Bruce Tulgan

For more than 30 years, Bruce Tulgan has studied human performance and advised business leaders around the world. For 52 years, Bruce Tulgan has studied and taught classical Okinawan karate. Now, for the first time, he brings those two worlds together.

The deepest lessons of karate are not really about fighting. They are about how people become stronger, wiser, more disciplined, more resilient, and more capable of handling whatever comes next. In the dojo, progress comes from showing up, practicing the fundamentals, accepting corrections, building the right habits, learning from everyone, putting aside ego, teaching others, and beginning again, and again.

Bruce began studying karate at age seven in 1974. Today, he is a seventh-degree black belt and senior master in Okinawan Uechi Ryu Karate Do. From 2015 to 2022, he had the extraordinary honor, privilege, and responsibility of housing and caring for one of the world's most respected and beloved karate masters, his lifelong teacher.

In this new signature keynote, Bruce combines funny, candid, moving, and inspiring stories from a lifetime in karate with practical lessons drawn from decades of experience advising organizations on leadership and human performance. The result is a program designed to help people build strength and wisdom: Learning to face adversity, play the long game, learn from correction, develop others, and keep growing over a lifetime.

Drawing on themes from Bruce's forthcoming memoir, The Karate Master and Me: A Scared Little Boy, an Enigmatic Old Man, and My Lifelong Quest for Strength and Wisdom, Bruce takes the lessons beyond the dojo and applies them to how we work, lead, learn, teach, and live.

THE PROGRAM EXPLORES
•  How do our origin stories - the stories we tell ourselves about who we are - shape who we become?
•  How does deliberate practice turn into the right habits to make us smarter, faster, and better?
•  How do we become strong enough to withstand pressure without becoming hard, rigid, or needlessly combative?
•  How do we remain lifelong learners - following the fundamentals, making the lessons our own, teaching others, and beginning again, and again?

PARTICIPANTS WILL LEARN TO
•  Examine the stories they tell themselves about who they are - their origin stories - and recognize how those stories shape who they become, and how to reshape those stories.
•  Build mastery through deliberate practice, consistent fundamentals, and small improvements sustained over time. Practice makes permanent. Correct practice makes perfect.
•  Develop resilience by learning to "take a punch" - conditioning themselves for setbacks, criticism, uncertainty, and adversity.
•  Become strong without becoming too hard, balancing toughness with patience, flexibility, empathy, and restraint while playing the long game.
•  Deepen their own mastery by learning from everyone, embracing correction, and teaching others.
•  Become lifelong learners by putting aside ego and maintaining a beginner's mind.
TECHNIQUES AND BEST PRACTICES
•  Create or find your dojo. Identify the place, routine, people, and standards that support consistent practice of your craft.
•  Practice what you want to make permanent. Examine what your repetitions are teaching you and replace weak habits with better ones.
•  Learn from everyone. Seek correction, reflect on it, and make the useful lessons your own.
•  Condition yourself for pressure without becoming hard. Build the confidence and capability to absorb setbacks, avoid unnecessary fights, and respond rather than react.
•  Teach. Deepen your knowledge, standards, and skill by helping someone else improve.
•  Evolve Through Shu-Ha-Ri. First follow the form, then adapt it, and eventually make the principles your own.
 

Recruiting and retention require a sustained strategy. Employers need a clear value proposition, a steady supply of applicants and managers who keep people engaged after they join.

Bruce breaks down six steps to gaining a strategic advantage as an employer, drawing on decades of workplace research and practical approaches to attraction, selection, onboarding, training, performance management, development and retention.

Participants will learn
•    The short- and long-term factors affecting today's talent wars.
•    The five costs of voluntary turnover.
•    The top four causes of early voluntary departures.
•    The top five causes of mid- and late-stage career departures.
•    Why strong, highly-engaged management is more important than ever.
•    The six steps to gaining a strategic hiring advantage in the new hybrid workplace.

Techniques and best practices
•    Improving onboarding processes to reduce turnover among new hires
•    Defining a clear and compelling employer value proposition
•    Building and maintaining a steady supply chain of applicants
•    Aligning communication up, down, sideways, and diagonal on the organization chart to improve outcomes-even in a hybrid work environment
•    Creating an upward spiral of improvement for every employee in the organization through high-structure, high-substance communication
 

Most managers spend a lot of time communicating with their direct-reports, but their communication is too often lacking in structure and substance. As a result, problems hide below the surface, until they blow up, and then everyone has to jump into firefighting mode. That's why so many managers are stuck in a vicious cycle of undermanagement.

The solution: Highly-engaged management.

In this program, Bruce Tulgan explains this approach, drawing on decades of workplace research and sharing true stories from real managers. With a blend of humor, insight, and concrete best practices, Bruce helps managers confront their own bad habits and teaches leaders a step-by-step approach back to the fundamentals of highly-engaged management that anyone can put into action.

Participants will learn
•    How to build relationships of trust and confidence with direct reports.
•    How to effectively delegate tasks, responsibilities, and projects.
•    How to keep employees focused on what's important and moving in the right direction.
•    How to increase productivity and quality for high-, mid-, and low-performing employees.
•    How to increase retention of superstar talent.
•    How to reduce waste, inefficiency, errors, downtime, and conflict.

Techniques and best practices
•    Conducting regular one-on-ones with direct reports
•    Communicating clearly and effectively, with an emphasis on coaching-style dialogue
•    Tuning in to the particular strengths and weaknesses of every individual on the team
•    Working through or around obstacles in order to hold employees accountable
•    Making expectations clear
•    Monitoring, measuring, and documenting employee performance
•    Helping employees solve problems related to productivity, quality, and behavior
•    Dealing with persistent performance problems
•    Tying rewards to performance
 

In hundreds of advanced management seminars, Bruce Tulgan has taken experienced leaders through one problem-solving session after another, focusing on one real life case study after another: "Who are the employees you are really struggling with? What are the really tough cases?"

Like clockwork, the same basic cases come up over and over again-the same 27-  maybe it's the superstar the manager is afraid of losing, the slacker the manager cannot figure out how to motivate, the one with an attitude problem, or the two who cannot get along. From decades of research, Bruce has identified the most frequent and toughest challenges managers face and the best step-by-step solutions.

In this program, Bruce draws on decades of research, sharing true stories from real managers, blending humor, insight, and concrete best-practices to show participants how to apply the management fundamentals to the challenges managers most often face.

Participants will learn
•    How to identify and avoid the vicious cycle of undermanagement.
•    The most common ways that managers spend their management time and techniques for gaining control of that time.
•    The back-to-fundamentals approach to high-structure, high-substance communication.
•    How to apply the fundamentals to their own daily management challenges.

Techniques and best practices
•    Overcoming the challenges unique to new, first-time leaders
•    Teaching self-management
•    Managing performance, such as productivity and quality
•    Managing employee attitudes and interpersonal conflicts
•    Motivating and retaining superstars
•    Developing new leaders
•    Working around resource constraints, logistical hurdles, and rapid change
•    Renewing commitment to strong, highly-engaged management