Today’s business landscape is one of contradiction. Leaders are expected to maintain productivity while addressing rising rates of burnout, drive innovation while combating change fatigue, build more meaningful connections in an increasingly remote world, and the list goes on.
It’s no wonder that leadership and optimizing performance were some of our most requested topics in 2024 as organizations and leaders continue to navigate a rapidly evolving — and often contradictory — business landscape.
Throughout the year, we enlisted our experts on burnout and sustainable performance, workplace culture, human-centric leadership, and more to explore these critical topics on our blog. Below is a round-up of some of our most popular articles of 2024, which share actionable insights and innovative strategies to help you thrive in today’s complex leadership landscape.
Bring these ideas to life in 2025 by booking a leadership and/or performance expert to speak at your next event.
Authentic Leadership: The Key to Success in the Future of Work
Dr. Chika Stacy Oriuwa on the Power of Authentic Leadership
Authentic leadership became an in-demand topic in 2024 as it addresses the needs of today’s workforce and lays the foundation for creating an inclusive organizational culture
A multi-faceted powerhouse, Dr. Chika Stacy Oriuwa’s journey exemplifies the power of authentic leadership in every aspect. She is an accomplished physician, nationally ranked spoken word poet, and thought leader, who has driven transformative change within Canada’s healthcare system and beyond. She credits four principles of authentic leadership for helping her drive change and succeed through adversity and explored each one in her incredibly impactful keynote at our Showcase 2024 event.
By sharing her journey to becoming a medical trailblazer, Chika illustrated the impact of authentic leadership — how it’s key in managing and leading change — and, most importantly, how to embody these principles and become a leader that people actually want to follow.
Validation is one of the most powerful tools a leader can have. It lets people know that you hear them, see them, and are here to support them. In turn, grateful leaders are seen as having more integrity and being more trustworthy and authentic.
Unlocking Elite Performance
Tessa Virtue on Life After Sport, Positive Psychology, and the Key to Sustainable Performance
High performing teams are prone to burnout. To combat that, it’s essential for leaders to not only learn how to motivate their teams but prioritize their well-being to sustain high performance.
The winner of three Olympic gold medals — five medals in total — Tessa Virtue is the most decorated figure skater in Olympic history. Today, she is an executive advisor with Deloitte, where she works with the firm’s senior leaders and their clients to unlock potential and empower sustained high performance.
Tessa joined us as part of our “Inside Our Boardroom” video Q&A series, where she shared insight into her life after sport as well as the strategies she employed firsthand to sustain high performance as an elite athlete. She also delved into positive psychology and how it’s the key to unlocking healthy high performance and sustaining excellence, both within leaders and their teams.
So much of our work and so much of psychology is based on, how do I get from minus three to zero? Well, positive psychology thinks about going from zero to plus three and those are the difference makers. Those are the marginal gains that empower people to feel energized, focused, motivated, and connected.
People-First Leadership
With employee disengagement at an all-time high, embracing a more human-centric approach to work — one that puts people first — is the only way to drive long-term success.
Hamza Khan, a future of work and leadership expert, shows leaders how to unlock the tremendous power of a loyal, thriving, and innovative workforce by shifting from outdated, top-down leadership models to a more inclusive, people-first approach.
His “Inside Our Boardroom” video Q&A explores some of today’s most prevalent challenges facing people leaders today — from employee disengagement to low productivity, burnout to a changing workforce — and why rehumanizing workplaces is the winning strategy of the future.
It’s almost a bit of a paradox that technology will enable a more human-centered future of work, but I truly believe in the very profound potential of technology to liberate not just leaders, but everyone in the workplace.
Balancing Accountability and Employee Wellness
The Challenge of Modern Leadership: Balancing Accountability and Empathy in the Workplace
There’s a fine line leaders must walk in today’s workplace between balancing accountability and prioritizing employee well-being — a byproduct of the pandemic that’s proving easier said than done.
When the pandemic first started, good leaders understood that they needed to be compassionate and flexible to best support their employees through the profound stresses and logistical challenges they were suddenly experiencing. Now, four years later, productivity isn’t rebounding as expected.
As an expert on building effective teams and increasing leadership effectiveness, Liane Davey has been watching this trend closely. She believes it’s time for a reset — time to usher in a new era of greater personal accountability without overcorrection, which risks creating a toxic workplace. The secret, Liane says, is helping leaders understand that accountability and empathy aren’t mutually exclusive.
In this blog, Liane shares practical techniques to increase accountability in the workplace and drive results in a psychologically safe way.
An empathetic leader is someone who can appreciate a situation from the employee’s perspective and make decisions within that context. However, being empathetic does not include lowering standards, tolerating underperformance, or accepting behaviour that compromises the team, the business, or the customer.
Building Meaningful Relationships
Every Conversation Counts: How to Build Extraordinary Relationships with Riaz Meghji
In an age of polarization, disconnection, and shallow substitutes for real relationships, every leader needs to know how to build and maintain meaningful relationships with clients and teams alike, especially in our hybrid reality.
At Showcase 2024, human connection expert Riaz Meghji captivated the audience with his emotionally charged keynote. He shared insight into how we can make every conversation count and illustrated the power of empathetic curiosity to drive meaningful connections at home and work.
If we do not make time for connection, we will have to make time for misunderstanding. Research shows that 90% of the time, we’ll send a text or an email and think we’re being crystal clear, and 50% of the time, our message is misunderstood.
Publishing 2-3 blog posts weekly, we share insights and advice from our leading roster of experts on the topics that you and your audiences want to hear about. Follow us on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram to stay in the know.
Meet More Leadership Keynote Speakers
We’re fortunate to work with several renowned leadership thought leaders and practitioners who, by sharing their firsthand experience, the latest research, and dynamic case studies, equip audiences with the knowledge and strategies needed to thrive in the future of work.
Below is a selection of a few more leadership experts who, in addition to those featured above, are some of our most requested speakers in 2024. Contact us to book your 2025 event today and take the first step towards transforming your organization.
Yassmin Abdel-Magied
Yassmin Abdel-Magied expertly combines personal experience and research to inform leaders on the tools of transformative leadership and how to be a just and empowering leader for the 21st century.
Ron Tite
A purpose-driven leadership expert, Ron Tite equips audiences with his leadership playbook that delves deep into the powerful role purpose plays in driving long-term growth and team engagement.
Ivan Joseph
Self-confidence, cohesion, and expectations drive team performance. Dr. Ivan Joseph shows leaders how to cultivate these qualities in their teams and build inclusive, high-performing workplace cultures.
