Dan Pontefract

Work-Life Bloom

Winner of the 2024 Gold Medal Axiom Business Book Awards
Recipient of Thinkers50 2024 Best New Management Book

“Work–Life Bloom: How to Nurture a Team That Flourishes” by Dan Pontefract offers a revolutionary approach to merging work and personal life. Pontefract, using global research, interviews, and personal insights, critiques the outdated concept of work–life balance. He suggests that striving for balance often leads to burnout and dissatisfaction. Instead, he advocates for a holistic “blooming” in both spheres.

Pontefract introduces six work factors — trust, belonging, value, purpose, strategy, and norms — and six life factors — relationships, skills, well-being, meaning, agency, and respect. These are crucial for fostering an integrated work-life ecosystem. The book provides practical solutions for leaders to cultivate this environment, emphasizing the need for a seamless integration of professional and personal elements for true fulfillment.

“Work–Life Bloom” is essential reading for leaders seeking to enhance their influence and create a flourishing team environment.

Buy "Work-Life Bloom" at:

In Work-Life Bloom, Dan Pontefract showcases an insightful and nuanced perspective on work and life. This book is a compass for leaders who aspire to nurture a fulfilling and flourishing professional setting with their teams.

Dr. Ranjay Gulati
Harvard Business School Professor and author of "Deep Purpose"
The best leaders not only enable people to do great work, they help people live a great life. This book will give you the tools to both grow your talent and help everyone on your team be at their best at work and beyond. If you want to grow as a leader, read Work-Life Bloom.

Liz Wiseman
New York Times bestselling author of "Multipliers" and "Impact Players"
Work-Life Bloom is a game-changing book that challenges conventional notions of work-life balance. Dan skillfully exposes the flaws in our current approach and offers a refreshing perspective on how leaders can create environments where people truly thrive. With personal stories, profound research, and practical insights, Dan shows us how to foster fulfillment, rest, creativity, joy, and purpose within the workplace. This book is a must-read for leaders who are committed to building teams that not only survive but truly thrive — unlocking the full potential of their people and driving extraordinary results.

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
Thinkers50 #1 Executive Coach and New York Times bestselling author of "The Earned Life," "Triggers," and "What Got You Here Won’t Get You There"
Dan Pontefract’s Work-Life Bloom recognizes how our “Working Together” Leadership, Management System, and its Connected Culture of Love by Design contributes to our one integrated life and life’s work of service, which is our love made visible. Great job Dan!

Alan Mulally
Former CEO Boeing Commercial Airplanes and the Ford Motor Company
A must read book by Dan Pontefract who challenges the concept of work-life balance by introducing Work-Life Bloom. Highly recommended.

Martin Lindstrom
The New York Times best-selling author of "Buyology" and "Small Data"
Work-Life Bloom challenges the status quo. It’s an essential read for anyone committed to building an amazing workplace and great employee experience.

Dr. Alex Osterwalder
CEO Strategyzer & IMD Visiting Professor
When people bloom at work and in life, they flourish and your organization does as well. This book offers both soil and seeds – frameworks and tactics – that you can use to help unlock the greatness of your people and teams.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Author of "The Coaching Habit" and "How to Work with (Almost) Anyone"
Dan Pontefract’s Work-Life Bloom turns the conventional wisdom about work and life on its head. If you truly want your teams to thrive, read this refreshing, indispensable guide now.

Dorie Clark
Work-life balance? We’ve been laboring to achieve it for the last two decades. Clearly, we need a new approach and a new metaphor. So we should all be grateful to Dan Pontefract for providing it with Work-Life Bloom. Dan offers not just sound principles but actions we can take to bloom together– testing our soil, remembering to water. Helpful, inspiring, and fresh.

Sally Helgessen
Author of "Rising Together," "How Women Rise," and "The Female Advantage"
In this timely and compelling book, Dan Pontefract uproots outdated ideas about work and tosses them in the compost heap. Then, with a graceful mix of advice and analysis, he shows leaders at every level how to plant new seeds of possibility for themselves and their teams.

Daniel H. Pink
#1 New York Times bestselling author of THE POWER OF REGRET, WHEN, and DRIVE
With Work-Life Bloom, Dan Pontefract offers us the seeds to grow not just better workplaces but better lives. A must-read for leaders navigating the modern world.

Erica Dhawan
WSJ bestselling author of “Digital Body Language”

Work–LIfe Bloom in a nutshell

Dan Pontefract

DAN’S PURPOSE
We’re not here to see through each other; we’re here to see each other through.

For 20 years, Dan held senior roles at SAP, TELUS, and Business Objects, leading corporate culture change, leadership development, employee experience and overall performance improvement. Ever since, he has worked with organizations worldwide including the likes of Salesforce, Amgen, State of Tennessee, Nestlé, Canada Post, Autodesk, Manulife, Nutrien, City of Toronto, BMO, D2L, among many others.

He has on-the-ground experience to improve your leadership and corporate culture. Indeed, the future of work is now.

Dan is the award-winning author of five leadership books: WORK-LIFE BLOOM, LEAD. CARE. WIN., OPEN TO THINK, THE PURPOSE EFFECT and FLAT ARMY.

A renowned leadership keynote speaker, Dan has presented at four different TED events and delivers roughly 50 keynotes per year. Download his speaker/facilitator overview document. In addition to keynotes, Dan facilitates workshops as well as small or large consulting engagements. He writes for Forbes and Harvard Business Review and is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, Gustavson School of Business. Download his short or long bio.

Dan also hosts the popular Leadership NOW program; interviews in audio, video, and Forbes column formats. Dan is always in pursuit of what makes leadership better… now.

WORK-LIFE BLOOM

PERSONAL ASSESSMENT

Find out if you’re currently blooming, budding, stunted or in need of renewal through the Work-Life Bloom Personal Assessment.

Start Assessment

Work-Life Bloom

Work–LIfe Bloom in a nutshell

Dan Pontefract

PERSONAL ASSESSMENT

Media Appearances