Liane Davey

Speaking topics

Presentations listed below include in-person and virtual keynotes, as well as workshops, fireside chats, and other presentation formats.

• The Great Reset: Enhancing Accountability Without Eroding Empathy

  Managers today are walking a tightrope. After years of navigating crises and keeping teams afloat through uncertainty, they feel it’s time to raise expectations and drive performance, but worry that higher expectations will erode engagement and increase anxiety.

  What if you didn’t have to choose? What if empathy and accountability weren’t opposing forces — but powerful partners? What if accountability were more about positioning people to succeed rather than waiting for them to fail?

  In this timely and transformative session, Liane Davey reframes what it means to lead in today’s workplace. She shares a modern roadmap for fostering a culture where people own their impact, step up to deliver results, and still feel safe, supported, and seen. With practical strategies and memorable models, this keynote shows managers how to foster proactive accountability.

  Audiences will leave knowing how to:

  • Encourage employees to take accountability, rather than forcing it on them.
  • Articulate expectations and focus priorities on the most important outcomes.
  • Foster psychological safety and increased tolerance for discomfort.
  • Use feedback, coaching, and effective consequences to encourage growth.

  Discover how to lead with both backbone and heart — because the future of work demands nothing less.

• The Good Fight: How to Create a Culture of Productive Conflict

  Business today is more competitive than ever. Getting ahead and staying ahead requires being able to make tough calls, face hard choices, and work through conflict. But no matter how much we invest in conflict workshops and training, productive conflict is still rare. Why? Because productive conflict is about more than the right skillset — it requires the right mindset and the right processes, neither of which come naturally.

  In this high-impact keynote, Liane Davey shares a proven framework for turning conflict into a force for good in your organization. With real-world examples and actionable takeaways, she’ll help your audience rethink how they approach disagreement — and teach them to use it as an accelerant for trust, clarity, and results.

  Your audience will learn how to:

  • Identify the costs of conflict avoidance on productivity, innovation, and well-being.
  • Reframe tension as a tool, not a threat.
  • Create systems that surface and solve issues faster.

  Are your leaders ready to turn conflict into a competitive edge?

• Cracking the Code: The Keys to Unlocking Cross-functional Collaboration

  You’ve invested in smart, motivated people who deliver impressive results within their functions — but when it’s time to collaborate across functions, priorities clash, trust frays, and outcomes stall. More meetings, clearer roles, and extra communication haven’t solved the problem.

  In this provocative and practical keynote, Liane Davey reveals why cross-functional collaboration so often fails — and what to do instead. Audiences will learn how to align around shared outcomes, direct attention to where it adds the most value, and cultivate productive tension without creating friction.

  With real-world stories, groundbreaking research, and actionable tools, this session gives leaders the clarity and confidence to finally crack the code on collaboration that drives growth and innovation.

  Audiences will walk away knowing how to:

  • Align around shared outcomes before diverging into functional outputs.
  • Prioritize work to build trust and highlight each person’s unique value.
  • Maximize productive tension while minimizing unhealthy friction.
  • Shrink teams and strengthen communities to make collaboration scalable.

• Invisible Overload: How Thoughtload is Undermining Performance and What Leaders Can Do About It

  Work has never felt heavier. Your team is logging long hours, juggling endless demands, and still struggling to keep up. Productivity is stalling, stress is peaking, and burnout is becoming the norm. If you’re thinking, “This isn’t sustainable,” you’re right.

  But here’s the twist: it’s not the workload that’s wearing us down — it’s the thoughtload.

  We’re not just overwhelmed by tasks. We’re distracted, triggered, and running on empty. The real culprit is the invisible tax on our attention, emotions, and energy.

  In this eye-opening and actionable keynote, Liane Davey introduces a radical reframe of what’s really driving burnout and disengagement. With groundbreaking research, sharp insight and relatable stories, she unpacks the three forces that make up the modern thoughtload — attention overload, emotional reactivity, and energy depletion — and offers practical tools to lighten the lift.

  Audiences will learn how to:

  • Reclaim focus by shifting from activity obsession to outcome orientation.
  • Recognize and regulate emotional triggers that derail teams.
  • Tap into renewable sources of energy.

  This isn’t another time management talk. It’s a complete reset for the way we think, feel, and lead at work — because if we want to go further, we need to carry less.

• Change Has Changed: How to Build High Performance in a World of Perpetual Change

  As a leader, managing change is nothing new. So, why does it feel so much harder now? Because change has changed. It’s no longer an event to prepare for, but a constant reality to cope with. With this unrelenting pace and intensity, your employees don’t have a chance to recover from the last initiative before moving on to the next one. Even your top performers are starting to show signs of wear: some disengage quietly, others burn out spectacularly.

  While you can’t stop the tsunami of change, as a leader, you have more power than you think to create calm within the chaos.

  In this session, audiences will learn how to:

  • Inspire high performance amid significant change and competing priorities.
  • Use the mindset and language that will allow you to surface and move your team through resistance and drama rather than getting stuck in it.
  • Implement practical strategies to develop your own resilience, so you have the energy, patience, and endurance to be there for your employees over the long haul.

  Who’s ready to stop fighting the waves — and start surfing them?