Dan Pontefract
Dan Pontefract is a renowned leadership strategist, author, and keynote speaker with over two decades of experience in senior executive roles at companies such as SAP, TELUS, and Business Objects. In these roles, he focused on corporate culture change, leadership development, employee experience, and overall performance improvement. Since then, he has worked with organizations worldwide, including Salesforce, Amgen, the State of Tennessee, Nestlé, Canada Post, Autodesk, BMO, the Government of Canada, Manulife, Nutrien, and the City of Toronto, among others. Dan has firsthand experience in turning leaders and corporate cultures into a competitive advantage, and he believes that the future of work is now.
Dan is an award-winning and best-selling author and has written five books.His third book, OPEN TO THINK, won the 2019 get Abstract International Book of the Year. His fourth LEAD. CARE. WIN. won the 2022 Nautilus Awards Silver Medal for Leadership. Dan also writes for Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and other outlets.
Speaking topics
- Collaborative Cultures: It's the Secret to Organizational Excellence
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:
- Learn why work-life balance is a lie 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 from 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.
- Purpose Fuels People: Why a Meaningful Role & Purpose-Driven Organization Matters
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:
Nine leadership lessons are discussed to ensure you care as a leader, including:- 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 & adopt lifelong learning.
- Think and act with clarity.
- Commit to balance and inclusivity in all your dealings.
- Act with humility and thoughtfulness.
- The Keys to Being a Truly Caring Leader: Lead. Care. Win.
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:
Nine leadership lessons are discussed to ensure you care as a leader, including:- 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 & adopt lifelong learning.
- Think and act with clarity.
- Commit to balance and inclusivity in all your dealings.
- Act with humility and thoughtfulness.
- The Keys to Flourishing in Work and Life: It's Not Work-Life Balance
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 to work-life balance. We must create the conditions for people to bloom in both work and life, not balance. After all, we bring our work into our lives and our lives into our work; an improved work-life model is vital.
Dan will introduce an improved work-life leadership 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 lie 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 from 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.
- We are Losing the Ability to Think and What to Do About It
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.