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Dan Pontefract

Leadership Strategist, Culture Change Expert, Author, Speaker

Dan Pontefract is an award-winning author and leadership strategist who helps organizations and leaders to bloom.

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Dan Pontefract's videos

What Dan Pontefract's clients say

Here is some of the feedback from audiences and clients who have worked with Dan.
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"Dan challenged us to have clarity of purpose, both as individuals and as an organization. He related inspiring stories drawing on his experience in business, technology and academia. As he said, ‘There is no ownership without belonging.’"

Christian Pantel, 
D2L

"Dan accomplished what we set out to do, which was not only to be inspirational, but also to leave everyone with tools and food for thought / self-reflection to improve their personal and professional lives."

Hermann Handa, 
FCT

"Dan not only brought his presentation to life with his charisma, but also content, style and presentation finesse. Our members were especially interested in his thought provoking and top of mind topic on the future of work and how we’re going to be leading the next generation of leaders."

Cheryl Goodwin, 
CPA

"One of the best motivational speakers we have had over the past 21 years."

CEO, 
Reboot Privacy & Security Conference

"Dan was excellent. He really took into account our briefing and developed a presentation that was spot on. Everyone learned something."

SVP Communications, 
CPPIB

"WOW what a talk! I have been inundated with positive feedback from your keynote all weekend. You hit the nail on the head in terms of what’s happening in our organization and your examples really resonated with our group. One of our Execs was really thankful for how you directly tackled the ‘elephants in our room.’"

Vice-President, 
Manulife

"Dan is a conference organizer’s ideal speaker. Not only did he inspire and energize our group, but he also masterfully adapted his content so it resonated with the audience and our conference theme. As a bonus, Dan is able to nimbly navigate to adjust to a reduced time slot when other speakers went over time without sacrificing the impact of his session."

Director and General Counsel, 
BCLMA

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Dan’s speaking themes

Languages: 

  • English
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Dan Pontefract's 2023 biography

Meet 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.

As an award-winning and best-selling author, Dan has written five books: WORK-LIFE BLOOM, LEAD. CARE. WIN., OPEN TO THINK, THE PURPOSE EFFECT, and FLAT ARMY. His third book, OPEN TO THINK, won the 2019 getAbstract 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.

Dan is a renowned keynote speaker who has presented at four TED events and delivers approximately 50 keynotes annually. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria’s Gustavson School of Business and has received over 25 industry, individual, and book awards. Furthermore, Dan hosts the popular Leadership NOW series, where he interviews famous thinkers, authors, CEOs, and other incredible leaders. Through these interviews, he seeks to understand what makes leadership and people better.

Before leaving the world of full-time gigs in 2018, Dan served as Chief Envisioner and Chief Learning Officer at TELUS, a Canadian telecommunications company with 50,000 global employees and over $14 billion in revenue. While at TELUS, he launched the Transformation Office, the TELUS MBA, and the TELUS Leadership Philosophy, all of which helped increase the company’s employee engagement to nearly 90%.

Prior to his ten years at TELUS, Dan held senior executive positions for 12 years with SAP, Business Objects, Crystal Decisions, and the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). Dan’s career is interwoven with corporate and academic experience, coupled with an MBA, B.Ed, and multiple industry certifications and awards. Notably, Dan is listed on the Thinkers50 Radar, HR Weekly’s 100 Most Influential People in HR, PeopleHum’s Top 200 Thought Leaders to Follow, and Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers.

In 2010, Dan was acknowledged by CLO as a Vanguard Award winner. In addition, he was a 2-time winner by the Corporate University Best in Class Awards of the Leader of the Year in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, SkillSoft awarded Dan the ‘Learning Leader of the Year’ for his work at TELUS, and CLO Magazine also bestowed the Learning in Practice

Innovation Award. He is also the recipient of the 2012 Brandon-Hall Gold Award in Strategy & Governance. In 2015, TELUS became a 10-time winner of the prestigious ATD BEST award under his leadership and was the first-ever recipient of the ATD Hall of Fame distinction.

Dan and his wife, Denise, have three children, two dogs and two cats and live in Victoria, Canada.

Dan’s latest books
Dan Pontefract Book

Articles and podcasts

Dan Pontefract, The Speaker Show
  • Podcast

Sep 2020

Ep. 138 – In discussion with Dan Pontefract

Dan Pontefract's 2023 talks & topics

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. We must create the conditions to bloom in both work and life, not balance. After all, people bring their work into their lives and their lives into their work; an improved work-life model is vital.

Dan will introduce a new, if not more benevolent work-life 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 myth 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 across 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

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:

  • 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 and adopt lifelong learning
  • Think and act with clarity
  • Commit to balance and inclusivity in all your dealings
  • Act with humility and thoughtfulness

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.

Purpose Fuels People: Why a Meaningful Role & Purpose-Driven Organization Matters

Having a sense of purpose has become table stakes for many employees at work. Equally important, today’s organizations are being pressured to begin exhibiting purpose in their operating practices. If there is a positive interconnection between both, the benefits will be felt by all stakeholders. Including you!

Dan Pontefract refers to this balanced state of purpose as the ‘sweet spot.’ The alignment of purpose between self, role and organization is critically important for both employees and leaders.

The more a leader can assist team members to understand this alignment of purpose, the quicker everyone will recognize how important the ‘sweet spot’ is to an engaging and fulfilling life and place of work. The quicker an employee defines, develops and decides their purpose—alongside how bought in they are to the organization’s purpose—the more engaged and innovative they will be in their role … and in life.

OUTCOMES:

  • What makes up the “sweet spot” of purpose
  • Recognize the difference between a job, career, and purpose mindset
  • How your sense of purpose is linked to defining your best future self
  • Distinguish the traits that make up purpose-driven people
  • Learn ways in which to bring purpose into daily and long-term planning in life & work
  • Apply methods and discover examples of purpose-based leadership and how it can positively impact your productivity and engagement

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:

  • Why it’s so important to employ a “dare to share” attitude as a leader and on the team
  • Learn the simple yet vitally important collaborative leader action model — where all levels of the organization can participate
  • The six obstacles to collaborative cultures and why teams operate in silos
  • How learning, recognition, technology, and internal HR systems can help or hinder your chance for collaborative cultures
  • Gain insights into the alignment between a leadership philosophy and collaboration model that can increase employee engagement and overall performance

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

Dan Pontefract's 2023 speaking fees

Dan travels from:
  • Canada

Specific fees fall within the ranges shown. These are presented as a guide only and are subject to change without notice.

To get an exact quote for your event, click the button below.

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Complete the form below to check Dan Pontefract's availability. If you prefer, you can also send an email directly to our head office.

How would Dan Pontefract deliver their presentation at your event?
Please provide details of your budget for Dan Pontefract's speaking fee, including currency.