Speaking

Teresa Amabile is an accomplished speaker. She has given talks at Google and, most recently, TEDx Atlanta. She is available to speak on a variety of topics related to The Progress Principle.

Sample Topics

The Progress Principle

What really makes people happy, motivated, productive, and creative at work? In Teresa Amabile's latest research, she's discovered the answer. It’s the Progress Principle: Of all the things that managers can do to engage their employees, the single most important is facilitating progress in meaningful work. Yet only 5% of managers realize the power of progress. Analyzing nearly 12,000 daily diaries from over 200 knowledge workers, Amabile discovered eleven specific actions that managers can take to catalyze progress and nourish employees’ motivation. Through this presentation, you will learn how to leverage the progress principle to achieve the dual goals of supporting employee well-being and igniting organizational innovation.

The Power of Small Wins

Most workdays consist of small, mundane events. Yet these seemingly tiny events can have an outsized impact on employees’ motivation and creative productivity. By collecting and analyzing nearly 12,000 daily diary entries from dozens of workers across companies and industries, Teresa Amabile discovered that 28% of seemingly minor events at work have a major impact on people’s emotions, perceptions, and motivation. The most important of these is the “small win”–incremental progress toward a meaningful goal. Of all the things that can maintain knowledge workers’ engagement and continually boost their performance, the single most powerful is making at least one step forward on meaningful work every day. The key for managers and for employees is developing the daily discipline to reflect on the day’s progress, setbacks, work catalysts, and work inhibitors, targeting one action for the following day. In this talk, you'll learn how to identify small wins, how to support and capitalize on them, and–ultimately–how to increase the probability that they will lead to innovative success.

Workplace Confidential: Revelations from Work Diaries

The popular television comedy The Office (BBC, NBC) shows workers revealing their innermost thoughts, feelings, and drives to an unseen, ever-present “other.” Through extensive research, Teresa Amabile has tapped into nearly 12,000 such revelations. Over 200 volunteers working on creative projects in 26 teams in 7 companies in 3 industries filled out electronic daily diary forms about their inner work lives and events unfolding at work–every day, over the entire course of their projects. The diary stories reveal the hidden perceptions, emotions, and motivations that people experience as they react to and make sense of the events in their workdays. In this presentation, you'll learn from a detailed analyses of these diaries; find out what really happens at work – from the perspective of people in the trenches; and explore the implications for people, their performance, and their organizations.