Caren Kenney Speaker Biography
Human Performance Expert, CEO and Founder at Evolve Leadership
Caren Kenney, is CEO and founder of Evolve Leadership, which delivers highly personalized, whole person, whole-life C-suite development programs designed to help executives achieve and sustain higher levels of physical wellbeing, mental and emotional resilience, and character-centered leadership. Prior to launching Evolve, she was part of the leadership team at the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute and executive director of its Premier Executive Leadership™ program, which she was responsible for creating and leading beginning in 2016. Before that, she served as part of the Johnson & Johnson Health and Wellness Solutions leadership team, where she built and launched several strategic health and wellness enterprise platforms, initiatives, and partnerships. In 2001, Caren co-founded a health-tech startup that developed the world’s first direct-to-consumer behavioral health digital coaching programs, which were ultimately acquired by J&J.
Leadership
As an ICF-certified executive coach, Caren has worked with a range of leaders from early-stage start-up CEOs to Fortune 100 senior executives and Fortune Most Powerful Women. She also delivers keynotes and workshops for executive leadership teams, HR executives, and women leaders on how to achieve higher levels of wellbeing and performance for themselves and their organizations. She has published articles on how to build high-performing and sustainable C-suite leaders and has been featured in several publications including the American Journal of Health Promotion, Forbes, Directors & Boards, HR Magazine, FierceCEO, SHRM Executive Network, and Authority Magazine.
Leading with Character
Caren is co-author with Dr. Jim Loehr of Leading with Character, a book and journal representing the industry’s first training focused on strengthening one’s character by clearly identifying one’s personal purpose, uncovering and addressing barriers and gaps, creating a Personal Credo that guides leadership behavior and decision making, and creating a meaningful life and leadership legacy. She is also working with Dr. Loehr and other leading experts on additional research and training to continually advance the field of human performance.
Caren Kenney Speaking Topics
Peak Performance: Building Higher Levels of Personal Energy and Resilience
This session, delivered by Caren Kenney, CEO and founder of Evolve Leadership, is designed to help leaders achieve higher levels of performance, mental and emotional resilience, and physical wellbeing through a focus on proven human energy management and strategic recovery techniques. Attendees will learn strategies for: • becoming more effective in an increasingly complex, challenging, and uncertain environment • defining and activating a meaningful personal purpose • achieving greater performance and fulfillment in all areas of their lives Evolve will send attendees a link to a brief anonymous survey on energy, wellbeing, resilience, and the greatest personal and professional challenges they are experiencing in the current environment. Attendees will also receive a link to a private webpage that includes resources to support sustainability around the new strategies and behaviors they wish to focus on.
The Fully Engaged Leader
The most important dynamic of leadership is the ability to ignite, focus and sustain people's energy in the service of a mission. The fully engaged leader must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with the corporate mission. Each of these capacities are necessary, none is sufficient by itself. The fully engaged leader learns to draw on all four sources of energy and to consciously cultivate them throughout the organization. Doing so requires leaders to be committed to training in the same way elite athletes do to expand capacity both individually and organizationally.
The Making of a Corporate Athlete
As demand accelerates, many executives lack the capacity to sustain high performance--especially under pressure. The creators of the Corporate Athlete performance model, described in a January 2001 Harvard Business Review article ("The Making of a Corporate Athlete"), argue that in order for executives to achieve sustained high performance, they must learn to train in the same systematic ways that elite athletes do. This requires drawing on four separate but interconnected sources of energy to achieve sustained high performance. This presentation outlines the multidimensional training strategies adopted by executives and managers at more than two dozen Fortune 100 companies.
The Power of Full Engagement
Nearly 75 percent of American workers are disengaged, according to data collected by the Gallup Organization. To be fully engaged, one must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with the mission of the organization. Drawing on 25 years of experience working with world-class athletes and other elite performers, this presentation describes a unique science-based system for driving full engagement, grounded in the management of personal energy, and the development of highly precise performance rituals.
The Pulse of High Performance: Life is a Series of Sprints, not a Marathon
The conventional wisdom is that the best way to manage the endless demands of our work lives is to assume the mentality of a marathoner, conserving energy in order to stay the course over many years without burning out. In fact, sustained high performance requires the mentality of a sprinter--fully engaging for clearly defined periods of time and then strategically recovering. To live like a sprinter is to break work down into a series of manageable intervals--fully engaging and then fully recovering. This principle is called oscillation and it creates a powerful pulse that drives greater efficiency, improved health and happiness, and sustained higher performance.
Energy, not Time, is the Fundamental Currency of High Performance in Business
Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of performance and the most precious gift we have to give. Productivity, as well as health and happiness, are grounded in the skillful management of energy. To be fully engaged means to be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and fully aligned with the company's mission. Each individual represents a cell of potential energy in the larger corporate body. Great leaders begin by effectively managing their own energy. Great leadership is marked by the capacity to mobilize, focus, invest, channel and renew organizational energy in the service of the corporate mission. Just as individuals have a pulse, so too does the corporate body. The skilled management of energy fuels a strong and vibrant pulse and a fully engaged workforce.
Caren Kenney Books
