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.
Meet Dan Pontefract
Some of Dan's Trusted Clients
“Dan 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, ‘There is no ownership without belonging.’”
Christian Pantel, Vice-President, D2L
Signature Keynote: The Elephants in the Leadership Room
In today’s landscape, there are significant challenges that we often overlook: ‘the elephants in the leadership room.’ It’s crucial to not only acknowledge these ‘elephants’ but also learn how to navigate them whether you’re a leader of people or not.
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 you’re 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 worth—invest in relating to and championing others.
DOWNLOAD the info sheet.
Full Range of Keynote Topics and Content Areas
“I 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.”
~Dan Pontefract
- Work-Life Bloom
- Open Leadership
- Purpose & Meaning
- Collaborative Cultures
- Employee Experience
- Remote & Hybrid Work
- Creative & Critical Thinking
- Organizational Learning
- The Laws of Good Business
- Leadership Conferences
- Association Conferences
- HR / People & Culture / CHRO
- IT / Technology / CIO
- Sales / Sales Kickoff
- C-Suite / Boards
- Learning / Education / Training
- High Potential / High Performer
- Virtual / Online Events
- There’s No Such Thing as Work-Life Balance
- Do You Dare to Share? Collaboration and Networking 101
- You’re Crazy Busy: Now What?
- The Good DEEDS of the Organization
- The Three Types of Purpose
- It’s Time to Declare Your Purpose
- Do You Care? The Importance of Empathy as a Leader
Download Dan's Speaker Sheet
Looking to download a detailed document that outlines outcomes, Dan’s credibility, content areas, what to expect, and why you would use him at your event – face-to-face or virtual?
Other Sample Keynote Descriptions and Downloads
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. It’s 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 it’s done.
OUTCOMES:
- Learn why work-life balance is a myth and how rising levels of anxiety, burnout, and stress are related symptoms
- Be introduced to the work-life bloom model — an improved personal operating system for leaders and team members
- Get insights from research conducted globally across 8,000+ leaders and team members across 15 countries
- Discover the 12 work-life factors that allow people to bloom in both work and life
- Analyze whether you are blooming, budding, stunted or renewing in your work-life persona
There are only two kinds of leadership in this world: leading self and leading others. It’s 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 “Lead. Care. Win.” leader. Considerate and engaging leaders—ones who fully understand the critical importance of crafting meaningful, respectful relationships—are 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:
- Be relatable and empathetic
- Act not out of ego but out of purpose
- Share knowledge to build a wise organization
- Stay present and attentive to the needs of others
- Embrace change and the opportunity for growth it offers
- Stay curious and adopt lifelong learning
- Think and act with clarity
- Commit to balance and inclusivity in all your dealings
- Act with humility and thoughtfulness
- 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.
Having a sense of purpose has become table stakes for many employees at work. Equally important, today’s 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 ‘sweet spot.’ 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 ‘sweet spot’ is to an engaging and fulfilling life and place of work. The quicker an employee defines, develops and decides their purpose—alongside how bought in they are to the organization’s purpose—the more engaged and innovative they will be in their role … and in life.
OUTCOMES:
- What makes up the “sweet spot” of purpose
- Recognize the difference between a job, career, and purpose mindset
- How your sense of purpose is linked to defining your best future self
- Distinguish the traits that make up purpose-driven people
- Learn ways in which to bring purpose into daily and long-term planning in life & work
- Apply methods and discover examples of purpose-based leadership and how it can positively impact your productivity and engagement
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 organization’s culture.
There is a way and Dan can show you how to turn your culture into a collaborative, competitive advantage.
OUTCOMES:
- Why it’s so important to employ a “dare to share” attitude as a leader and on the team
- Learn the simple yet vitally important collaborative leader action model — where all levels of the organization can participate
- The six obstacles to collaborative cultures and why teams operate in silos
- How learning, recognition, technology, and internal HR systems can help or hinder your chance for collaborative cultures
- Gain insights into the alignment between a leadership philosophy and collaboration model that can increase employee engagement and overall performance
There is a crisis brewing. We have lost the ability to think critically, to be creative, and to contemplate ideas of the unknown. It’s 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 “crazy busy” and the pressure to “do more with less,” 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:
- Recognize and understand the effects poor thinking is having on an individual’s and an organization’s performance
- Pinpoint the difference between reflection and action – being made aware of indifferent, inflexible and indecisive thinking and how it affects our daily lives
- Realize how technology can both help and hinder everyone’s state of open thinking
- Distinguish the traits that make up Open Thinking—and learn ways in which to bring them into your daily habits
Talks
TalksDan 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 Dan’s passion: helping people reach their full potential. You can watch each of them below.
Accolades and Information
Inc. named him one of the top 100 leadership speakers.
Download Dan’s Speaker Overview document in PDF format that outlines what to expect, and why you would use him at your event.
If you’re 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).
Book Dan Today
Just fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch right away.
