Drew Dudley

An affable and captivating speaker, Drew Dudley recasts our notions of leadership. By making leadership into something bigger than ourselves, Dudley says, we fail to acknowledge the everyday leadership that effects us in innumerable ways. When it becomes outsized, we are given an excuse to not expect it from ourselves and from those around us.  Instead, we need to redefine leadership as being a series of "lollipop moments"—those moments when something you've done has made someone else's life fundamentally better. How many lollipop moments occur every day? Dudley asks. And how many go unacknowledged? How many lollipop moments we create, how many we acknowledge, and how many we pay forward—this comes closer to a true measure of leadership. A born storyteller with infectious energy, Dudley tells us that leadership is, at its core, about striving to act in a way that has a positive effect on your own life, and the lives of others.

“No matter how old you are, you're too young to settle.”

Drew Dudley wants to talk about "the list" that exists in people's heads about what they have to do in life to consider themselves a success. This list—that we're all guilty of having—are disempowering and often causes us to turn away from our true passions. In a sense, Dudley says, we are our own worst bullies. Adding insult to injury is the fact that bullying breeds fear: we won't make changes in our lives because we're afraid of ending up with less than we have now, even if we aren't happy. So, we settle. With compassion and storytelling, Dudley shows us how to break out of this bullying cycle. Doing so is the only way to become better leaders, and to live happier lives. We can't lead others until we can lead ourselves, Dudley explains. We must be able to the question, "where in my life am I settling?" and then we must refuse to do it for a single day more.

The working world is too often treated like a game, complete with rules to learn, bend, and break, and worst of all, a system of winners and losers. It leads people to feel, also, that we live and work in a world of scarcity—that when someone else gets a bonus, or a big break of some sort, it means there's less for us to gain. We put great emphasis on achieving things that might be out of our control, and have less to do with our work ethic and contributions than we might think: things like promotions, bonuses, and even office recognition, which depend heavily on finances and office cohesion. Still, we focus on these goals, and convince ourselves that they are the means by which we will feel needed, secure and satisfied with our jobs.

But what if we focused on other goals, like making an impact on society and adding value to it, without being sure that we'll receive anything but a pat on the back? Could this more selfless work model actually be more compassionate and fulfilling? Drew Dudley says, it can. In optimistic and inspiring talks, Dudley pushes his audiences to embrace the world of work as a world of abundance, where there is satisfaction and fulfillment enough for everyone who is adding value to their industry. Rather than making money and promotions our goal (which really means putting your fate into the hands of someone else), Dudley urges us to work toward a happiness that can't be bought, or framed, or praised by someone else's standards. By doing so, you CAN be in charge of your own success.