Dr. David Burkus's Recent LinkedIn Posts

Leadership isn’t about how loud you are. It’s not about how much space you take up in a room. It’s about your ability to listen closely, analyze situations, reflect thoughtfully, and chart a new course of action.

The best leaders aren't the ones with all the answers. They're the ones who stopped needing to be. Hero leadership feels productive—but it creates dependency, not performance. Real team success comes from clarity (everyone knows their role), visibility (everyone sees how it fits together), and safety (everyone fe…

Conflict isn't the enemy of great teamwork. The wrong kind of conflict is. Research distinguishes between task conflict—debating ideas, assumptions, and approaches—and personal conflict, which is really just disrespect with a professional veneer. Task conflict makes teams better. Personal conflict quietly destro…

The average employee toggles between apps, platforms, and websites nearly 1,200 times a day. All that switching doesn’t just burn time—it burns focus. It adds up to nearly four hours each week spent simply reorienting your brain after shifting contexts. It’s not just inefficient. It’s overwhelming.

Your team's real standard only becomes visible when someone can't meet it. That's not a flaw in the system. That's the system working exactly as designed. The uncomfortable truth: most teams don't fully align around expectations until they're forced to confront a gap. And how you handle that gap tells your team…

Conflict isn't the enemy of great teamwork. The wrong kind of conflict is. Research distinguishes between task conflict—debating ideas, assumptions, and approaches—and personal conflict, which is really just disrespect with a professional veneer. Task conflict makes teams better. Personal conflict quietly destro…