Stedman Graham

I Have a Dream: The Nine Step Success Process to Building Your Identity in 2010 and Beyond

The Nine Step Success Process is a life management and performance system designed to build your identity and give you the tools to create your future. This methodology is based on the premise that individuals hold the power to their success or failure: that knowing who you are is the first step in self actualization, the first step to self leadership and leadership.

The Dynamics of Leadership

Great leaders share an ability to inspire, guide and motivate their followers. In The Dynamics of Leadership, Stedman Graham, best-selling author and businessman, shares his insight into how participants can master the "hard skills" necessary to succeed in the business world, cultivate their potential, expand their opportunities and empower themselves to participate at all levels of leadership and organizational development. He stresses the importance of advocacy and mentoring to help others aspiring for greater achievement.

The Competitive Advantage in Business Leadership

Stedman Graham works with business leadership and executives to help them align business strategies. Moreover, he offers them a process for developing and performing in business that is congruent to their own Life Brand. Once leaders have a personal vision and know who they are, they can act on where they want to be personally and professionally. With this knowledge, they are better equipped to work authentically and ethically toward business objectives. Leaders who participate in the Competitive Advantage in Business Leadership program will be able to consciously articulate not only what needs to be done, but why it needs to be done. This collective knowledge is then the catalyst for serving up and rallying around the action plan regarding "how" to create, share and achieve business objectives. This source of personal and business transformation is intended to create an environment that works better for the leader, the company and those impacted in the surroundings.

Leaders Not Labels

When we focus on performance and strive toward excellence in our professional lives, we shed the relevance of external labels based on race, gender, age, ethnicity, lifestyle or physical ability. We are personally responsible for how we view and respond to diversity. In Leaders Not Labels, Stedman Graham helps people to recognize that it is about recognizing your own strengths, being proud of your own culture and never having to apologize for who you are. Acceptance, tolerance and excellence start from within, based on self-knowledge and self-reliance. With those abilities, you can lead by example and perform at the highest level. Without them, you can't even lead your own life effectively.

Build Your Own Life Brand

You can start to maximize your potential once you know exactly who you are and what is important to you. Once you know who you are and what drives you, only then can you begin the process of branding yourself into the market. Stedman Graham champions messages on how to polish your brand - "your promise." His messages are tailored to the individual and/or the overall organization (including how to garner recognition, appreciation and response for your corporate brand and value).

You Can Make It Happen: A Health and Lifestyle Program

You Can Make It Happen: A Health and Lifestyle Program focuses on self-awareness and personal performance as the best way to achieve optimal results. Once a person changes his thinking, he is better able to change his patterns and "re-program" to create new habits. With the approaches and tools gained, participants are equipped to recognize core issues, remove obstacles to success and create opportunities. They are given a process to move beyond their problems and work toward who they want to become. The information Graham conveys to audiences will begin to equip them with grassroots principles of health and well-being that can be applied for a lifetime.

Business Development: Strategic Positioning and Marketing

One way to improve profitability in an increasingly competitive and complex business environment is to align business strategies and develop leaders and leadership capacity from within the organization. This positions business in the marketplace and gives leaders access to the industry. Both personal and professional leadership require having the right information and alignment based on values and vision. The intent of the Business Development: Strategic Positioning and Marketing keynote or seminar is to provide business people with the process and tools to position themselves to develop and capitalize on their skills, leadership ability toward building an overall Life Brand that transcends any situation.

Strategic Marketing

Stedman Graham targets the opportunities for business growth through organizing the industry for discovery and innovation and developing strategies for integrated business, marketing and sales. Graham also relates the power of building brand awareness, client service and building individual leadership skills as powerful contributors to business growth.

You Can Make It Happen: The Nine-Step Success Process

You Can Make It Happen: The Nine-Step Success Process puts resources and strategies into people's hands to take control of their lives. Graham shares his insights regarding this systematic approach to organizing and advancing life goals and ambitions. It's the "how." Implemented consistently, the process helps build personal and professional effectiveness, increases focus, enhances time management and helps improve relationships.

The Nine-Step Success Process: Business Strategy and Vision

The Success Process can be applied as a unique approach to establishing a company's position in the marketplace by integrating business growth, people and community relationships. Stedman Graham shares his insights regarding this systematic approach to organizing and advancing business goals and aspirations. Graham demonstrates that when the Process is consistently implemented, it helps build organizational effectiveness, increases focus, promotes shared vision and helps improve relationships.

You Can Make It Happen in College

Today's college students have more options and more challenges than ever before. Technology and subject matter change rapidly. The marketplace they are preparing for is global. Demands, requirements and rules in nearly every profession are everchanging. Access to resources is changing. Competition is fiercer at the individual and organizational level. We live in a performance-based culture and it matters less and less where you are from, your race or gender, or even what college or university you attended; what matters is how students and graduates are able to interact and produce results. Stedman Graham's You Can Make It Happen In College program enhances academic and personal performance by teaching a process for success. It puts resources and strategies in students' hands to set higher, smarter goals for themselves and be more accountable for their lives in college and beyond. Graham makes education more relevant to students' lives so that they are better prepared to meet the changing environment of the information age. He helps the students to focus not on "being something," but on increasing self-awareness and self-esteem to help them transcend the real and perceived barriers to success.

Teens Can Make It Happen: Nine Steps to Success

In Teens Can Make It Happen programs, Stedman Graham gives students the tools to overcome their fears and embrace their futures, limited only by the vision they have for themselves. He teaches teens that their potential is based on excellence, performance and results, rather than the outdated limitations of where they are from or what they look like. Graham provides young people with tools, skills and attitudes to achieve academic and workforce success. Programming targets high school students and can be offered as a one-time event or a series. SGA would develop programming format and delivery particulars for the Workshop in cooperation with a client or sponsor.

Move Without the Ball

Stedman Graham teaches student athletes that there is more to life than just being a professional athlete. Today, many teens buy into the illusion conveyed by TV and magazines - that it is easy to be a superstar. Wanting to play sports is a worthy goal. But, what happens if they don't make it? What then? Many young people don't achieve their full potential because they don't understand the process of success. Graham teaches the importance of education, health and fitness, as well as factors contributing to athletic performance. The idea is to be well rounded, which opens up many more opportunities for youth throughout a lifetime. He teaches the Success Process, so teens not only have a Plan B, but a Plan C! In doing so, he ensures they have time to build their dream and realize they can break free and realize their potential as an individual. In a down-to-earth, inspirational manner he encourages teens to stay in school, work harder in their studies and focus their energies into building their futures. He opens minds to set the stage to help teens reach their full potential, no matter the endeavor.

Business Expert

Stedman Graham is chairman and CEO of S. Graham & Associates (SGA), a management and marketing consulting company that specializes in the corporate and educational markets. As a businessman and educator, Graham lectures and conducts seminars for businesses and organizations around the country. Content is driven by his proprietary Nine-Step Success Process™. Clients have included Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch, CVS Pharmacy, Georgia Pacific, PRO-LINE International, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, Manpower, CNN and GlaxoSmithKline among many others.

Bestselling Author

Graham has authored ten books, including two New York Times bestsellers, You Can Make It Happen: A Nine-Step Plan for Success and Teens Can Make It Happen: Nine Steps to Success. Build Your Own Life Brand! explores the concept of personal and professional branding. Move Without the Ball is a collection of principles that teaches students that sports are a part of life, not life itself. Who Are You? A Success Process for Building Your Life’s Foundation focuses on success through self-discovery. His latest release, Diversity: Leaders not Labels – A New Plan for the 21st Century, shares his unique approach to eliminate barriers to success.

Educator 

Actively involved in education, Graham is a former adjunct professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago where he taught a leadership course based on his Nine-Step Process. At the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, he taught a management strategy course entitled “The Dynamics of Leadership.” He also founded and directed George Washington University’s Forum for Sport and Event Management and Marketing – the first of its kind in the country.

Community Leader

Graham has a lifelong commitment to youth and community. In 1985, he founded AAD Education, Health and Sports (formerly, Athletes Against Drugs), a nonprofit organization with over 500 professional athletes and other civic leaders committed to developing leadership in underserved youth. AAD has served over 15,000 students through scholarships and education. Graham is also actively involved in leadership efforts and programs in South Africa and is Founder of Concerned Citizens of Whitesboro, NJ, and Concerned Citizens of Lake Waccamaw, NC. He serves on several boards, including the national board of Junior Achievement (JA) and the 7-Eleven Education Is Freedom Foundation, and is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Work from Hardin-Simmons University. He received a master’s degree in Education from Ball State University and an honorary doctorate in Humanities from Coker College, where he is also a distinguished visiting professor.