Mike Robbins
Engagement is not a survey score. It is the quiet question of whether people are willing to bring real judgement, real disagreement, and real commitment to work that increasingly feels transactional. The leaders who can rebuild that contract have a culture advantage. The ones who cannot are watching performance erode in ways the dashboards cannot explain.
Mike Robbins helps leaders and teams rebuild the trust, psychological safety, and appreciation that high performance actually rests on, drawing on five books, a Stanford and professional baseball background, and two decades inside organisations like Google, Microsoft, and the NBA.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Mike Robbins
- He treats appreciation, vulnerability, and psychological safety as operational levers, not soft values, and gives leaders a vocabulary their teams can act on the next morning.
- He has spent twenty years inside the cultures of Google, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, eBay, Gap, Schwab, Airbnb, the NBA, and Pixar. The frame is tested against how high-stakes teams actually behave.
- His book Bring Your Whole Self to Work and the related TEDxBerkeley talk gave senior leaders a usable language for authenticity that does not collapse into oversharing or performance.
- He holds the Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association, the top earned credential in his profession, and is one of fewer than ten percent of speakers worldwide to hold it.
- His perspective sits on an unusual seam: elite-level baseball at Stanford and in the Kansas City Royals system, then two decades of cultural work with serious operating companies. The room recognises the standard he is calling for.
Biography highlights
- Author of five books published by Hay House, including Bring Your Whole Self to Work and We’re All in This Together, translated into fifteen languages.
- Speaker at TEDxBerkeley, with three TEDx talks that have reached close to 2.3 million views.
- Featured in the New York Times, on ABC News, and in Harvard Business Review; hosts the weekly We’re All in This Together podcast.
- Stanford graduate (American Studies, specialisation in race and ethnicity); pitched for Stanford in the College World Series.
- Drafted by the New York Yankees out of high school; played three professional seasons in the Kansas City Royals minor league system.
- Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), National Speakers Association.
Biography
Most teams underperform their talent. Not because the people are wrong, but because the cultural conditions around them, trust, candour, appreciation, the willingness to be honest under pressure, are weaker than the work demands. That gap is the territory Mike Robbins has worked in for twenty-five years, across more than 2,000 programmes in 17 countries.
His five books, published by Hay House and translated into fifteen languages, build a coherent argument about how authenticity and appreciation operate as performance variables inside teams. Bring Your Whole Self to Work and We’re All in This Together are the most cited. Both have moved from leadership reading lists into the working language that companies like Google, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, Airbnb, the NBA, and Pixar use to describe their own culture work.
The intellectual frame is sharpened by an unusual background. Robbins pitched for Stanford in the College World Series and spent three seasons in the Kansas City Royals minor league system before injuries ended his playing career. He understands what high-performance teams demand of the people inside them, and he understands what fails. That perspective sits alongside a Stanford degree in American Studies with a specialisation in race and ethnicity, and the Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association.
His TEDxBerkeley talk on bringing your whole self to work has reached audiences far beyond corporate stages, and his Forbes column extends the same argument into how leaders practise appreciation, navigate change, and create psychological safety without slipping into performance. The throughline is consistent: culture is not climate, it is capability, and the leaders who treat it that way get more from their people.
Key speaking topics
- Team culture and psychological safety
- Authenticity and vulnerability at work
- Appreciation as a performance practice
- Emotional intelligence for leaders
- Belonging and inclusion inside teams
- Leading through change and uncertainty
- Trust and high-performing teams
- Human connection in an AI-accelerating workplace
Ideal for
- CHROs and chief people officers rebuilding engagement and team culture after restructure or hybrid transition
- Senior leadership teams who want a shared language for trust, candour, and appreciation
- Heads of talent and learning designing culture and leadership development programmes
- Sales, R&D, and operating leaders responsible for the performance of large, distributed teams
Audience outcomes
- A practical model for psychological safety that leaders can apply inside their own teams the same week
- Specific behaviours that turn appreciation from a soft idea into a measurable team practice
- A clear distinction between authenticity that builds trust and disclosure that erodes it
- Tools for engaging conflict directly rather than routing around it
- A shared team vocabulary for the cultural conditions that high performance actually depends on
Talks
A keynote on building a team culture where people trust each other enough to speak up and fully commit, drawn from 25 years of work with high-performing teams and Robbins’s own professional baseball career.
Key takeaways:
- How psychological safety lets people raise hard issues and commit even when they disagree, and how that shows up in performance
- The specific practices that turn appreciation and authentic connection into everyday team behaviour
- How leaders break down silos and rebuild collaboration when change or rapid growth pulls a team apart
A keynote on authenticity as a leadership advantage: the self-awareness and courage that build credibility and trust with a team.
Key takeaways:
- Why authenticity strengthens engagement and performance, and the point at which disclosure starts to erode trust
- Practical ways to strengthen emotional intelligence and build deeper working relationships
- How leaders hold trust and open communication steady through change and cultural transformation
A keynote on leading through disruption by separating what people can control from what they cannot, and choosing ownership over resistance.
Key takeaways:
- How a growth mindset and ownership become real advantages during change and restructuring
- Tools to stay grounded and adaptable when teams feel stretched by rapid shifts
- How to move a team from fear and resistance toward curiosity and accountability
A keynote on protecting the relationships and trust that sustain culture and performance as AI and constant change put human connection at risk.
Key takeaways:
- Why connection and trust decline in hybrid, remote, and AI-driven environments, and what reverses the slide
- How leaders balance technology with the human practices that engagement depends on
- How appreciation and authenticity hold a culture together through rapid technological change