Psychologist • Speaker • Author

John M. O’Brien, Ph.D.

Working with organizations to eliminate everyday rudeness before it eliminates their best people isn’t a line I picked out of a marketing workshop. It is what three decades on the front lines of stress, burnout, and workplace conflict taught me first as a psychologist, then as a business owner, and now as a speaker and author. Every keynote and workshop I deliver is built on lived clinical experience, not slides pulled from someone else’s research.

I’m a Ph.D.-level trained Counseling Psychologist with 30 years working with individuals and organizations to build low-stress workplaces that ignite engagement, productivity, and profitability. I’m also a TEDx speaker, the author of Rudeness Rehab, and host of the Civility Matters podcast but the roots of this work go back further than any of those, to the experience that explains why I speak on the topics I do.

The experience behind the message

When I was 15, my father, a highly successful executive under constant work pressure, had a serious heart attack at 49. A few years later, hit by his own father’s death and his mother’s rapid decline into dementia within six weeks, his health collapsed for good; he never worked again and died at 63. I watched it happen and chose a career built around helping other executives avoid that same path, studying psychology at Boston College, Tufts, and Michigan State.

In 1998 I opened a small group private practice, which meant learning to run a business alongside the clinical work: a partnership that has now served the greater Portland community for almost 30 years. Along the way I’ve led the Maine Psychological Association as President, Mental Health Associates of Maine as Managing Partner, and co-chaired the Continuing Education Committee for the Society of Consulting Psychology, a division of the APA. When I later added coaching and speaking to that mix, I went back for formal training and certification through the College of Executive Coaching, the International Coach Federation, and the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching because I wanted the credentials to match the experience.

A supervisor once told me, as I finished my internship at the Dallas VA Medical Center, “now the learning process truly begins for you.” She was right. It still is ongoing.

Every one of these experiences shows up on stage: watching stress cost my father his health, building and running a practice, leading professional associations, training executives and teams. When I talk to an audience about civility, burnout, or resilience, I’m not reciting theory. I’m speaking from three decades of watching what happens when organizations get this wrong, and what changes when they get it right. That is the foundation every keynote and workshop is built on.

My Approach

I am an active and engaged thinking partner. My approach as a speaker and coach is to both support and challenge my audiences and clients. People benefit from feeling my overall support and encouragement as they increase their skills and bolster their stress resilience. However, I also think that support can involve pushing people to examine situations or themselves differently. My job is not to always agree, but to ask questions and share experiences that get people to think more deeply about situations and/or themselves.

My Mission

Working with organizations to eliminate everyday rudeness before it eliminates their best people by activating insight to enhance success and stress resilience.

My Vision

Connecting clients and audiences to their inner strengths to refine stress resilience and civility, ultimately transforming goals into realities.

My Values

Integrity — striving to always be honest and direct with clients and audiences in providing the best services possible to enable better stress management.

Diversity — valuing the difference in individuals based on our life experiences as sources of stress resilience.

Compassion — viewing all clients and audiences with the belief that they are doing the best that they can on any given day to deal with current life stress.

Humor — learning to approach life in a way that does not take it too seriously and values how levity can be a source of coping with stress.