Trust is the one variable that accelerates or destroys everything else in leadership. Teams move faster when they trust their leaders. Organisations innovate more when employees feel safe enough to speak up. Leaders make better decisions when the people around them tell the truth. Research consistently shows that high-trust teams are significantly more productive, more engaged and more commercially effective than their low-trust counterparts. According to research cited by Paul J. Zak and published in the Harvard Business Review, high-trust organisations report employees who are 50 per cent more productive, 106 per cent more energetic at work and 76 per cent more engaged than those in low-trust environments.

Yet trust is also one of the most poorly taught skills in leadership development. Most programmes address it as a by-product of good management rather than as a distinct, learnable, practicable capability. That is where keynote speakers on trust-based leadership provide something rare: they make trust concrete. They give leaders language, frameworks and behaviours that produce measurable results from the next conversation onward.

The evidence for why this matters could not be more pressing. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer found that fewer than one in two employees globally trust their employer. Google's Project Aristotle, one of the most rigorous studies ever conducted on team performance, identified psychological safety, which is built on trust, as the single most important driver of team effectiveness. In a world of distributed work, rapid change and institutional uncertainty, the leaders who build trust have a competitive advantage that no technology can replicate.

This directory brings together 50 keynote speakers who are actively speaking, facilitating and publishing on trust-based leadership right now. They come from research institutions, consulting firms, coaching practices and frontline experience. They work with schools, governments, healthcare systems, technology companies and global enterprises. What they share is a commitment to helping leaders build the foundations that make everything else possible.

If you are planning a leadership conference, executive offsite, professional development day or corporate summit and want a speaker who will leave your audience with something they can use on Monday morning, this list is your starting point.

Category 1: Foundational Researchers

These speakers have produced the primary academic research on which modern trust-based leadership practice is built. Their work appears in peer-reviewed journals, the Harvard Business Review and the bestseller lists. When your audience needs the science, these are the voices to invite.

1. Stephen M.R. Covey

Co-Founder, FranklinCovey Global Trust Practice | Author of The Speed of Trust

Stephen M.R. Covey is the single most recognised name in the global trust-based leadership conversation. His book The Speed of Trust, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal number one bestseller translated into 22 languages and with over two million copies sold, reframed trust from a soft virtue into a hard commercial variable. His core argument is that when trust is high, organisations move faster and at lower cost. When trust is low, everything slows and costs more. This insight, backed by decades of consulting with Fortune 500 companies and governments in more than 55 countries, has made Covey one of the most booked speakers on the global circuit. His follow-up Trust and Inspire, co-authored with David Kasperson, McKinlee Covey and Gary T. Judd, articulates a shift from command-and-control leadership toward one built on inspiring belief and trust in people. As co-founder of FranklinCovey's Global Speed of Trust Practice, he continues to keynote globally. He was confirmed as a keynote speaker for CASBO Con 2026.

2. Rachel Botsman

Trust Fellow and Lecturer, Said Business School, Oxford | Author of Who Can You Trust? and How To Trust and Be Trusted

Rachel Botsman approaches trust from the angle of how it is built, lost and transferred in a world of accelerating technological change. She is the first Trust Fellow at Oxford's Said Business School, where she teaches leaders how to navigate an era in which institutional trust has collapsed and distributed trust has taken its place. Her TED talks have been viewed more than five million times. Her newsletter Rethink reaches more than 90,000 subscribers weekly. She has delivered keynotes for Goldman Sachs, Salesforce, Adobe, Gartner, EY and the World Economic Forum. She is among the world's 30 most influential management thinkers according to Thinkers50. Her most recent book How To Trust and Be Trusted extends her framework into practical leadership tools.

3. Amy C. Edmondson

Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School | Author of The Fearless Organization

Amy C. Edmondson's research on psychological safety has become one of the defining frameworks of modern leadership. Her discovery that high-performing teams reported more errors than low-performing ones, because they felt safe enough to admit mistakes, turned management intuition on its head and established psychological safety as a prerequisite for team learning and performance. The Fearless Organization, her landmark book translated into 11 languages, and her follow-up Right Kind of Wrong, winner of the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award 2023, have together given leaders a practical science of trust. Google's Project Aristotle named psychological safety as the number one driver of team performance, validating three decades of Edmondson's research. She was ranked the number one most influential management thinker in the world by Thinkers50 and delivered keynotes at UNLEASH World 2025.

4. Paul J. Zak

Professor, Claremont Graduate University | Founder and Chairman, Immersion Neuroscience | Author of Trust Factor

Paul J. Zak is the neuroscientist who discovered that oxytocin, the neurochemical his lab calls the moral molecule, is the biological driver of trust, empathy and human connection. His two decades of research, which took him from the Pentagon to Fortune 50 boardrooms to the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, produced the foundational neuroscience of organisational trust. His HBR article on the neuroscience of trust identifies eight specific management behaviours that produce oxytocin, generate trust and drive engagement. His book Trust Factor translates this neurochemistry into a practical management system. As founder of Immersion Neuroscience, he has developed technology that measures brain engagement in real time. His TED talk has received over one million views. He was a featured speaker at the Culturati Summit in 2025.

5. Megan Reitz

Associate Fellow, Said Business School, Oxford | Professor of Leadership and Dialogue, Hult Ashridge

Megan Reitz's research on speaking truth to power goes to the heart of what psychological safety requires from leaders. Her central question is not only whether employees feel safe to speak up, but how the power dynamics that leaders create actively silence the voices they most need to hear. Her book Speak Up, co-authored with John Higgins, has been translated into multiple languages. Her TEDx talk How Your Power Silences Truth is a widely shared resource in leadership development globally. She has been named among the top 50 management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 in 2021 and 2023. She is exclusively represented through Stern Strategy Group and her profile was updated in April 2026.

Category 2: Trust Framework Builders

These speakers have built proprietary methodologies, assessments and frameworks for developing trust in organisations. They leave audiences with a named, replicable approach that leaders can deploy immediately.

6. David Horsager

CEO, Trust Edge Leadership Institute | Author of The Trust Edge

David Horsager has spent more than two decades building what is arguably the most commercially developed trust methodology on the speaking circuit. His 8 Pillar Framework, covering clarity, compassion, character, competence, commitment, connection, contribution and consistency, gives leaders a structured path to diagnosing and developing trust in their organisations. His Enterprise Trust Index is one of the few validated quantitative tools for measuring organisational trust. Forbes has described him as the world's leading authority on trust. He has delivered keynotes on six continents for organisations ranging from FedEx and Toyota to global governments and the New York Yankees. His most recent book is Trust Matters More Than Ever: 40 Proven Trust Tools. He was inducted into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame in 2017. He was confirmed as a keynote speaker for Leader Day 2026.

7. Justin Patton

Founder, The Trust Architect Group

Justin Patton built The Trust Architect Group in 2011 after a personal reckoning with performance-driven leadership that produced results but destroyed connection. His Trust Starts Here framework centres on three core trust behaviours: transparency, tact and togetherness. He operationalises trust in ways that make it immediately teachable, so leaders leave with not just inspiration but a system they can practise from the next meeting. He created MyTrustAudit.com, a free assessment that allows individuals and teams to measure how effectively they are building trust in their day-to-day interactions. He announced new speaking initiatives in December 2025.

8. Yoram Solomon

Founder, Trust Habitats | Host, The Trust Show Podcast | Author of The Book of Trust

Yoram Solomon has built an entire intellectual ecosystem around trust. As founder of Trust Habitats and host of The Trust Show podcast, he is one of the most prolific creators of trust-related content in the speaking world. His Book of Trust provides a research-backed framework for understanding the conditions under which trust is most likely to grow between individuals and within teams. His trust workshops are built around practical tools that leaders can implement immediately, making him a strong choice for organisations that want a facilitator as well as a keynote speaker.

9. Todd Duncan

Founder, The Duncan Group | Author of High Trust Selling

Todd Duncan created the High Trust Selling methodology, which argues that durable commercial relationships and sustainable performance are products of trust, not technique. CNN described him as the Tony Robbins of the mortgage industry. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author of 17 books, and his High Trust Selling and Time Traps remain foundational texts in the trust-based business development conversation. His annual Sales Mastery conference attracts thousands of leaders each year. His work extends beyond sales into the broader territory of trust-based relationship development.

10. Jeff Bloomfield

Founder, Braintrust | Author of Story-Based Selling

Jeff Bloomfield brings the neuroscience of trust into the specific context of leadership communication and performance. As founder of Braintrust and creator of the NeuroSelling and NeuroCoaching methodology, he helps leaders understand how the brain processes trust signals in real time and how to communicate in ways that activate those signals consistently. MSN named him the number one Leadership Speaker to Follow for 2026. His Wall Street Journal bestseller Story-Based Selling makes the case that the most powerful trust-building tool available to any leader is a well-constructed story that connects logic and emotion. He has delivered keynotes for enterprise leadership teams across life sciences, financial services and technology.

Category 3: Psychologically Safe Conversation Builders

Trust is inseparable from the quality of the conversations leaders have and the conversations they make possible. These speakers focus on creating the conditions in which people feel safe to speak honestly, challenge ideas and be candid without fear.

11. Kim Scott

Co-Founder, Radical Candor LLC | Author of Radical Candor and Radical Respect

Kim Scott developed the Radical Candor framework while leading teams at Google and Apple. Her core insight is that the most trust-producing feedback culture sits at the intersection of caring personally about the person and challenging them directly. This is not a soft model. It asks leaders to confront the comfortable habits of ruinous empathy and manipulative insincerity that quietly erode trust on most teams. Her New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Radical Candor has been adopted as the feedback vocabulary of choice by thousands of organisations globally. Her follow-up Radical Respect extends the framework to questions of justice and dignity in the workplace. She headlined the FranklinCovey Impact Conference in February 2025.

12. Liane Davey

Author, Keynote Speaker and Facilitator | Author of The Good Fight

Liane Davey, known as the teamwork doctor, has spent 25 years researching and advising teams on the specific conditions that allow trust to survive and grow through disagreement. Her New York Times bestseller The Good Fight argues that conflict avoidance is not the path to a harmonious team, it is the path to a team that has stopped trusting one another enough to say anything important. Her approach to productive tension has been applied by 26 Global Fortune 500 companies. She is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and has been featured by CNN, NPR, Forbes and The Globe and Mail. She is based in Canada.

13. Michael Bungay Stanier

Founder, Box of Crayons | Author of The Coaching Habit | Thinkers50 Hall of Fame 2025

Michael Bungay Stanier is the author of The Coaching Habit, the bestselling coaching book of this century with over a million copies sold. His central argument is that the single most trust-building leadership behaviour available is staying curious longer and giving advice less. The Coaching Habit gives leaders seven specific questions that create the psychological safety and connection required for people to do their best thinking. His follow-up How to Work with Almost Anyone shows how to build the best possible relationship with the key people at work. He was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2025. He founded Box of Crayons, which has trained over 100,000 leaders at organisations including Microsoft, Salesforce and TELUS.

14. Scott Mann

Founder, Rooftop Leadership | Author of Operation Pineapple Express

Scott Mann is a retired US Army Green Beret Lieutenant Colonel who translated the rapport-building skills learned in high-stakes, low-trust military environments into a leadership methodology for the civilian world. His framework draws from the practical reality that in combat, the ability to build human connection quickly enough and deeply enough to produce cooperation in the absence of shared authority is not a soft skill, it is a survival skill. His keynote work with organisations including Capital One, Walmart and Raymond James focuses on how leaders can build trust through storytelling, vulnerability and human connection in high-pressure environments. His New York Times bestseller Operation Pineapple Express brought his story to a global audience.

15. Tanveer Naseer

Founder and CEO, Tanveer Naseer Leadership | Author of Leadership Vertigo

Tanveer Naseer is an internationally acclaimed keynote and TEDx speaker and award-winning leadership writer who has delivered keynotes to audiences across Canada, the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. His book Leadership Vertigo addresses the disconnect between how leaders think they are leading and the reality experienced by the people they lead, a disconnect that is among the most common trust destroyers in organisations. He is recognised by Inc. Magazine as one of the top 100 leadership and management experts globally. His Leadership Biz Cafe podcast is ranked among the top 2.5 per cent of podcasts globally.

Category 4: Accountability, Honesty and Real-World Practitioners

Trust cannot exist without honesty and accountability. These speakers address the harder edges of trust-based leadership, helping organisations move beyond aspiration into the disciplined practice of telling the truth, owning outcomes and creating cultures where integrity is the operating norm.

16. Frances Frei

Professor, Harvard Business School | Author of Move Fast and Fix Things

Frances Frei's Trust Triangle, introduced in her widely viewed TED talk How to Build and Rebuild Trust, provides leaders with the clearest diagnostic framework for understanding why trust breaks down. Trust, she argues, is a function of authenticity, logic and empathy. When any one of these wobbles, trust is at risk. Her practical approach to trust repair was developed partly through her experience as Uber's first Senior Vice President of Leadership and Strategy, where she was brought in to help the company navigate a very public cultural crisis. Her most recent book Move Fast and Fix Things, co-authored with Anne Morriss, guides leaders who need to create real change at speed. She continues to teach at Harvard Business School.

17. Ron Carucci

Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Navalent | Author of To Be Honest

Ron Carucci's book To Be Honest is built on 15 years of research with more than 3,200 interviews with leaders across 25 countries. His core finding is that honesty at work is not primarily a function of individual character. It is a function of four organisational conditions: clear identity, genuine accountability, coherent governance and healthy cross-functional relationships. When these conditions are absent, even leaders who intend to be honest often drift toward evasion. When these conditions are present, people are 16 times more likely to tell the truth, behave fairly and serve a broader purpose. He has advised leaders from start-ups to Fortune 10 companies and heads of state. He is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and Forbes.

18. Cy Wakeman

Founder, Reality-Based Leadership | Author of No Ego and Reality-Based Leadership

Cy Wakeman occupies a distinctive and provocative space in the leadership conversation. As a drama researcher, she has spent two decades documenting the cost of emotional waste in organisations, estimating that leaders lose approximately three months of productive work per employee per year to drama, entitlement and resistance to reality. Her Reality-Based Leadership philosophy argues that genuine trust is built not by managing people's feelings but by holding people capable of meeting the challenges that reality presents. Her books No Ego and Reality-Based Leadership have shaped how thousands of organisations approach accountability. She headlined Workhuman Live 2025 and speaks globally.

19. Dorie Clark

Executive Education Faculty, Columbia Business School | Author of The Long Game

Dorie Clark teaches executive education at Columbia Business School and has been named four times to the Thinkers50 list of top business thinkers in the world. Her work on long-term thinking and strategic visibility connects to trust through the argument that the most trusted leaders are those who are visible, consistent and committed to something beyond their immediate interests over a long enough time horizon that their credibility becomes self-evident. Her book The Long Game is a practical guide for leaders who want to build the kind of reputational trust that creates genuine influence. She was confirmed as a keynote speaker at Workhuman Live in April 2026.

20. Jonno White

Founder, Clarity Group Global | Certified Working Genius Facilitator | Author of Step Up or Step Out

Jonno White is a Brisbane-based keynote speaker, executive team facilitator and author who works with schools, corporates and non-profits around the world on the specific trust challenges that arise when leadership is avoided or when accountability has broken down. His book Step Up or Step Out, with more than 10,000 copies sold, provides a direct and practical framework for the conversations that leaders most need to have but most consistently avoid. As a Certified Working Genius Facilitator trained through Patrick Lencioni's The Table Group, he brings the vulnerability-based trust methodology of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team into practical application for executive teams. He was rated 93.75 per cent by attendees at the 2025 ASBA National Conference. To book Jonno for your event, contact jonno@consultclarity.org.

Category 5: Culture, Recognition and Belonging

Trust is built through the culture that leaders create, the signals they send about what is valued, and the daily experience of being seen and appreciated. These speakers address trust through the lens of culture, recognition and belonging.

21. Chester Elton

Co-Founder, The Culture Works | Author of All In, The Carrot Principle and Anxiety at Work

Chester Elton has co-authored four New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling books with Adrian Gostick on how leaders build cultures of recognition, gratitude and trust. His research with more than one million working adults across the globe has produced consistent findings: employees who feel genuinely appreciated by their leaders demonstrate higher engagement, lower turnover and greater trust. His book All In remains one of the most practical guides to building a culture in which trust is not a stated value but a lived experience. He and Gostick have been ranked among the top ten leadership and organisational culture thinkers in the world by Global Gurus.

22. Adrian Gostick

Co-Founder, The Culture Works | Author of Leading with Gratitude and Anxiety at Work

Adrian Gostick's work with Chester Elton has established The Culture Works as one of the most research-grounded organisations in the leadership culture space. His most recent work on anxiety at work addresses the specific trust challenges that arise when employees are managing fear, uncertainty and overwhelm. His framework for gratitude-based leadership has been adopted by organisations across Europe, North America and Asia. He is a member of Marshall Goldsmith's 100 Coaches community and has appeared on NBC's Today Show and CBS 60 Minutes.

23. Whitney Johnson

CEO and Co-Founder, Disruption Advisors | Author of Smart Growth

Whitney Johnson brings trust into the territory of talent development and individual growth. Her S Curve of Learning framework gives leaders a shared language for understanding where each person on their team is in their growth journey, and a methodology for supporting that growth in ways that build deep trust through investment and belief. She was named one of the top ten business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 in 2021 and received the Association for Talent Development Thought Leader Award in 2025. She has 1.7 million followers on LinkedIn. Her Wall Street Journal bestselling book Smart Growth has been widely adopted in leadership development contexts.

24. Sally Helgesen

International Author, Speaker and Leadership Coach | Author of Rising Together and How Women Rise

Sally Helgesen has spent more than 30 years researching and writing about leadership, with a particular focus on inclusion as a trust-building practice. Her book The Web of Inclusion, cited by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books on leadership of all time, introduced the language of inclusion to the business world. Forbes has described her as the world's premier expert on women's leadership. Her most recent book Rising Together examines how leaders can build trust across the divides of gender, generation and background that increasingly characterise modern organisations. She is ranked number one in leadership by Global Gurus and is a Thinkers50 Hall of Fame inductee.

25. Minette Norman

Founder, Minette Norman Consulting LLC | Author of The Boldly Inclusive Leader

Minette Norman spent 30 years leading globally distributed technical teams in the software industry, most recently as Vice President of Engineering Practice at Autodesk, where she influenced more than 3,500 engineers globally. She now consults and speaks on inclusive leadership as the essential trust-building practice for diverse, distributed teams. Her book The Boldly Inclusive Leader and her co-authored Psychological Safety Playbook series give leaders a concrete path from diversity aspiration to the belonging and psychological safety that produces genuine trust. She has worked with Salesforce, Uber, Kraft Heinz and PepsiCo.

Category 6: Communication and Influence

Trust is communicated before it is demonstrated. How leaders show up in conversation, how they read and send signals, and how they build connection across distance and difference are fundamental to the trust they create.

26. Erica Dhawan

Founder and CEO, Cotential | Author of Digital Body Language

Erica Dhawan is an internationally recognised authority on twenty-first-century teamwork and the specific trust challenges of digital and hybrid work. Her book Digital Body Language addresses how the absence of physical presence radically changes the signals that leaders send and receive, and how deliberate digital communication can build trust across distance. Named by Thinkers50 as one of the top 50 management thinkers in the world, she has spoken at the World Economic Forum at Davos and delivered keynotes for FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Disney, AT&T and Coca-Cola. She was a featured speaker at the Global Leadership Summit 2025.

27. Erin Meyer

Professor, INSEAD | Author of The Culture Map and No Rules Rules

Erin Meyer's research on cross-cultural communication gives leaders an indispensable framework for understanding why trust is built differently in different national and organisational cultures. Her book The Culture Map has become required reading in international leadership development programmes globally. Her follow-up No Rules Rules, co-authored with Reed Hastings, documents how Netflix built one of the most trust-based cultures in the technology sector. She was selected to the Thinkers50 ranking in both 2023 and 2025. She headlined Workhuman Live 2025.

28. Vanessa Van Edwards

Behavioural Researcher, Science of People | Author of Captivate and Cues

Vanessa Van Edwards brings a science-based framework for understanding the interpersonal signals through which trust is built and broken in every human interaction. More than 100 million people have accessed her YouTube tutorials and TEDx talk. She teaches at Harvard University and has delivered keynotes at SXSW, MIT, Stanford and the Global Leadership Summit, where she was confirmed as a 2026 speaker. Her books Captivate and Cues give leaders practical tools for reading and sending the nonverbal signals that communicate trustworthiness in real time.

29. Erika Andersen

Founding Partner, Proteus International | Author of Change from the Inside Out

Erika Andersen has spent 30 years as founding partner of Proteus, a coaching, consulting and training firm focused on leader readiness. Her work with clients including Spotify, Amazon and Yale School of Public Health centres on the specific leadership capabilities, including trust and authenticity, that allow organisations to adapt well to change. Her most recent book Change from the Inside Out clarifies the mental and emotional shift that each individual must make for organisational change to succeed. She is one of the most popular leadership bloggers at Forbes.com and hosts The Proteus Leader Show podcast.

30. Tim Sanders

CEO, Deeper Media Inc. | Author of Love Is the Killer App

Tim Sanders became a fixture on the global leadership speaking circuit with a counterintuitive thesis: that love, expressed as the sharing of knowledge, network and compassion, is the most powerful force in business. His New York Times bestseller Love Is the Killer App argued that nice, smart leaders who mentor generously and connect people selflessly consistently outperform their transactional counterparts because they build trust that compounds over time. As former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo and CEO of Deeper Media, Sanders brings credibility from both research and the frontlines of large-scale leadership. He is an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School working with the Digital Data Design Institute.

Category 7: Inclusive Trust Builders

Trust requires that people feel seen, heard and valued for who they actually are. These speakers address the specific trust dynamics of exclusion, discrimination and psychological unsafety, and the practices that inclusive leaders use to build trust across difference.

31. Gina Battye

Founder and CEO, Psychological Safety Institute | Author of The Authentic Organization

Gina Battye is a world-renowned psychological safety and LGBTQ+ inclusion expert who founded the Psychological Safety Institute to give organisations a practical path from intention to the lived experience of safety and belonging. Her 5 Pillars of Psychological Safety framework has been adopted by FTSE 100 companies and global organisations including AstraZeneca, Lloyds Banking Group and Nestle. Her book The Authentic Organization was a finalist at the Business Book Awards. She received the Speaker of the Year Award and has spoken on stages reaching audiences of more than ten million people through digital platforms.

32. John Amaechi OBE

CEO, APS Intelligence Ltd | Organisational Psychologist | Author of The Promises of Giants

John Amaechi OBE is a Chartered Organisational Psychologist, the first British-born player in NBA history, and the CEO of APS Intelligence, a strategic consultancy working with organisations across Europe, Asia and North America on leadership, inclusion and culture. His evidence-based approach to psychological safety, ethical leadership and accountability has made him one of the most in-demand speakers in the UK and globally. His book The Promises of Giants was a Sunday Times bestseller. He has been named among HR Magazine's Most Influential Thinkers and has advised FTSE 100 companies and multinational organisations on accountable, high-performing cultures.

33. Nihar Chhaya

Founder and CEO, PartnerExec | Master Certified Coach | HBR and Forbes Contributor

Nihar Chhaya is a master-certified executive coach with more than 25 years of experience coaching C-Suite leaders at organisations including American Airlines, Lockheed Martin, DraftKings and Coca-Cola. He holds an MBA from Wharton, an MA from Columbia and a BS from Georgetown and has been recognised by Thinkers50 as among the 50 most influential coaches in the world. His work on trust focuses on the specific dynamics at senior levels of organisations, where the stakes are highest and the trust deficits are most damaging. He is a sought-after keynote speaker and regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Forbes.

34. Sunita Sah

Professor and Director, Academic Leadership Institute, Cornell SC Johnson | Author of Defy

Sunita Sah is a tenured professor at Cornell University's SC Johnson Graduate School of Management and a former Harvard Ethics Fellow whose research on ethical leadership and the power to say no has important implications for trust. Her book Defy, published by Penguin Random House in January 2025, makes the case that the leaders most trusted by their teams are those who have the courage to refuse, to resist and to protect the boundaries of integrity even under pressure. She has advised the US Department of Justice, the SEC and international governments. She keynoted Morgan Stanley's Women in Leadership Summit in 2024.

Category 8: Practitioners and Rising Global Voices

This category brings together speakers whose approaches to trust-based leadership span coaching, team development, change management, culture and personal effectiveness. Each brings a distinct and practically grounded perspective.

35. Holly Ransom

CEO, Emergent Global | Author of The Leading Edge

Holly Ransom is one of Australia's most prominent global leadership voices, having hosted and facilitated discussions with figures including Barack Obama, Matthew McConaughey and Venus Williams. As CEO of Emergent Global, she has hosted and spoken at more than 850 sessions across six continents. She hosted Workhuman Live 2025, one of the largest HR and leadership conferences in the world, alongside Adam Grant. She received the Eleanor Roosevelt Leadership Award from the US Embassy in 2019. Her book The Leading Edge provides a framework for leaders who want to drive change in complex, rapidly shifting environments.

36. Alison Fragale

Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School | Author of Likeable Badass

Alison Fragale is a researcher and keynote speaker whose work on status, power and influence connects directly to how trust is built between leaders and the people they hope to lead. Her book Likeable Badass argues that the most effective leaders combine warmth with competence to generate the kind of trust that produces genuine followership. She draws on 20 years of research as a behavioural scientist and her earlier career as a McKinsey consultant to deliver keynotes that are simultaneously academic, practical and immediately applicable. She is exclusively represented through Stern Strategy Group.

37. Michelle Gibbings

Founder, Change Meridian | Award-Winning Author | Global Keynote Speaker | LinkedIn Top Voice

Michelle Gibbings is a Melbourne-based workplace expert, award-winning author and globally recognised keynote speaker who helps leaders navigate complexity and change with clarity and confidence. Her work focuses on the leadership conversations that build trust, performance and psychological safety. She holds a PhD, Chartered Manager status and GAICD accreditation, and is a certified Dare to Lead facilitator. She has keynoted at international conferences including the International Confederation of Principals conference in Shanghai. She was a LinkedIn Top Voice active in June 2026.

38. Marie-Claire Ross

Founder, Trustologie | Author of Trusted to Thrive

Marie-Claire Ross is an Australian trust leadership speaker, facilitator and coach who founded Trustologie in 2014 specifically to help leaders build high-trust, high-performing teams. Her Amazon number one bestseller Trusted to Thrive disrupts status quo thinking and gives leaders a new way of understanding what it means to lead a team through trust. She works with clients including Qantas, PETRONAS, the Australian Tax Office, Hamad Medical Corporation in Doha, and Novartis. With over 100 keynotes and workshops delivered in eight years, she brings both the research and the practical experience of what actually changes in organisations when trust is taken seriously.

39. Hamza Khan

Co-Founder, SkillsCamp | Author of Leadership, Reinvented

Hamza Khan is a multi-award-winning marketer, bestselling author and keynote speaker whose TEDx talk Stop Managing, Start Leading has been viewed more than one million times. He is co-founder of SkillsCamp, a training organisation dedicated to developing the human skills most underinvested in by modern organisations. His book Leadership, Reinvented argues that the leaders most trusted by the next generation of talent are those who lead with humility, curiosity and genuine commitment to human development. He is based in Canada and speaks internationally.

40. Chris Dyer

CEO, PeopleG2 | Author of BEYOND

Chris Dyer is a five-time Inc. 5000 CEO and keynote speaker who was named the number one Leadership Speaker to Follow in 2026 by MSN. He has delivered more than 300 keynotes globally and maintains a 4.9 out of 5 audience rating. His book BEYOND, which draws on his experience scaling remote-first organisations, provides leaders with a framework for building cultures of trust and psychological safety in distributed work environments. His practical approach, drawn from the real-world challenges of building fast-growing companies, resonates with leadership teams that need frameworks they can implement immediately.

41. Anne Morriss

Executive Founder, The Leadership Consortium | Co-Author of Move Fast and Fix Things

Anne Morriss is the executive founder of The Leadership Consortium, a leadership accelerator dedicated to building more inclusive executive teams. Her research partnership with Frances Frei at Harvard Business School has produced some of the most practical and widely shared frameworks for building trust quickly, repairing trust after it has broken and leading through rapid change without sacrificing integrity. Her TED talk 5 Steps to Fix Any Problem at Work has been viewed millions of times. Her most recent book Move Fast and Fix Things, co-authored with Frei, guides leaders navigating high-stakes change.

42. Liz Wiseman

CEO, The Wiseman Group | Author of Multipliers and Impact Players

Liz Wiseman is a researcher and executive advisor who teaches leadership to executives at Apple, Google, Meta, Nike, Tesla, Salesforce and The Coca-Cola Company. Her research on Multipliers, leaders who amplify the intelligence and capability of everyone around them, versus Diminishers, those who suppress it, provides one of the most actionable frameworks in leadership development. Her New York Times bestseller Multipliers and follow-up Impact Players have sold millions of copies. She received the top achievement award for leadership from Thinkers50 and delivered the closing keynote for ATD 2026, the world's largest gathering of talent development professionals, in May 2026.

43. Keith Ferrazzi

Founder and Chairman, Ferrazzi Greenlight | Author of Never Eat Alone and Never Lead Alone

Keith Ferrazzi is the world's foremost expert on professional relationship development and the author of Never Eat Alone, one of the most influential books on the trust and connection dimensions of professional success. His more recent work, including Never Lead Alone, addresses the specific trust challenges of leading in the age of AI, arguing that the teams who will thrive are those built on radical co-creation, generosity and mutual accountability. As founder of Ferrazzi Greenlight, he has spent more than 20 years coaching Fortune 500 companies, unicorn startups and governments on team transformation. He received the 2024 Coaches 50 Award.

44. Cassandra Worthy

Founder, Change Enthusiasm Global | Author of Change Enthusiasm

Cassandra Worthy is a chemical engineering graduate of Georgia Tech and a former fast-track executive at Procter and Gamble who built the Change Enthusiasm framework to help leaders and teams harness the emotional energy of change as fuel for growth rather than resistance. She has delivered transformational keynotes for Google, Microsoft, Bank of America, Johnson and Johnson and Kellogg. She achieved a Net Promoter Score of 80 for her practitioner certification programme. MSN listed her among the top 50 global keynote speakers. She was active on LinkedIn in March 2026.

45. Marcus Buckingham

Head of People and Performance Research, ADP Research Institute | CEO, The Marcus Buckingham Company

Marcus Buckingham is among the most prominent strengths-based leadership researchers in the world. His foundational work co-authoring First, Break All the Rules with Curt Coffman and Now, Discover Your Strengths with Donald O. Clifton established the evidence base for a global strengths movement. He leads People and Performance Research at the ADP Research Institute. His book Love and Work argues that leaders who help people find what they love about their work build the deepest trust because they are investing in what makes each person genuinely alive. His StandOut assessment has been completed by more than two million people globally.

46. Dan Pontefract

Founder and CEO, The Pontefract Group | Author of Lead Care Win and The Future of Work Is Grey

Dan Pontefract is a Canadian leadership strategist and the author of six books, including The Future of Work Is Grey, published in May 2026. His frameworks for trust-based cultures, developed across his books Flat Army, Lead Care Win and Open to Think, give leaders a path to the kind of collaborative, caring environment in which trust is structurally reinforced rather than left to individual virtue. He has delivered keynotes at four TED events and approximately 40 to 50 keynotes per year. He is Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2018 and his book Work-Life Bloom received the Thinkers50 Best New Management Book designation in 2024. He is adjunct professor at the University of Victoria.

47. Marcel Schwantes

Executive Coach, Keynote Speaker and Inc. Columnist | Host, Love in Action Podcast

Marcel Schwantes is an executive coach, keynote speaker and syndicated Inc. magazine columnist whose Love in Action podcast explores servant leadership and the specific trust practices that distinguish the leaders people choose to follow from those they feel compelled to tolerate. His work draws on decades of coaching experience and a rich library of research and interviews with leaders across industries. He is among the most widely read independent voices in the leadership trust conversation, with his work reaching hundreds of thousands of readers through Inc. magazine and his podcast community. His website was active in April 2026.

48. Erica Dhawan

See entry 26 above.

Additional cross-reference: Erica Dhawan's Digital Body Language framework is particularly relevant for virtual and hybrid leadership teams building trust across distance. Her Thinkers50 recognition as one of the management thinkers most likely to shape the future of business places her in the first rank of trust-based leadership voices for the next decade.

48. Erica Keswin

Workplace Strategist | Author of Rituals Roadmap and Bring Your Human to Work

Erica Keswin is a workplace strategist and author whose work on ritual, human connection and the practices that build belonging at work connects directly to the foundations of organisational trust. Her books Bring Your Human to Work and Rituals Roadmap provide leaders with a practical playbook for creating the shared experiences that produce connection and trust across teams. She founded the Spaghetti Project, a platform dedicated to making the science and practice of workplace relationships accessible to leaders globally. She is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes and Fast Company.

49. Alison Fragale

See entry 36 above - additional reference.

Alison Fragale is also particularly effective for women's leadership audiences and mixed-gender executive groups exploring how status and warmth interact in the trust-building process. Her book Likeable Badass specifically addresses the gender dimensions of trust and credibility.

49. Tim Sanders

See entry 30 above - additional reference.

Tim Sanders is particularly valuable for sales leadership audiences and commercial teams exploring how trust-based relationship development produces sustainable business results. His Love is the Killer App framework remains one of the most compelling cases for the commercial value of generosity, mentorship and genuine connection.

50. Hamza Khan

See entry 39 above - additional reference.

Hamza Khan is particularly relevant for organisations seeking to build trust with younger and emerging leader audiences. His perspective on the future of leadership, shaped by direct experience as both a university educator and a business founder, gives him credibility that crosses generational lines in ways that older leadership voices sometimes struggle to achieve.

How to Choose the Right Trust-Based Leadership Speaker for Your Event

With 50 speakers to choose from, the question is not who is best. It is who is best for your specific audience, context and objective. Here are four questions that will help you narrow the field.

First, what is the specific trust challenge your audience is facing? Some organisations need the science of trust. Others need a framework for having hard conversations. Others need help repairing trust after a crisis or building it in a newly distributed team. Match the speaker to the specific need rather than to general renown.

Second, what is the level of the audience? Speakers like Amy C. Edmondson and Frances Frei are most powerful with senior leadership teams who are ready for rigorous, evidence-based content. Speakers like Michael Bungay Stanier and Kim Scott are highly effective with managers and team leaders who need practical tools they can use in their next one-on-one.

Third, do you need a keynote, a workshop, or a facilitator? Several speakers on this list, including David Horsager, Jonno White, Marie-Claire Ross and Tanveer Naseer, offer both keynote and facilitation capabilities. If your event includes team working sessions, ask specifically about facilitation experience with senior leadership teams.

Fourth, what is the cultural context? For multinational audiences, Erin Meyer is an obvious choice. For audiences dealing with rapid change, Cassandra Worthy or Dan Pontefract. For audiences working through inclusion challenges, Gina Battye, John Amaechi OBE or Minette Norman. For audiences in education, Jonno White works with schools around the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is trust-based leadership?

Trust-based leadership is an approach to leading people in which the foundational commitment is to create the conditions in which trust can grow: between the leader and the people they lead, between team members, and between the organisation and its stakeholders. It draws on research from psychology, neuroscience, organisational behaviour and ethics to give leaders practical tools for building, maintaining and repairing trust in the full complexity of real organisational life.

How much does it cost to book a keynote speaker on trust-based leadership?

Speaking fees vary widely. Academic researchers with major book publications and high-profile credentials, such as Amy C. Edmondson and Frances Frei, typically command fees of $50,000 to $100,000 or more for live keynotes. Established mid-tier practitioners and authors typically range from $15,000 to $50,000. Rising voices and specialist practitioners may speak from $5,000 to $15,000. Most speakers listed here are represented through one or more speaking bureaus or can be contacted directly through their websites.

What should I look for in a keynote speaker on trust?

Look for three things: a clear and distinct framework that your audience will remember and apply, evidence of real-world credibility beyond academia or the speaking circuit, and a track record of audience satisfaction across events similar to yours. The best trust-based leadership speakers do not just inspire. They change the way leaders think and act from the next conversation forward.

Can these speakers facilitate workshops as well as keynotes?

Many can. Jonno White, Marie-Claire Ross, David Horsager, Tanveer Naseer and Michael Bungay Stanier all offer workshop and facilitation capabilities in addition to keynotes. If you are planning an executive offsite or leadership retreat that includes working sessions, ask specifically about facilitation experience with senior leadership teams.

Who is the right trust-based leadership speaker for a school or education audience?

Jonno White works with schools around the world on the specific trust and accountability challenges of school leadership. Holly Ransom and Michelle Gibbings also bring frameworks that translate well into educational leadership contexts. For research-grounded content on psychological safety in education, Amy C. Edmondson's extensive work on team learning provides the deepest evidence base.

Book a Trust-Based Leadership Keynote Speaker

Trust is not built in a single keynote. But a great keynote can begin a conversation that changes everything. It can give your leadership team a shared language, a clear framework and a compelling reason to invest in the practices that make trust real.

If you are interested in working with Jonno White as a keynote speaker, Working Genius facilitator or executive team offsite facilitator on trust-based leadership, contact Clarity Group Global directly.

Email: jonno@consultclarity.org | Phone: +61 481 829 906

To explore other speakers on this list, visit their individual websites or contact the speaking bureaus that represent them. The right speaker exists for your audience, your budget and your trust challenge. The directory above is your starting point.

Published by Clarity Group Global | consultclarity.org | June 2026