. But why—when we are seemingly more connected than ever before—can it feel so difficult to keep those bonds alive and well? Why do we spend only four percent of our time with friends?
Learn a new solution for the mounting pressures of modern life: focus on your friendships. Smiley offers practical habits and playful reminders on how to create meaningful connections, make new friends, and deepen relationships. He’ll help you develop a healthier relationship with technology, but he’ll also encourage you to prioritize real-world experiences, send snail mail, and engage in self-reflective exercises.
Engaging the Multigenerational Workplace: Communicating Across Generations
Millennials currently make up more than half of the workforce, but what about everyone else? There are currently five different generations working together in the workplace. How do we create an employee experience where every single employee can thrive? Millennial workplace expert Adam Smiley Poswolsky will share how companies can retain top talent and empower the talent of the future by leading with purpose. We’ll breakthrough common stereotypes about Gen-Z, Millennial, Gen-X, and Baby Boomer employees, share case studies for increasing employee engagement, and learn proven strategies and tools to increase retention and foster intergenerational collaboration in the workplace, which will help you build a purpose-driven company culture that empowers all of your employees.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Proven strategies to engage employees of all ages, as well as how to attract, retain, and empower top talent.
- The similarities and differences between what Gen-Z, Millennials, Gen-X, and Baby Boomers want in the workplace, how to communicate across generations, and ways to foster intergenerational collaboration.
- Tangible HR management tools, technologies, and examples for increasing workforce collaboration and creating a purpose-driven workplace that participants can implement on their own teams.
- Insights on navigating the future of work, building an inclusive company culture, and creating a culture of coaching, mentorship and learning.
Creating a Purpose-Driven Workplace: How to Attract, Retain, and Engage Your Employees
A thriving workplace begins with an engaged and collaborative workforce. In this inspiring presentation, bestselling author and millennial workplace expert Adam Smiley Poswolsky will share how organizations can attract top talent and empower the talent of the future by leading with purpose. Smiley will teach a practical framework that helps employees find more meaning in their work, and find alignment between their personal values and the core values of your organization. Having a shared purpose can bring your workforce closer together, and lead to increased performance and retention. Smiley will provide case studies for increasing employee engagement and managing generational differences, with proven strategies and tools to foster inter-generational collaboration in the workplace and build a purpose-driven company culture that engages all of your employees.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Proven strategies to engage employees of all ages, as well as how to attract, retain, and empower top talent.
- Learn how to find alignment between your personal values and the core values of your organization.
- Tangible HR management tools, technologies, and examples for increasing workforce collaboration and creating a purpose-driven workplace that managers can implement with their own teams.
- Insights on navigating the future of work, building an inclusive company culture, creating a community of learning and development, investing in coaching and mentorship, and how to be a Purpose-Driven Leader who can manage during times of transformation and turbulence.
The Future of Work: Engaging Millennials and Gen-Z in the Workplace
The average 20-24 year-old is staying at their job barely a year. Millennial turnover alone costs U.S. companies $30 billion a year. Despite struggling with debt, recession, and the jobs crisis, millennials (who already account for more than 50 percent of the workforce) are not motivated by money. Rather, they are driven to make the world more compassionate, innovative, and sustainable. What does the millennial mindset mean for attracting and retaining future talent? How will the rise of Gen-Z, a generation that doesn’t know a world without Smartphones, impact the future of your business? Smiley will share how meaning-hungry millennials and Gen-Z are reshaping the future of work, how companies can engage their employees, attract the next generation, make intergenerational collaboration a priority, and empower the talent and customers of the future by leading with purpose.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Develop a better understanding of the millennial mindset, and how to attract (and retain) millennial employees and customers.
- Understand Gen-Z; the youngest and most diverse generation in history, learn key differences between millennials and Gen-Z, strategies for communicating across generations, how to manage the multigenerational workforce and foster intergenerational collaboration.
- Learn how to become a Purpose-Driven Leader who helps new talent find more meaning in their jobs and build a purpose-driven career.
- Discover HR management strategies to invest in learning and development, coaching and mentorship, and become a future-focused, people-first, mission-driven company.
Belonging in a Remote Workforce: Fostering Human Connection & Community in the Age of Coronavirus
In the age of coronavirus, the necessity of remote work and social distancing have increased the lack of human connection at work. Today, only 30 percent of people report that they have a best friend at work, and 10 percent say they have zero friends in the workplace. How do we stay connected and engaged in these uncertain and challenging times? How do we foster workforce belonging as we’re spending more and more time connecting via technology and social media. How do we solve the growing loneliness epidemic in our companies and across the world?
In this inspiring presentation, author and millennial workplace expert Adam Smiley Poswolsky will share how we can increase human connection, inspire creativity, and create more belonging, by building supportive communities inside and outside of the workplace. Smiley will lead participants through an interactive alignment exercise to help them clarify how they can best show up for their colleagues (and customers) in these uncertain times, and tangible ways to make remote work feel more human and more connected. We’ll discuss how to stay engaged in the digital age, and how this time can be opportunity for learning, leadership development, and personal growth. Smiley will share practical strategies to help you build a collaborative, inclusive, purpose-driven remote work culture, that empowers everyone on your team.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Develop strategies for increasing human connection, community, and belonging in the remote workplace.
- Discover how to invest in self-care practices to best support your employees (and customers) with the challenges of social distancing and the growing loneliness epidemic.
- Use experience design principles to help build employee engagement, boost creativity, and increase productivity among a remote and virtual workforce.
- Practical HR management strategies to build a collaborative, inclusive, and purpose-driven company culture.
Belonging at Work: Fostering Connection & Community in the Digital Age
The rise of social media and rapid technological growth have helped contribute to a growing loneliness epidemic across the world. Today, only 30 percent of people report that they have a best friend at work, and 10 percent say they have zero friends in the workplace. Meanwhile, the next generation is spending more money than ever on in-person, transformational experiences. A Harris study found that 80 percent of millennials would prefer to spend money on an experience or live event over buying something desirable. From Soul Cycle to Airbnb, experiences have replaced modern-day religion for the next generation. What qualities define a transformational community and what role do innovative in-person experiences have in the digital age? How can we apply these experience design principles to employee experience, event planning, marketing, and customer happiness? Smiley will share how we can increase human connection, inspire creativity, and create a better world by building experiential community inside and outside of the workplace.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Learn how the loneliness epidemic contributes to lack of productivity and disconnection at work.
- Develop strategies for increasing diversity and inclusion, connection, and belonging in the workplace.
- Understand how implementing experience design principles can help build employee engagement, boost creativity, create innovative marketing strategies, and increase customer success.
- Discover HR management strategies to become a Purpose-Driven Leader and build a transformational and inclusive company culture.
Public Speaking Skills for Leaders and Changemakers
Public speaking has become an essential life skill. Internationally renowned keynote speaker Adam Smiley Poswolsky will share the lessons he’s learned in his journey from an unpaid storyteller to a paid professional speaker. Smiley is the author of the book, The Breakthrough Speaker: How to Build a Public Speaking Career, a groundbreaking guide to inspire the next generation of changemakers and increase diverse representation on stage. Smiley will help you build confidence in your public speaking skills, share your story, craft a creative anchor to earn credibility, and stand in your worth. He’ll show you how to storyboard an effective presentation that communicates your message and leaves audiences wanting more. The practical lessons in this talk will help you share your truth, build your personal brand, become a more effective leader, and make a greater impact in your career.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Public speaking skills: learn how to gain confidence as a public speaker, overcome fear, own the stage, step into your zone of genius, find your voice.
- Communication tools and presentation tips: learn how to become a better facilitator (and a better listener), how to structure a meeting or presentation, and make an effective call to action.
- Storytelling: learn how to connect with your audience, develop your narrative, and share your story in a way that makes a positive impact.
- Professional development: learn how to position yourself as an industry expert, gain career capital, do more public speaking, book paid speaking engagements, and become a more effective leader.
Smiley Poswolsky’s Bio:
Adam Smiley Poswolsky is a millennial workplace expert, keynote speaker, and bestselling author of The Quarter-Life Breakthrough (Penguin Random House) and The Breakthrough Speaker. His most recent book, Friendship in the Age of Loneliness, was published by Hachette in 2021.
Smiley helps companies attract, retain, and empower the next generation, and he has inspired thousands of professionals to be more engaged at work, through speaking at companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, Genentech, Unilever, Salesforce, Verizon, Deloitte, and Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Smiley’s TEDx talk on “the quarter-life crisis” has been viewed over 1.5 million times, and he has done hundreds of speaking engagements, reaching over 50,000 people in 20 countries. Smiley has advised heads of state and foreign leaders about millennials, multigenerational engagement, and fostering connection and belonging in the digital age.
Smiley’s work has been featured in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, USA Today, Fast Company, Forbes, Entrepreneur, CNN, Cosmopolitan, and the World Economic Forum, among many other outlets. Smiley is a thirteen-time camp counselor at Camp Grounded: Summer Camp for Adults and advisory board member for Digital Detox.
In 2017, Smiley launched The Women/Womxn, Black, Indigenous, POC, and Inclusivity Speaker Initiative, a community that aims to increase the number of women and people of color speaking at conferences and companies, as well as ensure that women and other underrepresented speakers are paid competitively as compared to their colleagues. The group now has over 4,000 members.
Smiley is a proud graduate of Wesleyan University and can usually be found dancing in in the San Francisco Bay Area.
