David Mead
About
About David Mead - Top Leadership Speaker, Best-selling Author:
David Mead helps leaders and teams implement simple but powerful ideas that allow them to influence others with genuine humanity, no matter their role or title. He is bringing humanity back to work. Since 2009, David has worked with over 300 companies in 23 countries. In that time, he has discovered a pattern that is present with every leader worth following. He now helps others replicate and follow that pattern.
In 2009 David was the second person to join speaker and author, Simon Sinek’s team. For the next 10 years, David helped share Simon’s simple, inspiring ideas through speaking and workshops.
In 2017, David applied his years of practical experience and learning and coauthored, with Peter Docker and Simon Sinek, Find Your Why: a practical guide for discovering the WHY of an individual, team or organization. It has sold over 600,000 copies and is translated into over 25 languages.
Since Dec, 2019 David has focused on helping leaders implement what he calls (un)Common Sense™ Leadership. He shares a simple framework you can draw on a napkin, that allows each of us to lead and influence others with genuine humanity, no matter our role or title.
The result? Higher performance, innovation, collaboration, retention and importantly, well-being for leaders and their teams.
David is a no-stress presenter clients love working with. He brings a relatable, human approach to his ideas and guides people to identify frictionless daily practices they can use immediately after the session.
Topics
What David Mead Talks About:
Lead With (un)Common Sense™: How great leaders unlock high performance
Great leadership isn’t a secret—it’s common sense. We can all name the traits of the best leaders we’ve followed. Yet, despite being obvious, those traits are uncommon in leadership today. Why? Because although we know them, sometimes we just don’t put them into practice.
We allow things like outside pressure or human friction to get in the way. These are things like:
- Office politics & gossip
- Deadlines & time pressure
- Resistance to feedback
- Blame vs. ownership
- Poor collaboration
Most leaders try to fix these issues with policies and processes—but rules don’t build trust. Systems don’t inspire ownership. No structure can replace the human dynamics that make or break a team.
The real solution? Leading with (un)Common Sense.
In this interactive talk, David shares science-backed insights, real-world leadership challenges, and a simple, napkin-sketch framework that helps leaders reduce friction, build trust, and create teams that people want to be part of.
In this session, you’ll:
- Learn simple daily practices to reduce friction and improve team dynamics.
- Apply a framework that naturally increases trust, accountability, and engagement.
- Shift from managing people to leading a culture of trust, connection, and psychological safety.
- The best leadership principles aren’t revolutionary—they’re (un)Common Sense. And the leaders who actually practice them are the ones people choose to follow.
Turn Attrition To Attraction: How to keep the grass greener on your side of the fence
Every organization strives for high performance, growth, productivity and results. And often, organizations don’t realize they are self-sabotaging those efforts through the experience they create for their people.
When the culture we talk about doesn’t align with the culture our people experience, Culture Dissonance occurs. People go into self-preservation mode and they find it more difficult to trust and develop connections with others. Healthy, productive environments have Culture Congruence, where the stated culture aligns with daily behaviors.
In this interactive talk, David draws on his personal experience, research and patterns he has observed in leaders and organizations around the world. He will identify the symptoms of Culture Dissonance and explore three specific leadership traits that, when put into practice, lead to Culture Congruence.
As a result of this session, participants will:
- Have a greater awareness of their leadership impact
- Understand a framework that can help them lead with greater consistency
- Have tangible tools that increase performance, retention, transparent communication, well-being and more
Recent Publications
David was a pleasure to work with. As an event planner, it’s rare to find a speaker who’s both highly organized and deeply invested in lasting impact. His engaging, customized presentation delivered tangible takeaways that truly resonated. With excellent content and a personable style, he captivated the audience and powerfully reconnected them with their humanity. He’s the real deal
SVP & COO, California Grocers Association
