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, dedicated to transforming workplace culture by helping leaders cultivate genuine human connections that drive performance, innovation, and well-being.
- With experience working with over 300 companies across 23 countries, David has identified universal leadership patterns that create meaningful impact.
- As a co-author of Find Your Why, a global bestseller translated into 25+ languages, David has influenced leaders and organizations worldwide in discovering their purpose.
- His (un)Common Sense™ Leadership framework simplifies leadership into frictionless, daily practices that anyone—regardless of title—can implement immediately.
- Clients love David’s approachable and stress-free presentation style, making his leadership insights easy to understand, apply, and sustain.
Videos
Biography
David Mead is bringing humanity back to work. Since 2009, David has worked with over 300 companies in 23 countries. In that time, he has discovered a pattern that is present with every leader worth following. He now helps others replicate and follow that pattern.
In 2009 David 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. In 2017, David 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 600,000 copies and is translated into over 25 languages.
Since Dec, 2019 David has focused on helping leaders implement what he calls (un)Common Sense™ Leadership. He shares a simple framework you can draw on a napkin, 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 leaders and their teams. David is a no-stress presenter clients love working with. He 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 With (Un)common Sense
Length: ~45 - 75 mins
Format: Interactive keynote
Who It’s For:
Those who want to achieve sustainable performance through becoming the type of leader people choose to follow, instead of the type of leader people have to follow.
Talk Overview:
Great leadership isn’t a secret—it’s common sense. We can all name the traits of the best leaders we’ve followed. Yet, despite being obvious, those traits are uncommon in leadership today. Why? Because although we know them, sometimes we just don’t put them into practice.
We allow things like outside pressure or human friction to get in the way. These are things like:
- Office politics & gossip
- Deadlines & time pressure
- Resistance to feedback
- Blame vs. ownership
- Poor collaboration
Most leaders try to fix these issues with policies and processes—but rules don’t build trust. Systems don’t inspire ownership. No structure can replace the human dynamics that make or break a team.
The real solution? Leading with (Un)common Sense.
In this interactive talk, David shares science-backed insights, real-world leadership challenges, and a simple, napkin-sketch framework that helps leaders reduce friction, build trust, and create teams that people want to be part of.
In this session, you’ll:
- Learn simple daily practices to reduce friction and improve team dynamics.
- Apply a framework that naturally increases trust, accountability, and engagement.
- Shift from managing people to leading a culture of trust, connection, and psychological safety.
The best leadership principles aren’t revolutionary—they’re (Un)common Sense. And the leaders who actually practice them are the ones people choose to follow.
Turn Attrition Into Attraction
Every organization on the planet strives for high performance, growth, productivity, and results. And often, organizations don’t realize they are self-sabotaging those efforts through the experience they create for their people. When the culture we talk about doesn’t align with the culture our people experience, Culture Dissonance occurs. People go into self-preservation mode, and they find it more difficult to trust and develop connections with others. Healthy, productive environments have Culture Congruence, where the stated culture aligns with daily behaviors.
In this highly interactive session, David draws on statistically significant research, his personal experience, as well as the patterns he has observed in leaders and organizations around the world. He will identify the symptoms of Culture Dissonance and explore three specific leadership traits that, when put into practice, lead to Culture Congruence, ensuring that the culture we talk about matches the experience people actually have at work.
