Revealing the Hidden Value in People

Biography

William D. Smith, D.Phil.

Dr. Smith is president of Dresher Group Inc., which specializes in developing and delivering curriculum related to organizational development, leadership, negotiation, emotional energy management, inter-cultural management, advanced stress management, sleep improvement, and conflict resolution. Bill is also a member of the faculty with Educational Services Institute International and has developed and taught courses in negotiation, leadership, project management and high impact communications around the world.

Dr. Smith is certified by Personal Strengths Publishing to administer the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI). He has been using the SDI for over 12 years in a variety of settings to include teaching and as a consultant in the areas of leadership, conflict resolution, and negotiation skills. He has used the SDI within the IBM corporation teaching leadership to experienced project managers. Dr. Smith also uses the SDI when teaching negotiation skills to project managers, contracting officers, managers, senior executives, and post-doctoral research scientists in the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Smith developed and teaches the Negotiation Skills for Project Managers for Novartis Pharma in Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States. This course incorporates the SDI to assist the participants in understanding how their SDI Strengths affect their negotiation style showing the correlation between the three primary SDI motivational systems and the “soft, hard, and analytical” negotiation styles. Dr. Smith also uses the SDI in a Negotiation Strategies and Techniques course for contracting and procurement personnel where participants learn how their SDI style affects both their technique selection and negotiation stage preferences. He teaches the Strategies and Techniques course both in the government and commercial environments.

Qualified to administer the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality assessment instrument in 1993, Bill has conducted numerous MBTI workshops with groups at all levels from community volunteers to senior vice presidents of Fortune 500 companies. Bill developed the IBM Advanced Leadership Course for Project Managers, which emphasizes managing international multi-cultural teams. In addition, he developed and delivers the Negotiation Skills for Project Managers course based on the Harvard Negotiation Project for ESI International.

Bill holds a Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.) in Religion and Society Studies, with an emphasis in Leadership, from Oxford Graduate School, where his dissertation received the Oxford Chancellor's Honor Award. He also holds a Masters in Adult Education from Troy State University in Alabama, and a Bachelor of Science in Music Education from the University of Delaware. Dr. Smith is a member of the Oxford Society of Scholars, the Association for Psychological Type (APT), the American Institute of Hypnotherapy, the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and the American Society for Quality (ASQ). Dr. Smith is licensed by the Pastoral Medical Association.