in
Let's restore relationships central to building the lives we want and the society we need.
Noted author, consultant, and speaker on the strategic impact of relationships. For the past decade Robert has mentored inner-city homeless families. He helped pioneer a community-based, relationship-centric model for preventing homelessness, implemented in 25 communities. He has witnessed firsthand the power of relationships in addressing poverty and homelessness.
​
Previously, Robert co-founded and was CEO of ActionSystems for more than 20 years, growing it to a 200-person relationship training, consulting, and software company with offices in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, U.K., South Africa, and Australia. He created the company’s Relationship Banking training series designed to enhance customer and employee relationships. He also helped create the Managing Local Markets system that focused on building strong local market relationships. Under Robert’s leadership, the company implemented these comprehensive customer and employee relationship management systems in more than 100 major organizations spanning 20,000 local markets, touching over 100 million customers on six continents. These systems applied cutting-edge information and technology to enhancing customer relationships. Robert sold ActionSystems to a public company in 2000 and continued as the chief executive of that unit until 2003.
​
During his tenure as CEO, Robert was named a finalist for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year for the southwest region. Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business named his company one of the fastest growing privately held companies in Dallas.
Robert began his career at Arthur Young as a consultant to corporations and government.
​
Robert’s first book, The Streetcorner Strategy for Winning Local Markets, a business best-seller, broke new ground in the CRM (customer relationship management) movement. He has authored more than 150 published articles and research studies on the topic of relationships and leadership. His work has been published and discussed in The New York Times, Forbes, The CEO Magazine and The Huffington Post. His latest book, This Land of Strangers addresses society’s breathtaking relationship decline and its impact on major social issues such as poverty, education, and global competitiveness. Richard Boyatzis, Harvard Ph.D. and co-author of the best seller Primal Leadership calls This Land of Strangers “the most important book of the decade.”
​
Robert is an acclaimed keynote speaker on relationships and has shared the platform at national and international conferences with such notables as: Bill Gates of Microsoft, Lew Platt, CEO of Hewlett Packard, and Dick Kovacevich, CEO of Wells Fargo.
A Note from Robert
A warm welcome. After I sold my company and left corporate life in 2003, I started writing another business book but lost interest around page 160. A larger, more compelling sense of call beckoned. I began applying insights garnered from over 20 years of analyzing the relationships of client organizations and the last decade of mentoring homeless families—to our broader society. Two things stood out. First, there is a widespread relational unraveling across four key domains of our lives – home, work, politics and faith. Second, no one has connected the dots to present the larger narrative and the cumulative consequences of these declining relationships.
​
I spent six years on a mission to research and assess the cost, cause and cure of our relationship undoing. My conclusion, culminating in my book THIS LAND OF STRANGERS: Relationship decline is the single most destructive trend that threatens our lives and our society – emotionally, socially, politically, and economically.
​
Since completing the book, I have given more than 100 presentations – to businesses, non-profits, universities and schools, churches, associations and social groups – on the imperative for building stronger relationships and the crucial role of Relational Leadership in making that happen.
​
I have dedicated the rest of my life to the cause of Relationships. I invite you to read this book and join me in this cause to restore relationships so central to building the lives we want and the society we need.
​
Robert E. Hall
His non-profit keynotes include The Public Education Foundation Leadership Summit in Las Vegas, Values Aligned Leadership Conference at Colorado Christian University in Denver, National Guard Officer Association of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, Conference of Southwest Foundations in Colorado Springs and the Dallas Chamber of Commerce’s Executive Women’s Roundtable in Dallas.
​
Robert is a past Advisory Board member of Sales & Marketing Management,the University of Texas at Dallas Graduate Management School and Dallas Interfaith Housing Homelessness Prevention. He currently coaches CEOs of public and private companies on issues of strategic direction, leadership and relationships. He holds B.S. and M. A. degrees from Oklahoma State University where he was an instructor for two years. For 20 years he has taught an adult Sunday school class entitled “The Journey to Right Relationship.” Robert and Linda, his wife of 40 years, live in Dallas. They have two daughters.