Keynotes · Workshops · Webinars
Speaking
Executive sessions drawn from the research and frameworks in CEO Cadence — available as keynotes, half-day workshops, and live online webinars.
About the Speaker
David Johnston
MBA, Leadership · Graduate Certificate, Executive Coaching · Certified Executive Coach (CEC) · Certified Health Executive (CHE), Canadian College of Health Leaders
David Johnston is an executive coach, leadership educator, and author whose work focuses on the psychological and internal dimensions of CEO leadership. His forthcoming book, CEO Cadence: The Inner Work of Becoming a Cadence-Based Leader, explores what sits beneath strategy and execution — the structural isolation, the weight of non-delegable decisions, and the internal discipline required to lead with clarity under sustained pressure.
Over more than two decades, he has worked across healthcare, government, engineering, manufacturing, and the military — in both private and non-profit organizations — first in senior leadership, and now as an executive coach.
He teaches leadership and coaching principles and delivers workshops to organizations. He works with a small number of CEOs and senior executives through his practice, Human Capital Development Inc.
Signature Keynotes
Four keynotes on the inner work of leadership — tailored to your audience.
Each can be delivered as a keynote, a half-day workshop, or a live webinar — and shaped to your people, your sector, and the time you have. Tell me your audience and the outcome you want, and we’ll design the right session together.
Keynote 01 · Flagship
CEO Cadence
The Inner Rhythm of Leaders Who Last
Most leaders respond to a faster, noisier world the only way they know how: move faster, decide sooner, drive harder. Yet acceleration rarely produces wisdom — it strips it away. Drawing on decades of coaching CEOs and senior executives, this keynote makes a counterintuitive case: the leaders who thrive in turbulence do not outpace the storm — they anchor themselves within it. Audiences are introduced to the four movements of the Cadence framework — Awareness, Clarity, Commitment, and Cadence — and to a leadership architecture in which the leader’s steadiness makes coherence possible for the whole organization.
Your audience leaves with: a diagnostic for spotting urgency bias, the clarity-versus-certainty distinction that unlocks stalled decisions, and one cadence practice to implement the week they return.
Keynote 02
The Weight of the Role
The Psychology No One Briefs You On
There is a moment every senior leader knows but few ever name: the weight settles in. Not stress — something more permanent. This keynote takes audiences inside the hidden psychological architecture of senior leadership — why people change their behavior around a CEO, why the role demands paradoxes that never resolve, and why the weight is a defining feature of the position rather than a failure of the person carrying it. The talk consistently produces a distinctive reaction: relief.
Your audience leaves with: language for the psychological realities of senior leadership, a framework for separating personal insecurity from structural pressure, and sustainable practices for carrying weight without depletion.
Keynote 03
Steady in the Storm
Decision-Making, Crisis, and the Leader the Room Orients Around
When pressure enters an organization, everyone looks in one direction. The leader’s internal state becomes the organization’s operating climate — proportion or panic, clarity or confusion. This keynote examines what actually distinguishes leaders who decide well under pressure: not more information, but clarity — seeing a situation with minimal distortion, distinguishing what is known from what is assumed, and acting from understanding rather than reactivity. It unpacks the patterns that quietly corrupt executive decision-making, then builds the alternative: the intentional pause, the decision rhythm, and the communication cadence that steadies a system when events are moving fast.
Your audience leaves with: a pre-decision checklist for high-pressure moments, the known/assumed discipline for faster, cleaner decisions, and a crisis-communication rhythm that prevents organizational spin-out.
Keynote 04
The Sustainable Executive
Capacity, Recovery, and Leading Well for the Whole Tenure
The leadership development industry has spent decades teaching executives how to perform — and almost no time teaching them how to last. This keynote reframes personal sustainability as a governance issue, not a wellness perk: a depleted CEO is an enterprise risk. Audiences learn the discipline of capacity management — distinguishing commitment from overcommitment, building rhythms of intensity and recovery, and designing a pace that endures — so sustainability becomes a feature of the system rather than a private struggle.
Your audience leaves with: a personal capacity audit, the commitment/overcommitment distinction to apply to their calendar within a week, and a recovery architecture that fits the realities of a senior role.
For Event Planners
Everything you need to book and announce David.
Download-ready materials for your committee, program, and promotion — no forms, no waiting.
“Our speaker today has spent decades in the room where it happens — coaching and working alongside CEOs and senior executives through pressures the org chart never shows. He is the author of CEO Cadence, and he’s here to make the case that the best leaders don’t outpace the storm — they anchor themselves inside it. Please welcome David Johnston.”
Booking a conference? Bulk-purchase options for CEO Cadence are available — a book for every attendee is a popular format. Ask about it.
Book a Keynote
Start the conversation — right here.
Tell me which keynote fits, your timing, and what you need next. Your inquiry comes straight to me, and I respond within one to two business days.
Royal Roads University
Certified Health Executive, CCHL
Executive coaching & leadership consulting
September 2026