David Mead

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.

Length: ~60 mins
Format: Interactive

Who it’s for:
Leaders eager to create and maintain an environment in which trust and human connection lead to greater well-being, higher individual and team performance, increased innovation and higher levels of retention.

Talk overview:
Every organization 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 interactive talk, David draws on his personal experience, research and 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.

As a result of this session, participants will:

• Have a greater awareness of their leadership impact
• Understand a framework that can help them lead with greater consistency
• Have tangible tools that increase performance, retention, transparent communication, well-being and more