Jacob Morgan
Most leadership development investment targets the wrong variable. Organisations spend heavily on skills programmes while the real gap – between how executives believe they lead and how their people experience that leadership – goes unmeasured. When leadership style was built for a stable environment, it tends to fail quietly: engagement falls, talent leaves, and the organisation cannot understand why its capable leaders are not producing capable cultures.
Jacob Morgan is a futurist and bestselling author whose research – spanning 140 CEO interviews and surveys of 14,000 employees – gives organisations a tested framework for closing the gap between how leaders think they lead and what their people actually experience.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jacob Morgan
- His “Vulnerable Leader Equation” offers a specific, research-backed counter-argument to the dominant leadership vulnerability narrative – making the case that vulnerability without competence actively undermines trust, not builds it. Boards and CHROs get a framework they can act on, not a platitude.
- The research underpinning The Future Leader (140 CEO interviews, 14,000-person LinkedIn survey) gives senior audiences data that reflects their own peer group back at them – a rare source of authority in a crowded leadership development market.
- His founder role at Future of Work Leaders – a by-invitation CHRO community including members from Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and Lego – means his frameworks are stress-tested against the most senior people leaders in the world, not just conference rooms.
- The Future Leader won the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021, providing external, peer-validated credibility beyond self-reported authority.
- Organisations navigating the tension between AI adoption and human leadership capability get a framework that treats the two as interdependent – not competing priorities – grounded in his three-environment model of employee experience (culture, technology, physical workspace).
Biography highlights
- Bestselling author of six books published by Wiley and McGraw-Hill, covering collaboration, the future of work, employee experience, leadership, and vulnerability
- The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020) – winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021
- Research base includes 140+ CEO interviews and a LinkedIn-partnered survey of nearly 14,000 employees for The Future Leader; 100+ CEO interviews and a DDI-partnered survey of 14,000 employees for Leading With Vulnerability
- Founder of Future of Work Leaders, a by-invitation global CHRO community with members from Johnson & Johnson, Dow, Lego, Northrop Grumman, and Neiman Marcus
- Contributed to and cited in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, NPR, and CNN
- Host of Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan; featured guest on the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work podcast
Biography
Jacob Morgan has spent more than a decade asking a question most organisations avoid: why do capable leaders so consistently fail to produce the organisations they intend? His answer, built across six books and primary research involving hundreds of CEOs and tens of thousands of employees, is both precise and uncomfortable – the model of leadership most executives were trained in was designed for a world that no longer exists.
His most cited framework, the Vulnerable Leader Equation, makes a specific argument: vulnerability in isolation is not a leadership quality, it is a liability. The research underpinning Leading With Vulnerability (Wiley, 2024) – drawn from over 100 CEO interviews and a DDI-partnered survey of 14,000 employees – shows that leaders who combine openness about their gaps with clear, competence-driven responses to those gaps outperform peers on trust, engagement, and team performance. It is a direct challenge to the feel-good vulnerability conversation, and it is grounded in data.
The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020), winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021, applied the same research discipline to the broader question of what leading through disruption actually requires. Based on interviews with over 140 CEOs at organisations including Unilever, Mastercard, and KPMG – paired with a LinkedIn-partnered survey of nearly 14,000 employees – it identified four specific mindsets and five specific skills that define readiness for leadership in uncertain conditions.
Morgan is also the founder of Future of Work Leaders, a by-invitation CHRO community whose members include Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and Lego. His work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management Review. He hosts the Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan podcast and has been a featured guest on the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work series.
Key speaking topics
- Future-ready leadership
- Vulnerability and trust in organisations
- Employee experience strategy
- Leadership in the age of AI
- Future of work
- Organisational culture and performance
- Executive development and people strategy
Ideal for
- CHROs and CPOs navigating the gap between leadership investment and employee outcomes
- Senior leadership teams preparing for AI-driven workforce transformation
- Boards and executive committees reviewing leadership capability and succession
- HR and people functions building future-ready culture frameworks
Audience outcomes
- A named framework – the Vulnerable Leader Equation – for understanding when and how vulnerability strengthens rather than undermines leadership authority
- The four mindsets and five skills that Morgan’s CEO research identified as defining future-ready leaders, with practical application at individual and team level
- A clearer model for diagnosing where employee experience is breaking down across culture, technology, and physical environment
- Research-grounded perspective on how AI is reshaping the leadership role – and what human capability this places at a premium
- Practical tools for assessing the gap between how leaders perceive their impact and how their people experience it
Talks
Draws on 140+ CEO interviews and a 14,000-person survey to present a research-tested model of the mindsets and skills that distinguish effective leaders in conditions of disruption and rapid change.
Key takeaways:
- The four mindsets and five essential skills that define future-ready leadership
- Why traditional leadership approaches are breaking down and what is replacing them
- A practical framework for leading through disruption, transformation, and uncertainty
Uses primary research from 100+ CEO interviews and a 14,000-person DDI survey to show how the Vulnerable Leader Equation – combining openness with competence – builds trust and drives performance where vulnerability alone does not.
Key takeaways:
- The distinction between being vulnerable and leading with vulnerability, and why it matters for authority and trust
- The eight attributes of leaders who apply vulnerability effectively
- A research-backed framework for using vulnerability as a leadership tool without undermining credibility
Presents a structured framework – developed from research with 100+ CHROs at organisations including Verizon, Delta, Hilton, IBM, and LVMH – for designing employee experience as a strategic leadership responsibility rather than an HR function.
Key takeaways:
- The eight laws of employee experience and their relationship to organisational performance
- Why employee experience is a leadership accountability, not an HR one
- Practical tools for building a future-ready, human-centred workplace strategy in an AI-driven environment
Videos
Testimonials
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Asia Pacific | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| Europe | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| Middle East & Africa | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| South America | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| United Kingdom | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| US East Coast | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| US West Coast | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| Virtual | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |