About the Author

One client described Annette Simmons as “willing to go into the jaws of the lion.” In 1996, she founded Group Process Consulting to accommodate her diverse interests in research, writing, consulting, training, and facilitation. She has facilitated dialogue between conservative and gay Christians, budget-hungry military officers, and teachers and parents struggling to agree on educational methods. Her paying clients range from federal agencies like NASA, the IRS, the FDA, city and state government, to companies like IBM, Microsoft, and BestBuy, large professional associations, and small privately held firms.

She says she wrote her first book, Territorial Games: Understanding and Ending Turf Wars at Work (AMACOM, 1997) instead of getting a Ph.D. “It was a dissertation without the committee meetings.” While consulting on turf wars, anonymous polls of work groups reported perceived levels of trust between group members from zero percent to 90 percent, with the average trust levels hovering just under 40 percent. This led her to write A Safe Place for Dangerous Truth: Using Dialogue to Overcome Fear & Distrust (AMACOM, 1999). Ten years of facilitating dialogue left Annette convinced that “sharing true stories is more time- and cost-effective in increasing trust than ice breakers, trust falls, ropes courses, or group hugs.” Her last book, The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling (Basic Books, 2002), was revised and published in a second edition in 2006. Her books have been published in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Swedish, Norwegian, and German.

Annette has been featured on CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” radio stations including NPR, and quoted in Fortune, Working Woman, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and dozens of other newspapers and magazines. She wrote a chapter for Best Practice: Ideas and Insights from the World’s Foremost Business Thinkers, published in 2003 by Bloomsbury. Annette currently resides in Greensboro, North Carolina, with her Italian greyhound Lucy and a squirrel with unauthorized access to her attic.