Barbara Glanz, C.S.P.

More About Barbara

BARBARA GLANZ, Certified Speaking Professional

Barbara Glanz, CSP, works with organizations that want to improve morale, retention, and service and with people who want to rediscover the joy in their work and in their lives.

BACKGROUND / EDUCATION

Barbara Glanz, CSP, has been a teacher all her life. She grew up in a small town in Iowa where she taught swimming all the way through her college years. She was also an accomplished pianist, winning several State contests and accompanying most of the vocal groups in her high school.

She went to the University of Kansas where she majored in Music Therapy and Piano and finished her degree in English Education. While there, she won nearly every honor the university bestowed: Mortar Board, Treasurer of Student Union Activities, VP of KU-Y, the Dean’s List every semester, and Outstanding Gamma Phi Beta. Her educational career finally culminated in being chosen as a Hilltopper in the first edition of the Yearbook, the highest award anyone at the University could achieve.

After meeting her husband-to-be the summer before she was a senior in college, Barbara accepted a position as an English teacher at Lyons Township High School in La Grange, Illinois, so she could be near Charlie Glanz, who worked for the Chicago Tribune newspaper. They were married one year later, and Barbara continued to be a highly popular teacher, even directing David Hasselhof of ?Knight Rider? and ?Baywatch? fame in his first high school play!

When their first child was born, however, Barbara chose to stay home and make her children her career. Barbara and Charlie were blessed with four children, three on Earth and one in Heaven, and during those nineteen years, Barbara had a business plan and goals to make sure her children were exposed to as many learnings, people, and experiences as she could possibly provide.

She also kept her skills alive and growing by doing some part time things that did not interfere with her family life. She taught English as a Second Language at Argonne National Laboratory, she taught some college writing classes, she did some workshops on communication for various organizations, she volunteered in the school system, creating an Intergenerational Sharing Program that became a model for many throughout the country, and she finished her Master's degree in Adult Education, taking one class a quarter for five years at Northern Illinois University.

BUSINESS - TRAINING, SPEAKING AND WRITING

In 1988 when their oldest son was leaving for Dartmouth College, Barbara became a contract trainer for The Grammar Group and did a two day seminar on the English language in Fortune 500 companies around the country. Soon, she was asked to become the Manager of Training and later Director of Quality in Training, for Kaset International, a Times Mirror company dedicated to enhancing customer service in organizations around the world. While with Kaset, she helped design their facilitator certification process, grew the training staff from 11 to 44, contributed to many of their developing programs, and began to speak to large groups at their executive conferences and for client meetings. In 1993 she wrote her first book, The Creative Communicator—399 Ways to Make Your Business Communications Meaningful and Inspiring, and in 1994 she wrote Building Customer Loyalty—How YOU Can Help Keep Customers Returning.

In 1995 she began her own company, Barbara Glanz Communications, Inc., to help create workplaces where people truly care about one another and the customer and where they are able to fully engage their unique talents in ways that bring joy to them and make a difference in this world. She wrote her third book in 1996, CARE Packages for the Workplace—Dozens of Little Things You Can Do to Regenerate Spirit at Work, and in 1998 she wrote CARE Packages for the Home—Dozens of Ways to Regenerate Spirit Where You Live. During her first four years in business she was blessed to speak on four continents and in 46 states through only word of mouth and referral, and she participated in two of Westcott Communication’s most successful live satellite TV presentations.

In May of 2000 Barbara lost her husband of nearly 34 years to cancer which began a series of life-changing events for her and a time of reflection and re-evaluation of priorities. In November of 2002 Barbara sold her home of 27 years in Illinois and moved to a condo on the beach in Sarasota, Florida, where she continues to help organizations and individuals worldwide.

In 2002 Handle with CARE—Motivating and Retaining Employees was published, a book based on research with over 1200 non-management employees, asking them what their supervisor or manager could do to help them do their best work, and in May of 2003 she finished Balancing Acts—More Than 250 Guiltfree, Creative ideas to Blend Your Work and Your Life, a book focused on Work/Life balance. In July 2005 she co-authored a book with Ken Blanchard, the co-author of The One Minute Manager, titled The Simple Truths of Service – Inspired By Johnny the Bagger based on her signature story about a young man with Down Syndrome who completely changed the culture in the grocery store where he was employed. This book has sold over 250,000 copies, and has been used by McDonalds to train their managers worldwide! A short 3 minute movie based on this book has received 750,000 hits since its release in February of 2007. In 2006 Barbara wrote 180 Ways to Spread Contagious Enthusiasm, and The Simple Truths of Appreciation—How Each of Us Can Choose to Make a Difference was published in 2007. Another new book on how to help the friends and family of persons who are grieving, titled What Can I Do? Ideas to Help Those Who Have Experienced Loss, also was released in early 2007, and when the massacre at Virginia Tech occurred, the publisher sent copies to each family who had lost a child, each church in the area and each school chaplain as their way of offering comfort. Also, in the first quarter of the year a 17 minute training film based on Barbara’s signature story, titled “Johnny the Bagger – A True Story of Customer Service,” was released by Vision Point. Finally, in April the latest book in the CARE Packages series was published, titled CARE Packages for Your Customers—An Idea a Week for Customer Service.

Since 1987 Barbara has trained thousands of people in North America and has spoken worldwide to conferences, associations, government organizations, and companies both large and small. Some of her clients include: Bank of America, Kaiser Permanente, AAA, Honda, ADP, Nordstrom, Aetna, Rockwell International, Sprint, Mobil Research and Development Corporation, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Social Security Administration, IBM, American Express, AT&T, the New Zealand Institute of Travel and Tourism, Southwest Airlines, Hawaiian Electric Company, the American Heart Association, BP Products, Merry Maids, Nationwide Insurance, Chick-fil-A, USAA, Hilton Hotels, Kroger Company, Bank of Montreal, the States of Michigan, Florida, Illinois, Texas, Ohio, and Wyoming, the Hellenic Management Association, Allstate Insurance, Alaska Telephone Association, Waste Management, the GAP, Petroleus de Venezuela, Sea Ray Boats, Boeing, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Dominos Pizza, Great Clips, Delta Airlines, the Pampered Chef, SYSCO, Toyota, Business Objects, Shea Homes, Swarovski International,and the US Department of Energy.

In January of 2007 Barbara became the first speaker on record to have spoken on all seven continents and in all 50 states. She has earned the highest designation the National Speakers Association awards (Certified Speaking Professional), she has been selected as a Platinum Speaker by Meeting Professionals International, and she has been nominated five times for the NSA Speaker Hall of Fame. Since 1997 she has been one of the top rated speakers at the national Society for Human Resource Management convention, and in 2006 she was the ONLY FEMALE in the top ten rated speakers. She has appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX-TV, PAX-TV, WGN, CNBC, and on radio and in print nationwide.

SERVICE

Barbara currently serves as a Trustee at Northern Theological Seminary in Lombard, Illinois, and on the Board of Directors for Ken Blanchard’s Center for Faithwalk Leadership. She has served as a member of the Core Team of Impact XXI, a part of Campus Crusade for Christ; on the Advisory Board of the Loyola University Center for Ethics and Social Justice; on the Board of Trustees of the National Speakers Association Foundation, and as the Chairperson of the Community Development Committee for NSA. She recently served a three year term as a Director of the National Speakers Association, an organization of 4000 professional speakers worldwide, and she has just been asked to be a member of the Advisory Council for Guideposts, the organization founded by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.

She is a member of the National Speakers Association, NSA Central Florida, NSA New England, the Society for Human Resource Management, the American Society for Training and Development, the National Association of Female Executives, Kappa Delta Pi, Gamma Phi Beta, and is included in Who's Who of American Women, Who's Who in the Midwest, and Who's Who in Entertainment.

Barbara has three additional “claims to fame”: her great-grandfather laid the cornerstone where the four states come together (Page, Arizona, is named after him); she played the piano on the TV show “Talent Sprouts”; and she directed David Hasselhof of Knight Rider and Baywatch fame in his first high school play!

PERSONAL

Her greatest blessing, however, is the number of precious friends and family members who add such joy to her life. Her son, Garrett, and her daughter-in-love, Ashley, live in the Seattle area where Garrett works for Microsoft. They have blessed her with her first grandchildren, Gavin and Kinsey. Her daughter, Gretchen, and her son-in-love, Randy, both webmasters, live in Portland, Oregon, with Ramona, Shadow, Rerun, and Maisy, her “grand pets,” and they just had a new little boy named Owen Ray Gawlik, Her daughter, Erin, recently moved to Portland as well where she is a student in fashion design and works in an upscale downtown restaurant.

Barbara volunteers in several organizations in her new home of Sarasota, Florida, and walks three miles on the beach every day. She continues to speak and write about how ONE PERSON can make a difference, and even through her pain and loss, she has managed to live and breathe her personal motto, “Spreading Contagious Enthusiasm™!”

Her personal mission statement is: “I am here as the Lord’s helper to spread contagious enthusiasm and to lovingly and creatively help other people and myself to see the CHOICES we have to make a difference in the world.”