Dan Pontefract is an expert in leadership, corporate culture, and organizational performance. Recommended by many organizations, he has delivered his unique keynote speaker style of humour, analogies, metaphors, stories and wicked graphics to the likes of business executives and team members in Europe, America, Australia and of course his home country of Canada. Need a virtual keynote? Dan has got you covered there, too. Check out his four (4!!) TED Talks below as well as his speaker reel.
โDan challenged us to have clarity of purpose, both as individuals and as an organization. He related inspiring stories drawing on his experience in business, technology and academia. As he said, โThere is no ownership without belonging.โโ
Christian Pantel, Vice-President, D2L
The Reality of Your Busyness
Speed, multitasking, and busyness are the norms today, leaving little time for reflection. Balancing action with reflection is key to maintaining high performance in your team.
Collaborate or Else
Proactive collaboration shapes how work gets done and how youโre perceived. Engaging broadly across the organization leads to better outcomes. Aim to be known as someone open-minded, proactive, and inclusive, fostering performance and collaboration.
Being Relatable and Empathetic
Embrace humility, listening, and empathy. Practicing empathy in interactions with peers and team members creates magic. Remember, your network is your net worthโinvest in relating to and championing others.
DOWNLOAD the info sheet.
โI take pride in tailoring and customizing all of my keynote talks. No one keynote is typically the same although one of my most popular keynotes is titled “The Elephants in the Leadership Room.” Bottom line? I am an expert in leadership, corporate culture, and organizational performance who is hired to help you change the behaviour of your attendees. I want them to think, feel, and act differently at the end of my talk.โ
~Dan Pontefract
Looking to download a detailed document that outlines outcomes, Danโs credibility, content areas, what to expect, and why you would use him at your event โ face-to-face or virtual?
By choice or out of necessity, the manner in which many workers make a living is undergoing a fundamental change. And to make a living is to accept that there is a congenital bond between work and life, between what people do and how they live.
The problem? Work-life balance is not the answer. The rising rate of employee burnout is a sign. In this talk, Dan Pontefract provides an assessment of the current state of work and life, offering an alternative. We must create the conditions to bloom in both work and life, not balance. After all, people bring their work into their lives and their lives into their work; an improved work-life model is vital.
Dan will introduce a new, if not more benevolent work-life philosophy. Itโs time for leaders to understand what it means to adopt a Work-Life Bloom mindset. Yes, people at all levels of the organization need to bloom not balance. Find out how itโs done.
OUTCOMES:
There are only two kinds of leadership in this world: leading self and leading others. Itโs that simple, only two. Your ultimate goal is to master and deliver on them both. Now, more than ever, how you lead yourself and others might become the defining moment of your career. Perhaps even your life.
There are nine key & critical leadership lessons that make up a โLead. Care. Win.โ leader. Considerate and engaging leadersโones who fully understand the critical importance of crafting meaningful, respectful relationshipsโare people who know how to truly reach and build bonds with their team members with these nine lessons.
Every human interaction is crucial. Every exchange can be mutually beneficial. The bottom line is that when you care enough to champion others, the workplace becomes happily engaged and your organization benefits in more ways than one. Do you care?
OUTCOMES:
Having a sense of purpose has become table stakes for many employees at work. Equally important, todayโs organizations are being pressured to begin exhibiting purpose in their operating practices. If there is a positive interconnection between both, the benefits will be felt by all stakeholders. Including you!
Dan Pontefract refers to this balanced state of purpose as the โsweet spot.โ The alignment of purpose between self, role and organization is critically important for both employees and leaders.
The more a leader can assist team members to understand this alignment of purpose, the quicker everyone will recognize how important the โsweet spotโ is to an engaging and fulfilling life and place of work. The quicker an employee defines, develops and decides their purposeโalongside how bought in they are to the organizationโs purposeโthe more engaged and innovative they will be in their role โฆ and in life.
OUTCOMES:
Leaders in any organization seeking to improve productivity and business results must first start with their own operating culture.
To improve organizational culture is to build up and unleash behaviours that permit employees to connect and collaborate with one another effortlessly. An employee only becomes engaged when the culture is open, transparent, communicative, collaborative, and trustworthy. These are just some of the behaviours that must define how an organization operates.
Dan Pontefract implores organizations to rethink their workplace culture by instituting systemic-wide methods that encourage people to work together versus operating in silos or competitively. The engagement of employees occurs as a result of how they feel about and interact with the organizationโs culture.
There is a way and Dan can show you how to turn your culture into a collaborative, competitive advantage.
OUTCOMES:
There is a crisis brewing. We have lost the ability to think critically, to be creative, and to contemplate ideas of the unknown. Itโs becoming a calamity.
Distractions, social media, technology, and an incessant demand for short-term results over long-term planning are the big winners. In order to mitigate such calamities including being โcrazy busyโ and the pressure to โdo more with less,โ individuals must return to a state of symmetry between the three components of productive thought: dreaming, deciding and doing.
In this talk, Dan Pontefract introduces tangible, actionable strategies to improve the way we think as organizations and individuals through the cyclical process of Creative, Critical, and Applied Thinking.
To become an Open Thinker, one must understand the relationship between reflection and action, and how it can negatively or positively affect an outcome. It is time to Dream, Decide, Do, and Repeat.
OUTCOMES:
Dan is deeply honoured to have been asked to deliver four different TEDx Talks. Each of them has targeted a specific audience, yet in totality, they tell a story about Danโs passion: helping people reach their full potential. You can watch each of them below.
Download Danโs Speaker Overview document in PDF format that outlines what to expect, and why you would use him at your event.
If youโre an event planner / organizer, follow this link to download everything you need to get ready for Dan to deliver his talk to your audience (bio, headshots, intros, music, riders, and so on).
Just fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch right away.