Built for you.
Five keynotes for senior leadership audiences. One signature address for any room. Four domain keynotes built around the specific pressure points where decision quality most determines what follows. Every engagement is prepared for the specific audience: nothing is a repeat performance.
Ideas that provoke.
Frameworks that stay
in the room.
A keynote from David McQueen is not a motivational address. It is a structured argument: developed with rigour, grounded in the realities senior leaders are actually navigating, and designed to change how the audience thinks about the decision in front of them. The session ends. The thinking stays.
Five keynotes.
One signature.
Four domains.
The Brave Leader
- Annual leadership conferences
- Executive away days and offsites
- Board strategy sessions
- Any senior leadership audience
- A practical leadership diagnostic
- The BRAVE framework to apply immediately
- Clarity on where their leadership edge is
- A language for braver decisions
- 30 minutes
- 45 minutes
- 60 minutes
- 90 minutes + Q and A
What leadership requires when certainty disappears. A study of the characteristics that allow leaders to navigate complexity with clarity, and the habits that quietly undermine them.
This is the signature keynote: built for any senior leadership audience, at any scale, at any moment. It draws on the BRAVE framework, Bold, Resilient, Agile, Visionary, Ethical, not as a checklist, but as a diagnosis. What does each quality actually look like under pressure? What stops capable leaders from accessing them? And what does it cost when they don't?
The Brave Leader is the keynote that works for a conference of 500 or a board of twelve. It is the one that stays.
Bravery in leadership is not a personality trait. It is a practice. And it can be developed, if leaders are honest about where they are currently avoiding it.
Annual conferences · Leadership away days · Board strategy sessions · Any audience where the quality of leadership is the underlying question
Who Actually Decides Here?
- Boards and executive teams
- Governance reviews and conferences
- Organisations in rapid growth
- Rooms with unclear accountability
- Clarity on where decisions actually sit
- A framework to close accountability gaps
- Tools to rebuild decision confidence
- Language to address the gaps openly
- 30 minutes
- 45 minutes
- 60 minutes
- 90 minutes + Q and A
A forensic look at how organisations lose decision clarity, and how the best ones build it back. For boards, executive teams, and any leadership group where accountability has become ambiguous.
Most organisations have a formal decision structure and an informal one. The gap between them is where accountability disappears. This keynote examines how that gap opens, why it is so difficult to close, and what it costs when leaders stop being clear about who owns what, and what follows from it.
The keynote is grounded in the advisory work: real patterns from real organisations, and leaves the audience with a set of questions they can apply to their own situation immediately.
Decision ambiguity is not a structural problem: it is a leadership one. And most of the time, everyone in the room already knows where it is. The work is creating the conditions to say so.
Boards and executive teams · Governance reviews · Organisations navigating rapid growth or structural change · Any room where accountability has become unclear
Show Me The Money
- Founder and scaleup audiences
- Investor networks and summits
- Entrepreneurship conferences
- Growth and capital-focused events
- A clearer read on investor readiness
- A framework for capital decisions
- Sharper questions to ask before they raise
- Preparation for what comes after the money
- 30 minutes
- 45 minutes
- 60 minutes
- 90 minutes + Q and A
The relationship between capital, ambition, and growth, and what founders and CEOs misunderstand about investors, about their own readiness, and about what capital actually costs.
Raising capital is the moment when the quality of a leader's judgement becomes most visible, and most consequential. This keynote examines the decisions that surround capital: the decision to raise, the decision about who to raise from, the decision about what the organisation is prepared to give up, and the decision about whether the leader is ready for what comes next.
It is not a session about pitch decks. It is a session about what capital requires from the people who seek it, and the questions most founders are not asking themselves.
Most founders prepare for the investor conversation. Very few prepare for what follows it. The decisions that determine whether capital creates or destroys value are made before the term sheet is signed.
Founder and scaleup audiences · Investor networks · Entrepreneurship conferences · Any room navigating capital, growth, or exit
A Well Told Story
- Marketing and comms leadership
- Founders preparing to raise
- Organisations navigating change
- Events where narrative drives outcomes
- A structure for building a compelling narrative
- Techniques to simplify complex messages
- Confidence to tell their story under pressure
- A framework for story as strategic asset
- 30 minutes
- 45 minutes
- 60 minutes
- 90 minutes + Q and A
Your story is not decoration. It is an organisational asset. This keynote examines how leaders build, protect, and deploy narrative as a strategic tool, not a communication exercise.
Senior leaders are judged by whether people believe them: believe the vision, the plan, the person. The ability to tell the story of an organisation in a way that produces alignment rather than compliance is a competitive advantage that most leaders leave undeveloped. This keynote examines why that is, and what to do about it.
The session covers narrative architecture, the craft of simplification, and how to communicate with complexity without losing the listener, with practical frameworks the audience can apply the same week.
The leaders who move capital, talent, and organisations are not always the most technically capable. They are the ones who can tell the story of where they are going, and make the listener believe it is the right direction.
Marketing and communications leadership · Founders preparing to raise · Organisations navigating change or repositioning · Any room where how the story is told determines what follows
What Breaks Under Pressure
- Risk and governance conferences
- Executive leadership programmes
- High-stakes decision-making events
- Senior teams facing major transitions
- A clearer map of their own pressure points
- Strategies to protect decision quality
- A framework for building cultures that hold
- Practical tools to use before the next crisis
- 30 minutes
- 45 minutes
- 60 minutes
- 90 minutes + Q and A
What happens to judgement when the stakes rise, the clock is running, and the information is incomplete. A rigorous examination of decision quality under real conditions, not controlled experiments.
The research on decision-making is extensive. Most of it tells us what happens in controlled settings. This keynote is about what happens in the conditions senior leaders actually face: time pressure, political friction, incomplete information, and the weight of consequence. It examines the patterns of failure that show up repeatedly, and what it takes to interrupt them.
It is the keynote that leaves audiences unsettled in the most productive sense: more honest about how they actually make decisions, and more equipped to do it better.
Decision quality under pressure is not determined by intelligence or experience alone. It is determined by the habits, structures, and cultures leaders build, or fail to build, before the pressure arrives.
Risk and governance conferences · Executive leadership programmes · Any room where high-stakes decision-making is the core challenge
Every engagement
begins with a
conversation.
Before any keynote is confirmed, David wants to understand who is in the room, what they are carrying, and what a well-spent session would actually produce. That conversation shapes everything: the angle, the emphasis, the examples, the close.
Pre-event briefing
Every keynote begins with a briefing call, with the event organiser, and where possible with a senior leader from the audience, to understand the room, the context, and what the session is there to do. This is not a courtesy call. It is where the session is designed.
Tailored, not templated
Each of the five keynotes has a fixed thesis and a fixed structure. Everything inside it, the examples, the data, the framing, the application, is chosen for this audience. Nothing is a repeat of the last room.
Q&A and panel
All keynotes include a Q&A element. Where the brief calls for it, David is also available for facilitated panel sessions, roundtable discussions, or extended conversation with senior groups following the main address.
The fee
Keynote fees are five figures plus travel and expenses where applicable. Availability is limited. The booking is about alignment: the fit matters as much as the fee. If budget is a constraint, note it in your enquiry.
What event organisers ask
What size audiences does David typically speak to?
From 50-person leadership offsites to conferences of 2,000 or more. The content and delivery are adjusted for the room: an intimate executive session calls for a different energy to a main stage conference keynote. Both work well.
Can the keynote be tailored to our event theme?
Yes, and this is standard practice. Every engagement begins with a briefing call to understand the audience, the event context and what the session needs to achieve. The content is built around that, not retrofitted from a generic deck.
What formats are available?
- Keynote (45 to 90 minutes, with Q and A)
- Panel participation or moderation
- Leadership conversation or fireside
- Executive workshop (half or full day)
- Virtual and hybrid events
Is David available for international events?
Yes. David speaks internationally and has delivered keynotes across Europe, the US and beyond. Travel and accommodation are agreed separately and added to the speaking fee.
What is the investment for a keynote?
Keynotes are a five-figure investment. The exact fee depends on the format, duration, location and level of customisation involved. To get a specific figure for your event, use the enquiry form below and David will respond personally within two business days.
How far in advance should we book?
For major conferences, three to six months is recommended to ensure availability and allow time for the briefing process. Shorter-lead engagements are sometimes possible depending on the diary. It is always worth enquiring, even if the event is closer than you would expect.
What does the pre-event process look like?
After confirming the booking, there is a structured briefing call to understand the audience profile, organisational context, event objectives and any specific outcomes required. From that, the session is built. There is no standard content deck that gets dusted off for every event.
Do the keynotes work for non-leadership audiences?
The core material is most powerful with senior and mid-senior audiences where people are already making consequential decisions. That said, the BRAVE framework resonates broadly and has been delivered effectively to early-career cohorts, mixed-seniority conferences and cross-sector leadership programmes. If you are unsure whether the audience is the right fit, the briefing call will settle it.
Ready to check availability? David reviews all enquiries personally and responds within two business days.
Check availabilityTell me about
the room.
Before a session is confirmed, I want to understand who will be in the room, what they are navigating, and what a successful session would actually produce. Use the form to start that conversation.
Keynotes are five figures
If this is outside your current budget, note it in your enquiry: there may be a format that works.