Advertise on podcast: David Burkus Presents

If you feel overwhelmed as a manager, you probably already have the diagnosis. My team just got too big. Too many direct reports. And with companies flattening and widening the spans that are left, that explanation is about to get a lot more popular. It's a reasonable read — team size is the one thing on the org chart you can actually see. It's also not where the data points. Gallup's research on more than 16,000 U.S. managers found that 97% are still carrying individual-contributor work, and that managers who keep that work under 40% of their week stay just as engaged in their own jobs whether they lead four people or twenty-five. Cross that line, and their engagement slides as the team grows. That's the number missing from almost every manager training program, and it's the first one I'd hand any new leader I work with: not how many people you lead, but how much of a second job you're still doing. It also explains why coaching is always what gets cut. Leadership work never expires, and research on the mere urgency effect shows that urgent reliably beats important. Below: why the split matters more than the headcount, what aviation figured out about it, and three changes — one for the minute before a one-on-one, one for your calendar, and one for which half of your own work to cut first. // CHAPTERS 0:00 Why you feel overwhelmed as a manager 1:14 The player-coach ratio 6:01 Take back your one-on-ones 7:56 Schedule your feedback 9:57 Cut the paperwork // KEY TAKEAWAYS • Measure the ratio, not the headcount — in Gallup's data, managers under 40% individual-contributor work held steady in their own engagement at every team size • Treat dropped coaching as a design problem, not a discipline problem: leadership work loses because nothing about it ever expires • Give feedback a deadline — a standing weekly conversation turns the most postponable part of the job into something that shows up whether or not the deck is done • Close the loop before you switch tasks: one written line about where you stopped keeps unfinished work from following you into a one-on-one • Cut the paperwork before the craft — a boss's technical competence was the strongest single predictor of job satisfaction in Artz, Goodall and Oswald's data // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/podcast // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world's leading business thinkers, David's forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. An organizational psychologist who serves on the faculty at Columbia University, Dr. David Burkus is the best-selling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world's top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS This Morning. David works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David's keynotes aren't just entertaining and enlightening, they're evidence based and immensely practical—offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. // CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

In the early 2000s, Great Ormond Street Hospital in London — one of the world's leading centres for children's heart surgery — had a problem that had nothing to do with surgery. It was in the handover that followed, when a child was moved from the operating theatre to intensive care. A human-factors researcher observing those transfers counted an average of about five technical errors and two missing pieces of information per child. Everyone involved was an expert at their own part. The handover between them belonged to no one — the same gap that quietly undermines cross-functional teams in every industry. The fix started on a Sunday, when surgeon Martin Elliott and intensive care consultant Allan Goldman, exhausted after a night of operating, watched a Formula One pit stop on television and recognized their own handover, done far better. Ferrari stepped in — hosting the team at Silverstone and Maranello, and helping the hospital win the grant that restarted the work. What came out of it was a seven-page protocol. A transfer form goes to intensive care thirty minutes before the child arrives. The handover then runs in three phases that never overlap: equipment first, then information delivered without interruption, then a discussion led by the receiving doctor. And it ends with a formal moment when ownership passes from the anaesthetist to the intensivist. Technical errors fell by 42 percent and missing information by about half, with no added time. This video unpacks why that gap existed in the first place, what the protocol actually changed, and three ways to redesign the handoffs on your own team. // CHAPTERS 0:00 Great Ormond Street Hospital 2:10 The most dangerous ten minutes in the hospital 4:08 The trouble with handoffs 5:54 The seven page protocol 9:05 The project that almost stalled 14:30 Making Better Handoffs Happen// LEADERSHIP LESSONS - Every part performed by an expert doesn't add up to a handoff performed well — the seam between teams needs an owner of its own - Watch the small slips, not just the big failures — nobody recovers from an error they never saw - Sequence beats speed: move the assets, then transfer the context, then plan, instead of collapsing all three into one meeting - Good design doesn't make your stars better, it makes the outcome less dependent on them having a good day// NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/youtube // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world's leading business thinkers, David's forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. An organizational psychologist who serves on the faculty at Columbia University, Dr. David Burkus is the best-selling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world's top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS This Morning. David works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David's keynotes aren't just entertaining and enlightening, they're evidence based and immensely practical—offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. // CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

In 2017, Tesla set out to build a car factory so automated that people would barely be needed. The target was five thousand Model 3s a week. Across the entire third quarter, the line produced 260 cars. It remains the best-documented attempt we have at replacing people with machines at scale, which makes it the right place to start if you're worried about AI replacing jobs. The popular version of this story is a redemption arc. Musk owns the mistake, tears out the machines, puts people back on the line, and production recovers. All of that happened. It's also the least transferable lesson in the story, because the fix only worked for a reason most organizations won't have next time: the skill was still in the building. What I study is where teams actually build judgment, and the answer is almost never the training program. It's the routine, repetitive work — exactly the work that's easiest to automate. A five-page paper from 1983 explained why that's a trap, and Ford recently ran into it with AI, after years of quietly losing veteran engineers to ordinary attrition. This video covers what broke at Tesla, the research that explains it, what Ford faced next, and two questions to ask before you automate anything on your team. // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/podcast // CHAPTERS 0:00 Everyone's worried about the wrong AI risk 2:44 Tesla & The Alien Dreadnought 6:57 The Ironies Of Automation 11:19 Automate Last 17:05 Ford & When The Bill Comes Due // LEADERSHIP LESSONS - Automation doesn't shrink the human role — it concentrates it into the exceptions nobody designed for - The danger of AI isn't losing the job, it's losing the place people learned to do it - Ask what someone learns from a task before asking whether a tool can do it - Treat routine work as tuition, not overhead — it's where pattern recognition gets built - A process can be un-automated in a season; a talent pipeline has to be rebuilt one person at a time - Expertise rarely leaves by decision. It leaves at a normal rate, and no dashboard reports it. If you're rolling out AI on your team, planning around retirements, or wondering where your next experts will come from, this isn't a car story. It's a warning with a checklist attached. Comment below: what routine work taught you the most early in your career? // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. An organizational psychologist and professor at Columbia University, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

AI might make management more efficient. But efficiency isn’t the same thing as leadership. In this video, I break down four parts of management I would never delegate to AI and why keeping them human matters more as artificial intelligence becomes embedded in the workplace. AI can summarize meetings, organize information, draft emails, analyze data, and take a lot of administrative work off your plate. That’s a good thing. But there are some responsibilities managers shouldn’t automate away. 00:00 AI can do many things...but not everything. 00:10 Meet Dr. David Burkus 01:05 Don’t Let AI Decide “What” 02:28 Don’t Let AI Judge Your Team 04:44 Don’t Let AI Outsource The Conversation 06:11 Don’t Let AI Create Meaning // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/youtube // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. An organizational psychologist and professor at Columbia University, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

New team collaboration breaks for a reason that looks like something else. You inherited a team, or built one, or a reorg assembled one for you, and on paper it's the kind of group you'd point to in a leadership meeting. Six weeks in, the work is slower than it was when everyone was working alone. I've told myself the same thing you're telling yourself: they just need time. It's a reasonable read, and it's how most of us were taught teams work. It's also the most expensive assumption a leader can make, because time isn't what fixes this — time is just the slowest way to deliver the two things that actually do. Every fast-forming team I've worked with had the same advantage, and it wasn't hours. Their people knew who knew what, and they knew how each other operated. Aviation research from the 1980s stumbled into the first half of this by accident, while studying something else entirely. Research on surgical teams named both halves in the title of the paper. So this is the practical version: why capable teams stall anyway, the two deficits underneath it, and the specific moves that close them in a week instead of six months — the role conversation most leaders think they've already had, the operating manual each person writes for themselves, the shared work that builds more understanding than any dinner will, and the briefing that sets the norms before the first real deadline tests them. // CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 1:07 New Teams Don't Have A Time Problem 5:00 The Two Conditions for Click 6:16 Get Uncomfortably Specific About Roles 7:43 Hand Out Your Manual Of Me 9:07 Build Empathy Through The Work 11:30 Run The Pre-Flight Briefing // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/podcast // LEADERSHIP LESSONS -A new team's problem isn't tenure — it's that nobody yet knows who knows what, or how anyone else operates -Clarity isn't the org chart, it's decision rights: what each person can decide without asking you -Most friction diagnosed as a personality conflict is two people who each believed something was theirs -Empathy on a team isn't friendship — it's knowing enough about how someone works to disagree with them efficiently -Build the relationship through shared work, then reflect on it; the output isn't the point, watching each other think is -Launch the team, not just the project — and write the norms down, because a norm that lives only in a conversation is a memory of a meeting // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. An organizational psychologist and professor at Columbia University, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

Making mistakes is part of leadership. Knowing how to own them and apologize for them is a leadership skill most people never learn. In this video, I break down nine (yes, nine!) apologies every leader will eventually have to make. From owning a bad decision or broken promise to apologizing for not listening, waiting too long to act, or handling a difficult situation poorly. We’ll also cover the harder apologies: taking responsibility for your team’s mistakes, addressing painful decisions like layoffs and reorganizations, and even apologizing on behalf of an entire organization. More importantly, I’ll show you what makes an effective apology actually work. Research on leadership, psychological safety, trust, and corporate apologies reveals that the best apologies don’t explain away responsibility. They acknowledge what happened, own what needs to be owned, and make clear what changes next. You’re going to get things wrong. The question is whether your response rebuilds trust...or gives people another reason to lose it. // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/podcast // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. An organizational psychologist and professor at Columbia University, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

The obvious response to AI eating more of the workday is to get more efficient — learn the tools, move faster, automate what you can. Caroline Webb, who's spent twenty-five years coaching leaders using cognitive and behavioral science, argues something closer to the opposite: the tasks AI still can't touch are the ones that actually decide whether you're a good leader, and most of us have never been taught to get better at them on purpose. Specificity over generality, humanity of technicality is what makes her five-step method for how to give feedback so effective. Not "good job." Not "be more proactive." A named observation, a named impact, and an invitation to hear the other side before you coach. It's the difference between feedback people shrug off and feedback people actually use. Deliberate wisdom, intrinsic inspiration, reasoned resilience — the three principles her new book is built around — are really one argument in three parts: as the machines get faster, the leaders who matter most will be the ones who get more deliberately human. Find out more about Caroline at https://carolinewebb.co // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/podcast // LEADERSHIP LESSONS -The best leaders aren't getting faster in the AI era — they're getting more human, doubling down on judgment, empathy, and trust. -Team complaining isn't an attitude problem — it's a sign the leader hasn't redirected attention to what's controllable. -Feedback isn't about telling people what to fix. It's about being specific enough that they can act on it. -Motivation isn't built with bonuses — it's built with competence and connection. -Resilience isn't pushing through — it's making the situation feel manageable and meaningful again. // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. An organizational psychologist and professor at Columbia University, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

The people who lost their jobs are gone but that doesn’t mean the layoff is over for the people who stayed. Research shows that employees who survive layoffs often experience anxiety, guilt, lower morale, reduced productivity, and a loss of trust in leadership. And trying to rush everyone back to “business as usual” can make things worse. I’ll walk you through how managers can rebuild trust through honest communication and consistency, redistribute workloads without creating burnout, recognize employees who are carrying additional responsibilities, and give the team something meaningful to work toward. If you’re managing a team through layoffs or organizational change, your people don’t expect you to have every answer. But they do need communication, honesty, consistency, and a leader they can count on. Chapters: 00:00 There was a layoff. Now what? 00:39 Meet Dr. David Burkus 00:54 Day One After A Layoff 02:05 Be Upfront From The Get-Go 03:16 Rebuild Trust Through Consistency 04:30 Be Smart About Delegation 07:31 Give The Team Something To Work Toward // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/podcast // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. An organizational psychologist and professor at Columbia University, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

In 1998, Pixar lost two months of Toy Story 2 to a stray delete command. A dozen people gave up a weekend to claw it back. Ten weeks later, four colleagues watched what they'd rescued and threw away more of it than the computer had. The interesting part isn't the accident. It's that the verdict came from people with no power to enforce it — and that's the reason it worked. Feedback research is uncomfortable here: across six hundred measurements, criticism made performance worse more than a third of the time, and what predicted the damage wasn't harshness. It was where the note landed. This is a case study in how one studio engineered its way out of that problem — the two rules that keep a hard note from becoming a referendum on a person, why stripping authority out of the room raised the quality of what got said, and what it cost the crew to learn it the expensive way. If you lead a team where someone can already see what's wrong and keeps saying the eighty-percent version of it, the fix isn't asking for more honesty. It's lowering what honesty costs. // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/youtube // LEADERSHIP LESSONS -Separate the note from the power to enforce it — the moment criticism arrives with a chain attached, people defend their standing instead of the work -Ask for the diagnosis, not the cure — where someone got lost is a fact about the work, while what they'd do instead is a verdict on your judgment -Declare the bad first version expected, so finding problems stops reading as an indictment of whoever made it -Watch where feedback lands rather than how it sounds — identical words can arrive as information or as a referendum on competence -Treat candor as a price you lower with structure, not a character trait you hire for -Build the room that surfaces the problem in March, because hearing it in December is courage, and courage is expensive // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. An organizational psychologist and professor at Columbia University, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. A former business school professor, David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

What happens when everyone on your team thinks the boss is wrong...but nobody says anything? That’s exactly what happened at Netflix. In 2011, co-founder Reed Hastings made a decision that cost the company customers, millions of dollars, and a massive drop in stock price. The surprising part? Dozens of Netflix leaders suspected the decision would fail before it happened. They just stayed silent. In this video, I break down the psychology of organizational silence, why smart employees don’t speak up even when leaders genuinely want feedback, and how Netflix turned one of its biggest failures into a leadership practice called “farming for dissent.” More importantly, I’ll show you how to apply the same idea to your own team. Chapters: 00:00 You're boss just pitched a bad idea...what do you do? 00:17 What Netflix Did In 2011 01:22 The Mistake That Started It All 04:24 Research Calls This "Organizational Silence" 05:13 Reed Hastings' "Farming For Dissent" 06:45 The Lesson From The Mistake 07:21 Reed Hastings' "Socializing An Idea" 08:41 What I Hope For You // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/youtube // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. An organizational psychologist and professor at Columbia University, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. A former business school professor, David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

Does it feel like every business has gotten worse? Longer hold times, endless bureaucracy, frustrating customer service, and workplaces buried under layers of process. In this video, I explore why so many organizations feel broken—and why the problem isn't lazy employees or bad leaders. It's the systems we've built. Drawing on research in organizational psychology, I explain how concepts like suboptimization, Goodhart's Law, and goal displacement quietly shift companies away from serving people and toward serving metrics. From the Wells Fargo scandal to lessons from NVIDIA and KPMG, I'll show how even well-intentioned organizations drift into fragmentation, bureaucracy, and burnout—and what the healthiest companies do differently. We'll also explore why trust, psychological safety, meaningful work, and human-centered leadership matter more than ever in the age of AI. If you're a leader, manager, or simply someone who's tired of feeling like work has become more transactional and less human, this video will help you understand why—and what great organizations must do to stay human as they grow. // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/podcast // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. An organizational psychologist and professor at Columbia University, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. A former business school professor, David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

If you're managing under a toxic or chaotic senior leader, your job is more than just keeping projects on track. It's protecting your team. In this video, I share practical leadership strategies for managing up, shielding your team from unnecessary chaos, and building a healthy team culture even when senior leadership creates uncertainty. You'll learn how to act as a shock absorber instead of a stress amplifier, communicate with honesty without spreading panic, and create a strong micro-culture that keeps your team engaged and focused on meaningful work. I'll also explain when it's time to push back, how to give senior leaders feedback that actually gets heard, and when protecting your team may mean making a bigger career decision. Whether you're dealing with a toxic boss, poor executive leadership, constant organizational change, or workplace dysfunction, these research-backed leadership principles will help you lead with confidence and keep your team performing at its best. Chapters: 00:00 A Bad Leader Is All Too Common 01:00 Be The Shock Absorber 02:08 Be Transparent, But Know The Limit 02:56 Build A Micro-Culture 03:47 Keep Your Team Anchored 04:40 Know When To Escalate // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/podcast // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. A skilled researcher and inspiring communicator, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. A former business school professor, David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

A lot of leadership advice assumes everyone on your team actually works for you, but modern teams are often blended teams, full-time employees, freelancers, contractors, consultants, and fractional leaders all trying to move work forward with different schedules, incentives, and priorities. That can get messy fast. In this video, we’ll break down how to manage a blended team without wasting people’s time or creating resentment. You’ll learn why role clarity matters, how to protect contractors from unnecessary meetings, how to give fractional team members a reason to care, and how to address tension with your full-time employees before assumptions take over. Chapters: 00:00 Does your team look like this? 01:21 Meet Dr. David Burkus 01:32 Set The Foundation 03:13 Protect Their Time 04:41 Give Them A Reason To Care 06:12 Don't Ignore The Tension 07:57 Build Trust Through Small Actions // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/podcast // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. A skilled researcher and inspiring communicator, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. A former business school professor, David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

Is your team always waiting until the last minute...all the time? You'd be surprised. It’s not about laziness. It's usually about stress, unclear expectations, vague milestones, and bottlenecks leaders don’t always see. Now, don't you procrastinate here, I'm here to help! In this video, I’ll show you how to handle procrastination without micromanaging or becoming the boss nobody wants to work for. You’ll learn why teams stall, how psychological safety helps surface problems faster, and practical actions to take to create the best team ever. 00:00 Procrastination has infected the team! 00:13 Meet Dr. David Burkus 01:10 It's Not A Laziness Problem 02:17 Start A Conversation 03:15 Manage Each Person, Not Just The Project 04:42 Look In The Mirror 05:28 Break Down Deadlines Into Milestones 06:53 Make Timeliness A Team Value // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/podcast // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. A skilled researcher and inspiring communicator, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. A former business school professor, David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus

Most leaders treat time management like a logistics problem. Not enough hours. Too many demands. A calendar that's already full before Monday starts. So they grind harder—and still feel behind. Laura Vanderkam has spent two decades studying how people actually spend their time, and her research keeps arriving at the same uncomfortable finding: most of us aren't as busy as we believe. We're just zoomed in too close to see it. In this conversation, we dig into Laura's new book Big Time and the core insight behind it—that the way we frame time (in days, in tasks, in pressure) actively prevents us from seeing the abundance that's already there. We explore why high-earning leaders often feel the least in control of their schedules, what a dedicated weekly planning habit actually changes, and how leaders can model time abundance for their teams without it looking like bragging. If your people are burning out, and your answer is "we need to work smarter," this conversation will sharpen what that actually means. // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/podcast // LEADERSHIP LESSONS -Zoom out before you optimize. Most leaders experience scarcity because they plan in days. Shifting to weeks—and eventually to seasons and years—reveals space that the daily view hides entirely. -Busyness is often a framing problem, not a workload problem. The same week looks overwhelming in 24-hour slices and completely manageable across 168 hours. The math matters more than the feeling. -Leaders who hold the most power often have the most control over their time—if they choose to exercise it. Senior leaders frequently surrender schedule autonomy they technically have, out of habit or cultural pressure. -Track before you optimize. You wouldn't change a budget without looking at the numbers first. Time tracking—all 168 hours, not just work hours—gives leaders the data they need to make deliberate choices instead of reactive ones. -Modeling matters more than messaging. When you share how you spent your week, ask your team what they'd like to see you spend more time on, and visibly protect time for life outside work, you give your people permission to do the same—which is worth more than any policy. -Evening intentions are an underrated leadership tool. Encouraging your team (and yourself) to name one non-work, non-housework thing to do each evening changes how the whole week feels—less like a grind, more like a life. // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. A skilled researcher and inspiring communicator, Dr. David Burkus is the bestselling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS Mornings. A former business school professor, David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David’s keynotes aren’t just entertaining and enlightening—they’re evidence-based and immensely practical, offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. //CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus