David has an incredibly engaging style, and I loved the way he introduced fluidly stories, research and models in a conversational way - it was like watching art!
David Burkus
Helping Leaders Build Their Best Team Ever
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Fee Range
$25,000Travels From
Tulsa, OK
David Burkus
Biography
One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration.
A skilled researcher and inspiring communicator, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings.
A former business school professor, David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening, they’re evidence-based and immensely practical–offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately.
David Burkus
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David Burkus
Featured Keynote Programs
Best Team Ever
The Surprising Science Of High-performing Teams
Every leader wants to build a high-performing team, and nearly everyone wants to be on one. But most teams fail to perform at their optimal level. We try to recruit star players, improve compensation, give copious feedback, obsess over engagement surveys, and in the end, we still don’t have the results we want and often feel we're out of options. But the secret to unlocking performance isn't recruiting new teammates or designing the perfect incentive. The most effective teams became that way by building the habits and culture of the team that allows for optimal performance.
Talent doesn't make the team; the team makes the talent.
That’s what building the best team ever is all about. When you focus on improving the culture of the teams you lead–or the teams you're on–you create an environment that improves the performance of everyone on it. In this entertaining and enlightening keynote, Dr. David Burkus reveals the secrets of the highest-performing teams in the world and how you can get started tomorrow applying those secrets. Leaders will leave with a clear and concise understanding of how the culture of their team affects its performance, and a simple and practical blueprint for how to build the best team ever.
The Truth About Trust
Elevating Teams Through Psychological Safety
Collaboration is essential to teamwork. But it can be difficult to collaborate with people whose perspectives, preferences, and personalities are different from our own. It’s hard enough to build trust among the team and collaborate properly, but keeping that trust is even harder. That’s why high-performing teams don’t merely trust each other, they work to create a psychologically safe environment. An environment of trust and respect.
Trust is great, but trusting acts that aren’t met with a respectful response quickly diminish the culture and performance of a team.
In this evidence-based, yet highly engaging keynote, Dr. David Burkus reveals how psychological safety is the key to leveraging all the diverse minds on our team, coming up with the best ideas, and finding the best solutions. You’ll learn how to increase trust on the teams you serve, but also how to model the respectful, collaborative behavior that keeps that trust level high—even in times of setbacks, failures, and conflict.
Innovation Is A Team Sport
The Science Of Creative Collaboration
As the challenges organizations face seem to compound, we need innovative ideas more than ever. But many teams struggle to find and implement their brightest ideas. Much of this struggle comes from a common misconception: you can’t create an innovative company teaching individuals to be more creative. Instead, research reveals that “lone creators” are historically rare and for most innovations, creativity is a team sport.
Teams bring a broader perspective and a more diverse set of solutions, but only if they know how to leverage the wisdom of everyone involved.
By combining insights from social science research and practical takeaways from the most innovative companies and teams, Dr. David Burkus outlines a prescription for any team or organization to work more creatively together, without silos, politics, or frustration. You'll learn how to leverage the expertise of the whole team, how to harness conflict to strengthen ideas, and how to find and implement the best solutions to the challenges your teams face.
Leading From Anywhere
How To Build High-performing Remote And Hybrid Teams
The debate over hybrid work and returning to the office keeps raging, and leaders' plans for how to manage their team just keep changing. The desire for autonomy among employees is at an all-time high, while feelings of connection and belonging to the team are at all-time lows. It’s enough to make a leader cry “when are we going back to normal?”
But why not go forward to something even better? It’s undeniable that the future of work is working from anywhere, which means leaders need the skills to lead from anywhere.
In this meticulously researched, refreshingly practical keynote, Dr. David Burkus provides managers and teams with a complete guide to leading in remote and hybrid environments, packed with everyday examples and illuminating insights. You'll learn how to keep team culture strong even if the team isn't together and how to manage performance with people who aren't present. And you’ll discover how to balance team members’ newfound autonomy with the need for accountability to the team and organization.
This talk provides everything you’ll need to survive and thrive as the leader of a remote team—which is something all leaders will need to consider themselves from now on.
David Burkus
Featured Books
Best Team Ever: The Surprising Science of High-Performing Teams
by David Burkus
Talent doesn’t make the team—the team makes the talent. Why are some teams more motivated, innovative, and successful than others? Why do some groups of talented people fall short against lesser teams? And how do you go about building a high-performing team?
Dr. David Burkus understands that to build the best team, you must first shape the habits and practices that bring out the best in each member. Best Team Ever reveals what some of the world’s most effective teams do, and shows you how you can do the same.
Banish the frustration of having a team of talented people who can’t perform optimally. Discover how to develop a clear, concise understanding of how your team’s culture affects its performance. Follow this simple, practical blueprint to cultivate a Best Team Ever environment and set your team on a path to success.
Leading from Anywhere: Unlock the Power and Performance of Remote Teams
by David Burkus
The ultimate guide to leading remote teams, tackling the key challenges that managers face—from hiring and onboarding new members from afar to building culture remotely, tracking productivity, communicating speedily, and retaining star employeesIt’s undeniable that we’re entering a new era of remote work. So, how can managers ensure that their businesses run as usual when the way that we work looks so … unusual? Top business thought leader David Burkus has mined the very best research on virtual teams and case studies of companies that have not just survived but thrived through remote work to provide managers with the field guide to leading remotely, packed with everyday examples and illuminating insights. Structured around the lifecycle of working on a team, Burkus tackles the key inflection points and challenges that managers face in this new landscape from taking the team remote and adding new members, to communicating effectively and quickly, managing performance, keeping the team engaged, and celebrating individual departures or adjourning the team as a whole. If you want your remote team to have a harmonious work-life balance while increasing productivity, this is your indispensable guide.
Under New Management: How Leading Organizations Are Upending Business as Usual
by David Burkus
“Makes a provocative case that you should put customers second, close open offices, and ditch performance appraisals.”—Adam Grant, best-selling author of Originals
“Under New Management is a lively, provocative must-read.”—Whitney Johnson, author of Disrupt Yourself.
Why accepted management practices don’t work—and how innovative companies are changing the rules
Should your employees know each other’s salaries? Is your vacation policy harming productivity? Does your hiring process undermine your team? David Burkus argues that the traditional management playbook is full of outdated, counterproductive practices, and he reveals how the alternative management revolution has already started at companies like Netflix, Zappos, Google, and others. Burkus investigates behind their office doors to show how these companies are reevaluating and reinventing the most basic management principles, like hiring, firing, vacation policy, and even office floor plan, and enhancing their business’s success as a result.
“Is your company ready for a radical departure from twentieth-century management standards? David Burkus has collected the stories of dozens of companies that are standing the old rules on their heads. Even better, Burkus shows how you can do it, too.”—Daniel H. Pink, best-selling author of Drive and To Sell Is Human
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“If you are going to read one book on being a better manager in the next year, start here. David Burkus has assembled the most practical research and provocative ideas into an incredibly quick read.”—Tom Rath, best-selling author of StrengthsFinder 2.0
David Burkus
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