Let’s be honest. The latest survey results have landed with a thud, indicating that not only are only 31% of employees engaged at work—meaning 69% are disengaged— 17% of them qualify as actively disengaged. In short, the 17% resemble mutineers aboard the ship. Sure, you could throw them “into the sea” but isn’t the real solution to turn the situation around? To do so requires emotional wisdom and courage, and a vision for how things could be better. 

 

The standard response, another survey along with a town hall and an extra dollop of “people-first” messaging, isn’t working. What’s needed instead is a fundamentally different style of leadership that requires the emotional wisdom to actually understand what people need, and the courage to build a workplace that delivers it.

 

How do you build resilient, high-performance teams? How do you redesign the performance review—one of the most reliably trust-destroying rituals in organizational life—into something helpful? All of that and more becomes possible when leaders realize that with AI rapidly changing what "knowledge work" means, the human ability to collaborate, create, and sustain high-trust relationships isn't a nice-to-have bauble. It's the whole game, which this talk shows you how to win.