Leadership and Workplace Culture Expert
David Mead: Biography at a Glance
- David Mead is one of the world’s leading experts on leadership, culture, and the future of work, known for speaking about the intersection of business, human connection, and trust.
- Using a simple framework, he proves that human-centered leadership forms the foundation of increased performance, innovation, engagement, communication, retention, well-being, and so much more.
- As the first of Simon Sinek’s “Igniters,” he has spent over a decade sharing digestible insights, strategies, and ideas with over 250 companies on 5 continents through speaking and workshops.
- David co-authored Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering the WHY of an Individual, Team or Organization which sold over 400,000 copies and has been translated into 25 different languages.
- He brings a simple, human approach to his sessions that helps people powerfully connect with the content and with each other.
- Audiences leave David’s sessions inspired by their ability to take immediate action on what they learned.
Videos
Biography
David Mead is bringing humanity back to work. Since 2009 he has worked with over 300 companies on 5 continents. In that time, he has discovered a pattern that is present with every leader worth following.
David began his career in corporate training in 2004. In 2009 he was the second person to join speaker and author, Simon Sinek’s team. For the next 10 years, David helped share Simon’s simple, inspiring ideas through speaking and workshops.
David later applied his years of practical experience and learning and co-authored, with Peter Docker and Simon Sinek, Find Your Why: a practical guide for discovering the WHY of an individual, team or organization. It has sold over 500,000 copies and is translated into 25 languages.
David has since focused on helping leaders implement the powerful ideas he now talks about. He shares a simple framework that allows each of us to lead and influence others with genuine humanity, no matter our role or title. The result? Higher performance, innovation, collaboration, retention, and importantly, well-being for us and our teams.
David brings a relatable, human approach to his ideas and guides people to identify frictionless daily practices they can use immediately after the session.
Topics
Lead Through Uncertainty: How to confidently take on the unknown we face, together
Who it’s for:
Those who want to prepare for challenges and uncertainty by unlocking the creativity and open-minded thinking needed to weather the storm.
Talk overview:
It’s human nature to seek the sense of comfort we feel with consistency and stability. Yet, we look toward the future and see more change and uncertainty than ever - economic downturn, shifts in the workforce, residual effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and more unknowns to come. A Stanford University survey assessed business uncertainty is at its highest since 2015, with the level accelerating at an unprecedented rate. So, the only thing that’s certain is that there is more uncertainty ahead.
This state of instability can leave us feeling unsettled, demoralized, and anxious about the future. As a result, decision-making tends to become fear-based and progress slows; we become more rigid, and effective leadership declines. Rather than becoming adaptive, organizations tend to be reactive.
During these times, leadership expert David Mead urges you to stop resisting uncertainty and choose to run toward it by building and maintaining a resilient culture. In this interactive talk, David will share simple ideas to shift our perception of challenging situations and how we can see them as opportunities.
Through polling and Q&A, David will encourage active participation that can prompt ideas for action for attendees. Audiences will walk away with tangible tools that can be practiced daily in order to fully engage their hearts and minds when obstacles arise.
Key concepts of the session include:
- Our two primary drivers - Love and Fear
- How to understand and manage the way we lead and influence others • Leading when we don’t know the answer
- The humility to say, “I don’t know” and empowering others to contribute to the solution
- Activating innovation in our team
- How to create an environment of trust and collaboration where people feel confident to share ideas and take risks
Create High Performance Through Humanity: How to unlock your team’s untapped capacity
Length: 45 -60 mins
Format: Interactive
Who it’s for: Leaders who want to eliminate the friction standing in the way of building a sustainably high performing team.
Talk overview:
Every leader wants their people to care about the business and its outcomes as much as they do. Those outcomes require high performance, engagement, productivity and a commitment to results. And often, those things are hampered by friction that naturally arises among messy, complex human beings.
Friction can look like:
- Office politics & gossip
- Low engagement
- Lack of accountability
- Remote work challenges
- Poor collaboration
Policies and processes aren’t enough to reduce that friction, at least not for the long-term. The solution to reducing friction lies within the human beings who are causing it. And everyone on the team, from the senior leader to the newest hire, whether working in the office or in their bedroom, has a part to play.
The key lies in our ability to activate our innate humanity. That is exactly what David can help you do. In this interactive talk, David draws on science, case studies and a pattern he has discovered in working with leaders and organizations around the world.
You’ll learn and apply a simple framework you can draw on a napkin, that unlocks trust and connection - the foundation of our collective humanity. The principles you’ll explore, with David as your guide, will help you have productive tough conversations, mix accountability with empathy, engage remote team members and so much more.
In this session, participants will:
- Identify simple daily practices they can use immediately to reduce the friction on their teams
- Internalize a framework that guides behavior and naturally increases performance, innovation, retention, transparent communication and well-being
- Shift their perception of leadership and the role they play in shaping the culture based on trust, connection and psychological safety
