A keynote speaker at a gathering of senior execs—whether an intimate CxO roundtable of 20 or 500 of the top VPs/SVPs/C-Level leaders of a multinational organization—can do so much more than merely deliver an insightful, informative, and motivational keynote speech on essential leadership topics.
In this article, I'll explain what I've learned from delivering keynotes (and workshops) at a gathering like this and how to get the best ROI from the total cost of time away from work, travel, production, and the speaker.
Senior Leader Conferences & Top Executive Meetings: What Is At Stake?
When senior leaders and execs come together—whether a 10-person C-Level senior team or the top 500 managers of an enterprise—it’s a relatively rare moment in the life of an organization. It is also very costly.
Many leaders spend most of their time in their region, business unit, or function. They are focused on their targets, their team, and the competition for resources they believe they need to deliver (which is a necessary reality in large organizations).
Each arrives at a gathering with their assumptions about the ambitions for growth and change, their take (and mental models) on the existing strategy, and their perspective and insight from the unique part of the industry that their business unit or function engages with.
Large organizations with diversified offerings and/or activities spread across geographies and economies naturally have a diverse, even fragmented view of the industry and the organization as a whole (rather than as many parts), the likely futures of both, and so the right strategy to win.
On top of the silos that naturally arise in vertical or matrix organizations, senior leaders may not know each other as people very well. They may have never met some, even most, of their peers or spent more than a few hours on Zoom with them. This is even more likely in the post-pandemic reality we find ourselves in.
Each business unit or function may have its sub-culture, determined by the current boss and previous executives, as well as idiosyncratic historical factors like mergers and acquisitions, product successes and failures, and local customs.
For example, a recently acquired Chinese business unit that has had a controlling boss for many years may have a wildly different team climate and culture than a century-old head office in Ohio. The latter may have a wildly different team climate and working culture than a specialist R&D lab in Israel, an operations unit in Hyderabad, and a tech team in Silicon Valley.
This means that not only may the strategy lack alignment in terms of cognitive coherence—mainly if it involves innovation and/or business/digital transformation, which are famously nebulous and mean very different things to different people—but the culture of the top team may also lack a sense of cohesion from an emotional point of view.
Both challenges can be mission-critical and block the success that the senior team aspires to deliver, which is being judged by the Board.
The Issues Faced By Senior Leadership Teams
In other words, there are two significant challenges that most, if not all, senior executives of larger organizations encounter that can sabotage and even scupper their business strategies and undermine their boldest ambitions.
Strategic Misalignment & Cognitive Incoherence
Cognitive incoherence occurs when the beliefs of senior leaders about the past, present, and future of the business do not align fully with each other and/or fit the world as it is. This is what usually underlies misalignment in the strategy and plan of the top team.
In my experience advising corporations and institutions, such misalignment and incoherence are rampant regarding a strategic agenda that includes significant change, real innovation, or business/digital transformation.
This is because, unlike a simple growth-through marketing-and-efficiencies strategy, innovation, major change, and transformation are widely and wildly misunderstood by senior leaders, who may never have had to lead or manage such journeys and processes in decades of career advancement.
Given the radical complexity, relentless change, and ruthless uncertainty that are the hallmarks of the age we work and live in, strategic misalignments and cognitive incoherence are highly likely to emerge in top teams.
With little time to reflect alone and together, cognitive incoherence will likely creep in. Annual or bi-annual management gatherings offer the perfect opportunity to invest in cognitive coherence and strategic alignment building. And, as you will see, a keynote speaker who understands this can be part of a big win.
Top Team Cultural Fragmentation & Emotional Dissonance
Emotional dissonance and cultural fragmentation happen when a large group lacks the time, space, opportunity, and sometimes permission to proactively build trust, strong interpersonal relationships, a sense of shared values, and a positive team climate.
Such dissonance impacts everyone, from the SLT itself—where distrust and misunderstandings will likely lead to more internal competition and conflict that wastes critical resources and blocks innovation- and transformation-critical collaboration—to frontline workers who may struggle to feel safe, trusting, and connected with their colleagues and line managers.
Dissonance and distrust travel up and down the hierarchy, undermining the stability and security people need to perform at their best and unleashing drama, tensions, and mayhem that drain organizations of the energy and discretionary effort required to innovate, adapt, and transform to external change and complexity.
Annual or bi-annual top team events offer the perfect opportunity to invest in building more emotional resonance and cultural cohesion. But it is unlikely to be maximized and optimized just with drinks and dinner alone. Again, a keynote speaker can help.
The Opportunity for a Keynote Speaker: Unlock Alignment & Resonance
Given this, a keynote speaker can add significant value to a senior leadership team gathering way beyond information and inspiration.
This is even more valuable when the strategy includes innovation (AI, anyone?), significant change, and business or digital transformation, given that these are not business as usual. Any strategy that doesn't include some or all of these is unlikely to cut the mustard in the VUCA++ environment we are all in.
While a speaker cannot solve all the complex and demanding challenges above, they can:
Boost Strategic Alignment & Cognitive Coherence
As a keynote speaker at a top 10-500 event, I can intentionally unlock a shared understanding of an important topic, from the future of work to how to build an innovation culture.
For example, I am often briefed to help senior leaders understand what truly transformational leadership is, why it is a competitive advantage, and what it looks like in action. Then, they can all make decisions about what leadership they want to incentivize and model based on a shared understanding.
I can also provide a top team with a shared understanding of the deep code, concepts, and ideal approaches to, say, breakthrough innovation or business/digital transformation—as well as the key blockers and unlockers of these critical processes that senior executives can then look out for.
I am often asked to create strategic alignment around what change really is and isn't, blowing open the myths that surround change—and how the top team and their reports can unlock agility and a "change mindset"—and the safety and trust needed to cultivate both.
A keynote speaker can provide a common language, a collective grammar, and shared foundations for talking about and implementing such complex topics.
Top leaders can then work to find even more coherence within the sessions and conversations after the headline keynote and in the days and months after the event— because they can communicate using ideas, concepts, and words that mean the same to all.
Build Team Cohesion By Deepening Emotional Resonance & Bonding
As a keynote speaker at a top 10-500 event, I can intentionally work to build a shared feeling around an important topic—and even help to release stress, anxiety, and past tensions if briefed fully and given the time, permission, and space to do so.
This means I can help a team of leaders bond deeper with their colleagues, many of whom they will not know well. I can help them leave with an emotional sense of belonging, some memorable moments of magic and connection, and the feeling that they share more than what separates them.
These are intangible assets, hard to measure, and often not discussed much in the prep for an event. But their value-add can be exponential.
I have found that the way to do this is to move from a conventional one-way expert to a user keynote to a more interactive and experiential keynote format. I often do a 90-minute or even 2-hour experiential keynote for senior leadership teams, taking them on a mental and emotional journey of reflection, interaction, and discovery.
My aim is that they leave feeling that they are all dealing with similar issues and challenges which they can best overcome together, that they all feel stressed and anxious about leading in VUCA++—and that this is not just normal but that to pretend one doesn't feel challenged is decidedly abnormal!—and that they all share the same brains with which to rise to their individual and collective challenges.
As well as inspiring and encouraging courage and conviction, a speaker can open up sensitive moments of mutual belonging, shared humanity, and interpersonal vulnerability—without losing the room or the momentum toward victory!
Amplifying The Message Authentically
As a keynote speaker for a meeting of the top 10-500 leaders, we should aim to expand the minds and transform the hearts of those attending the executive meet-up. We must then focus both thoughts and emotions on igniting and amplifying necessary change so that the leaders win the future together.
It is crucial to always remain an impartial and independent thought leader... while also being able to amplify the event's message and theme without losing our authenticity and integrity. Clearly, this means that the organization and speaker must be deeply aligned as to how to drive growth, strategic breakthroughs, adaptation, transformation, and innovation.
If it's an opening keynote, this means setting the scene and the context for what comes next over the coming day or two. The keynote speaker at a senior leadership conference must craft a keynote that generates the "red thread" that ties up the sessions, talks, and workshops that follow.
If it's the closing keynote, it means tying up everything the executives have heard and felt over the previous days into a coherent whole while leaving the group inspired and excited to return to the business aligned and resonant as one team.
Whether an opening or closing keynote, two factors are key to getting it right as a keynote speaker for a top 10-500 leadership gathering:
The keynote must be customized carefully to hit the right notes, use language that is already being used in the business (without losing our discernment as thought leaders who understand that language creates reality), and tell a compelling story that reverberates with the strategy, culture, and ambitions of the leadership team. You can't recycle the same old slides and hope to deliver on the above.
The keynote speaker must always be independent, impartial, and full of integrity while aiming to speak with a similar voice, passion, and energy as the CEO and/or President (and the rest of the CXO team). This requires the company and keynote speaker to be an excellent fit for each other. I always suggest a pre-booking call to ensure the fit is there and an in-depth post-booking meeting to align on message, language, and tone.
With these two factors checked off—a keynote speaker who is conceptually and emotionally aligned with the purpose and intention of the event and who can quietly customize their keynote to land optimally with the leadership group—you can deliver outsized ROI on your investment in a speaker for you top 10-500 leadership gathering.
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