Michael Hingson

Learning to Survive in a Changing World

Most of us have experienced personal unexpected life-changing events and most likely had a difficult time moving on. Perhaps we have not been able to get past the traumatic change at all. This is because we never learned to prepare for unanticipated changes in our world even if we know that “change happens”.

Using the compelling account of his harrowing journey to safety from the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center on 9/11, Michael Hingson captivates audiences and challenges them to access and strengthen their skills, trust, teamwork, risk-taking, and creativity, to ease their way through changes in their work and personal lives. He shows his listeners how creating teams at home and at work can give each of us tools to better cope with new directions and alternative pathways in our lives

Strategies for Success in a Challenging World

"How did I get in this mess?" “Where did I go wrong?” How often have we asked ourselves those very questions or something like them? In this presentation Michael Hingson, blind since birth and a survivor of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks talks about how the choices we make direct our lives. He discusses choices that he made that brought him to the World Trade Center on 9/11 and choices which helped him and others survive and escape the terrorist attacks.

Your audience will learn firsthand how to think about the ramifications of the choices they make each day. They will learn from Mike's firsthand experiences why a little forethought can help make a wiser choice than having a knee-jerk reaction to a situation. They will discover that strategizing about the choices they make will greatly reduce stress and help make them happier people. They will discover, like Mike, how they can come to believe that there is no such thing as the "no-win scenario" and that even though a solution to a problem may not come right away they can go on without panicking and over stressing in their lives.

Michael and Guide Dog Africa: A Story of Ultimate Trust & Teamwork
Meet Africa, a seven-year-old Labrador retriever guide dog who travels the world with her partner, Michael Hingson, talking about Trust, Teamwork, and Life. Yes, you will meet Michael Hingson as well. He will tell you and your audience about working with guide dogs and the many lessons he has learned from them. In fact, Mr. Hingson will tell you very honestly that "I have learned more about team building and management from working with seven guide dogs that I have learned from Brian Tracy, Ken Blanchard, and all the other experts combined".

Mr. Hingson will share and discuss the 10 lessons of "Guide Dog Wisdom" presented in his number one New York Times best-selling book, "Thunder Dog" and he will show your audience how to apply these same lessons in their own lives. He will use his story of survival and escape from the World Trade Center with his former guide dog, “Roselle”, on 9/11, 2001 as a backdrop to show how each of us can become a better team player and team builder. Audiences take from Mike's talks lessons and ideas they can immediately apply in their work and home environments to make life more fun and build stronger and richer relationships with the people around them. Mike says, "there's a lot to be said for thinking more like a Labrador". "Don't knock it till you have tried it." Mike promises that you will be enthralled and captivated and won't miss a minute of his speech unlike Africa who has heard it all before and will probably sleep through most of it.

Lessons from 9/11

Michael Hingson uses his personal experiences of 30 years in high technology sales and management, more than 50 years with guide dog partners, and his survival of the twin towers terrorist attacks on 9/11, to address the issue of building a team based on trust. He captivates his audiences with stories and lessons about how he has created successful and high functioning teams wherever he goes. “The power of trust and teamwork is all around us if we but learn how to harness it and use its strengths wisely” Mike says. Mike’s audiences discover first-hand how he lived through the terrorist attacks by forming teams to keep everyone around him focused and to successfully work toward the common goal of escape from Tower One.

Mike’s thoughtful insights inspire his audiences to change the way they think about the way they live, work and relate to each other. Listeners learn about skills and methods Mike uses daily to create teams and how Trust and Teamwork enriches his life as well as the lives of those around him.

How to change our perceptions about disabilities and overcome our own inner handicaps

Companies and organizations are jumping on the bandwagon to become more "diverse". Some have even developed whole departments to roll out and implement "diversity plans". Unfortunately, these plans do not necessarily include everyone. How many times, for example, have we seen or experienced discussions of Diversity which include naming "minority" groups such as women, different races, and different sexual orientations, but there is little or no discussion of including persons with disabilities?

In this talk, Michael Hingson, who happens to be blind, a survivor of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and a number one New York Times best-selling author, shows us that Diversity is not enough. He illustrates why it is time to move from Diversity to real Inclusion on the job and in our lives. Mike uses stories and lessons from his own life growing up as a blind person, successfully working in professional sales, management, and leadership positions, and as an entrepreneur to teach his audiences how a few simple attitude adjustments can open jobs for persons with disabilities or who are different in some other way than those people normally discussed when talking about Diversity. Your audience will take away ideas about how to gain loyal and hard-working employees as well as how to help make the existing workforce more welcoming to those who are different than they. People will leave their time with Mike Hingson with a different perspective of diversity and how to create full inclusion of all people in their lives. Mike will use a mixture of humor and serious talk to help audiences realize the value of inclusion and how any one of us could in an instant unexpectedly join the ranks of persons with disabilities. Mike reminds us that we are all walking down the same road of life and that if we work together we can create a smoother path for everyone.