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Erica Dhawan

Speaker

Tampa, FL, USA

Leading Authority on 21st Century Teamwork, Collaboration, and Innovation

Erica Dhawan is the world’s leading authority on 21st century teamwork, collaboration and connectional intelligence. She challenges audiences and organizations to innovate faster and further, and was recently named #1 on the Top Women Keynote Speakers List by RealLeaders. With the world of business increasingly turning digital and work practices changing at a blistering rate, Erica provides innovative strategies to unlock the collective power of teams, build a culture of trust, and create authentic engagement to ensure competitiveness. 

Keynote Speeches

Virtual Keynotes & Webinars
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Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence

We typically associate success with speed and smarts. But in today’s hypercompetitive world, even those gifts aren’t enough.

Collaboration expert Erica Dhawan argues that the game changer is a thoroughly modern skill called Connectional Intelligence (CxQ). As radical a concept as Emotional Intelligence was in the 90s, Connectional Intelligence is turning people into superconnectors who accelerate innovation, break down silos and foster breakthrough impact.

This dynamic, engaging, high-energy, fast-paced session will help participants understand the practice of using connectional intelligence as the key to purposeful collaboration, resilience, and business success.

Attendees will shift the notion of collaboration from more meetings and emails to productive engagement that improves speed and quality of service, increases subject matter expertise and specialist sharing across silos, reduces cross-team dysfunction and delay, and eliminates duplicative work.

Attendees will learn new insights and tools to accelerate the connected power of teams, become more agile and innovative, and drive breakthrough ideas and outcomes.

Learning Outcomes:

  • Discover new ways to lead, inspire, and communicate with diverse teams through uncertainty
  • Learn how to keep cross team collaborations aligned, build trust, and foster motivation
  • Gain specific actions to inspire teamwork, innovation, resilience, revitalization, and results-driven progress
  • Behaviors to understand and build trust and connection, no matter the distance
Collaborate Faster and Further, Together

Email replies that show up a week later. Video chats full of “oops… sorry no you go” and “can you hear me?!” Ambiguous text-messages.

Is it any wonder communication takes us so much time and effort to figure out? How did we lose our innate capacity to understand each other?

Humans rely on body language to connect and build trust, but with most of our communication happening from behind a screen, traditional body language signals are no longer visible – or are they?

In her keynote, Erica combines cutting-edge research with engaging storytelling to decode the new signals and cues that have replaced traditional body language across genders, generations, and cultures.

In person, we lean in, uncross our arms, smile, nod, and make eye contact to show we listen and care. Online, reading carefully is the new listening. Writing clearly is the new empathy. And a phone or video call is worth a thousand emails.

In this keynote, Erica Dhawan, author of the bestselling book DIGITAL BODY LANGUAGE will supercharge your teams with collectively understood rules that foster connection, build trust and drive innovation.

Learning Outcomes:

  • Understand your collaboration style and the digital body language signals you may be broadcasting (even if you don’t intend to!)
  • Create cultures of maniacal clarity across email, phone, IM, text, video, and even live meetings
  • Develop a collaboration strategy that fosters valuable relationships, both in-person and online
  • End cultures of useless meetings, missed deadlines, and digital misunderstandings
Win Together: Build Resilient and High-Performing Teams in the Age of AI

This isn’t your ordinary keynote; it’s a front-row seat to the future of inspiration and impact in the age of AI. WSJ Bestselling Author and award winning keynote speaker Erica Dhawan promises not just a talk but an immersive experience, where the secrets to unlocking peak performance and team spirit are revealed in the new world of work. Get ready to be captivated, motivated, and equipped with the tools to bring out the best in yourself and those around you.

Discover the exact strategies to build 21st century teams that defy the odds, whether it’s how to be a better leader in the AI revolution or turn challenges into triumphs in the digital-first world. Spoiler alert: AI won’t replace us, but leaders who master it will redefine the game. Globally recognized teamwork expert Erica Dhawan provides actionable insights, equipping attendees with the knowledge and strategies to not only adapt to the changing landscape but to thrive in it.

Key Takeaways:

  • Build Trust in Times of Change: Learn proven techniques to foster trust within teams amidst constant digital and AI transformation.
  • Thrive Amid Uncertainty: Gain actionable tips to enhance engagement, minimize friction, and confidently navigate the unpredictable terrain.
  • AI as a Leadership Tool: Recognize AI as an asset rather than a threat, and harness its capabilities for organizational success.
  • Cultivate Team Spirit: Uncover strategies to enhance collaboration, experimentation, and camaraderie within your teams.
Concrete Empathy: A Playbook for Leading Modern Teams

We live in a culture defined by a distinct empathy deficit: The boss who constantly emails you are “wrong”—but never shows you how to correct those mistakes. The colleague who mansplains you to death in every conference call and has no interest in what you have to say. The team member who won’t stop looking at her phone as you share sensitive information during a meeting.

Why is empathy today at such a low point? You can credit various factors, including fewer face-to-face interactions, an ever-accelerating pace of change and an increasing number of global teams working remotely. These and other elements make it harder for any of us to understand and meet the unspoken needs of others. Teams have it especially hard. The more digitized teams become, and the more we interact online, the greater the need for empathy becomes to balance distances and misalignments and foster inclusivity and belonging.

In this keynote, attendees will learn to activate Concrete Empathy, a playbook for building trust and collaboration with confidence today. With a combination of engaging stories, science, and practical tools, it shows leaders how to cultivate greater empathy across teams, ultimately creating cultures of connection and high-performance. 

Learning Outcomes Include:
· Simple ways of seeing the world as others do, even during emails, conference calls, and video discussions.
· Rules of thumb to avoid misunderstanding, ambiguity and rushes to judgment (or what we call, reading digital body language).
· Signals that show others you understand their feelings and hear their ideas, especially when you are not in the same room.
· Tools to diffuse tensions, bring an end to conflicts and create lasting connections.

Audience reviews:

  • Erica Dhawan was an inspiring and provocative keynote speaker at our executive retreat. I highly recommend her and her work to senior executives seeking to build a thriving talent pool in today’s world! - Director, Deloitte Consulting LLP
  • Erica was one of the best speakers we’ve had. Her message was of great value to our teams at FedEx who ranged from Gen Y to Traditionalists! We left with specific actions we could use right away to drive more innovation across our teams. - Senior Advisor, FedEx Corporation
  • Her storytelling style of presenting along with a healthy dose of informative case studies kept everyone engaged and interested–and excited about using connectional intelligence to transform our business. - Chairman and CEO Emeritus, Sodexo
  • So many of us saw ourselves in the vignettes that you shared both in terms of what we are doing well and areas that we need to develop. We appreciate that your tips were very practical and easily implementable. Incredibly good takeaways! - Georgine, World Bank
  • Erica was even more impressive, relatable and engaging in person, I really enjoyed the session and Erica has a unique way of making you feel in a group she is speaking directly to you - Taeko, Sony

Speaker Biography

When leaders want to break team silos, drive exponential growth and innovate through teamwork, they call Erica Dhawan.

Erica Dhawan is an internationally recognized leading authority, speaker and advisor on 21st century teamwork, collaboration and innovation.

Named as one of the top 50 management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50, she is the author of two bestselling books, Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence and Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance.

As we continue to experience an increasingly digital world where work practices are changing at a blistering pace, Erica shares innovative strategies to unlock the collective power of teams, build a culture of trust across any distance and create authentic engagement to ensure competitiveness. Rated #1 on the Top Women Keynote Speakers list, Erica frequently appears in the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and The Wall Street Journal. Erica speaks on global stages ranging from the World Economic Forum at Davos, to the US Army, to companies such as Coca-Cola, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, and Cisco.

She holds degrees from Harvard University, MIT Sloan, and The Wharton School.