Travels from Omaha, Nebraska, USA
Cy Wakeman's speaking fee falls within range: $50,000 to $75,000
Human behavior expert, Cy Wakeman is the Founder of Reality-Based Leadership, where she has taught hundreds of leaders how to “upcycle” workplace drama, rechanneling wasted emotional energy into productive mentalities, behaviors, and results. She is the author the New York Times bestseller The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace: Know What Boosts Your Value, Kills Your Chances, and Will Make You Happier . Her latest book is No Ego: How Leaders Can Cut the Cost of Workplace Drama, End Entitlement, and Drive Big Results.
Wakeman has been researching drama and viable ways to eliminate it for over 25 years. She has been named one of the “Top Global Leadership Gurus” by Global Gurus, as well as one of the “Top 100 Leadership Experts to Follow on Twitter.” Her work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Fast Company, as well as many other media outlets.
Wakeman lives with her husband and eight sons.
Cy Wakeman is a drama researcher, New York Times best-selling author, and 2023 World’s #1 Leadership Guru who is recognized for her Reality-Based approach to leadership. Backed by over 25 years of unparalleled experience partnering with top brands spanning all industries, Cy’s philosophy offers a modern approach to leadership in which employees and managers alike can deliver better results with less drama, higher engagement without entitlement, and more happiness in even the most challenging workplace realities.
Deemed “the secret weapon to restoring sanity to the workplace and the worldplace,” Cy empowers leaders to love their teams up while calling them up to greatness. Her client list includes Google, Meta, Viacom, NBC Universal, Keurig Dr. Pepper, NASA, Pfizer, CVS, Johns Hopkins, Stanford Medicine, Bank of America, among others.
As a highly sought-after conference headliner, Cy holds a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, placing her within the top 3% of speakers worldwide. In 2024, she was honored with the prestigious Council of Peers Award of Excellence (CPAE) and inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame, recognizing her as a professional speaker who has reached the top echelon of platform excellence by the National Speakers Association.
Cy’s avid fanbase online has surpassed 250,000 followers. Her Reality-Based Leadership newsletter that often goes viral within organizations reaches over 30,000 raving fans who discuss and apply her modern leadership techniques each and every week with their teams.
She has published four best-selling books, the latest of which is Life’s Messy, Live Happy: Things Don’t Have to Be Perfect for You to Be Content (2022). Cy shares her latest leadership insights on the Reality-Based Leadership podcast where she offers practical ways to modernize how leaders evolve their teams beyond the challenges they face.
The average employee spends 2.5 hours per day caught up in workplace drama, leadership expert Cy Wakeman reports. Wakeman draws from 25 years of research to expose that most of the obstacles we face are products of our own ego. The good news, then, is that we have the power to reverse this dynamic.
“Leaders don’t manage people; they manage energy,” she comment on executives’ and managers’ power to influence their company culture. “They manage energy away from why we can’t to how we could.”
Leadership expert Cy Wakeman shows you how to get the drama out of your workplace so you can get back to what matters. Professional with a personal touch, Wakeman works with leaders and their teams to help them get to a place beyond ego – a place where people can be at their best. While other speakers may discuss how to increase engagement, accountability, and innovation in your organization, Wakeman’s approach says those things are already there; you just need to uncover them by removing the negative factors that are getting in the way.
No Ego: How leaders Can Cut the Cost of Drama, End Entitlement and Drive Big Results
Recent research conducted by Cy Wakeman in conjunction with the Futures Company, has discovered that rather than driving performance and creating efficiencies for the organization, conventional leadership strategies and philosophies are actually fueling drama in the workplace. In fact, research indicated that under currently prescribed leadership philosophy and strategic best practices, up to three months per year of each employee’s time - potentially billions of dollars annually in the U.S. alone – is wasted in drama. In this session, Cy proposes a radically different approach to core leadership philosophies such as engagement, change management, and accountability. Join Cy as she calls leadership professionals to redefine HR and leadership with science and research and to teach leaders strategies and tools that will actually work in their modern workplace.
Reality-Based Leadership™: Ditch the Drama, Restore Sanity to the Workplace and Turn Excuses into Results
These are challenging times in our businesses today. In leadership, we must become willing to admit that the ways in which we have taught leaders to lead over the years is simply not working. These times are calling for a new type of leader, one who can bring peace, sanity, and results back to the workplace! In this session, Cy rocks audiences as she teaches the key principles of her new wave of Reality-Based Leadership™.
Business Readiness – Ensuring Our Teams are Ready for What’s Next
In this high energy session, Cy Wakeman will help leaders understand their heightened responsibilities in delivering teams and talent that are ready for what’s next along with strategies to ensure that teams are able to quickly adapt and change and deliver on the needs of the organization to provide relevant, highvalue, services in even mature markets. After all, change is only hard for the unready.
Hardwiring Accountability into Your Workforce
Everyone is talking about accountability, but few organizations are actually successful in ensuring that personal accountability is hardwired into their talent and everyday business operations. Join Cy as she breaks down the core competency of personal accountability and gives you no nonsense, workable strategies to hire for, coach for, and develop for accountability in your workforce! After all, personal accountability is the foundation of Reality Based Leadership™ – a revolution in leadership.
Employee Engagement is Broken: Unlocking the True Driver of Employee Performance
For years, our organizations have been investing time, money and energy into engaging our employees based on the promise that engagement drives results. While engaging our employees is critical, it turns out that engagement isn’t enough. Engagement without accountability is chaos. In this dynamic, provocative and groundbreaking presentation, you will be introduced to the concept of Reality-Based Engagement, where accountability and engagement intersect to produce awesome results. This will include some practical guidance for how to cultivate the power of personal accountability within your organization.
“Cy’s philosophy is important for business leaders to understand – if you don’t invest in the right tools to empower your people, your going to lose.” – Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia
“Cy Wakeman does a great job in illustrating how leaders can build a workplace free of drama and full of accountability – the true amplifier of one’s strengths.” – Marcus Buckingham, New York Times bestselling author of First, Break All the Rules; Now Discover Your Strengths; and The One Thing You Need to Know.
“This is the most effective, productive and practical solution any business leader would want. I cannot tell you how much money, time and emotional waste has been saved because of Cy’s philosophy. She can transform any culture to help the willing revolutionize consistent and constant change.” – Frank Calderoni, CEO Anaplan, Former CFO Red Hat and Cisco
“The response from our HR community has been overwhelming. They loved your message, and I think the whole experience provided a much-needed energy boost. The day exceeded my expectations, and it was the perfect launch to my new role – setting a new tone for our HR community.” – Vicki Williams, CHRO, NBCUniversal Media, LLC
“What a privilege to have you in Charlotte last week! Your message of ditch the drama, your ego is not your amigo, and how to check our stories was so impactful to our teams. The group you spoke to is highly diverse and yet your message resonated in a uniform and profound way. A ‘home run’ said one of my key teammates. I am grateful you made the trip and that you seamlessly wove the issues we are facing into your discussion. Onward we go…but in REALITY!” – Robert Adam Schleusner III, Head of Wholesale Credit, Bank of America
“I wanted to share the fantastic feedback we’ve received from Cy’s programs over the years. I am grateful for the passion that she brings to her presentations and for the experience that those attending (including myself) are able to take away from her sessions. Cy’s presentations are some of the highest rated Executive Programs we’ve had at the Center since 2010, and Wow…she just gets better and better each time!” – Brent Kondritz, Assistant Director/Program Manager, Center for Leadership at University of Dayton
“Thank you for the impact you have had on me. Last year at Herman Miller, Inc. the East delivered a record year. My team is stronger and better leaders as a result of me working on my leadership… with you! Thank you. I also wanted to share how helpful your podcasts and YouTube videos are to create the adjustment in my thinking when I digress. I had a week this week where I did not step up, so I spent the morning re-watching your work. I am back thinking of the all possibilities of creating great and enabling my team to share in that work.” – Karen Stratton, Vice President Sales-East, Herman Miller
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The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace: Know What Boosts Your Value, Kills Your Chances, and Will Make You Happie
The key to understanding how your manager calculates your real value—and how to boost it
More than anything else, you need to understand exactly how your employer evaluates you, and your annual performance review doesn’t tell the whole story. In The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace, Cy Wakeman shows how to calculate how your true value to your organization by understanding your current and future potential against your “emotional expense”—the toll your actions and attitudes take on the people around you. With Cy’s clear, straight-to-the-point advice, you can confront and reduce your emotional costliness, become an invaluable member of your team, and even learn to love your job again.
Reveals a formula for measuring your current performance, future potential, and the biggest detractor, your emotional expense Shares real-world advice for quickly boosting your value and becoming a highly-valued, sought after employee and teammate Builds on the lessons in Reality-Based Leadership, Cy Wakeman’s first book for leaders and managers
The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace is the essential guide for boosting your value, owning your career, and becoming the kind of employee no organization can afford to lose.
Reality-Based Leadership: Ditch the Drama, Restore Sanity to the Workplace, and Turn Excuses into Results
Leadership strategies grounded in reality and focused on results
Recent polls show that 71% of workers think about quitting their jobs every day. That number would be shocking-if people actually were quitting. Worse, they go to work, punching time clocks and collecting pay checks, while completely checked out emotionally. In Reality-Based Leadership, expert Fast Company blogger Cy Wakeman reveals how to be the kind of leader who changes the way people think about and perceive their circumstances-one who deals with the facts, clarifies roles, gives clear and direct feedback, and insists that everyone do the same-without drama or defensiveness.Filled with dynamic examples, innovative tools, and diagnostic tests, this book shows you how to become a Reality-Based Leader, revealing how to:
Uncover destructive thought patterns with yourself and others Diffuse drama and lead the person in front of you Stop managing and start leading, empowering others to focus on facts and think for themselves
Equipped with a facts-based, confident approach, you will free yourself from the frustrations you face at work and transform yourself into a Reality-Based Leader, with the ability to liberate and inspire others.
No Ego: How Leaders Can Cut the Cost of Workplace Drama, End Entitlement, and Drive Big Results
The New York Times bestselling author of Reality-Based Leadership rejects the current fad of “engaging” employees and the emotional drama of “meeting their needs”–returning leadership to leaders and productivity to businesses.
For years now, leaders in almost every industry have accepted two completely false assumptions–that change is hard, and that engagement drives results. Those beliefs have inspired expensive attempts to shield employees from change, involve them in high-level decision-making, and keep them happy with endless “satisfaction surveys” and workplace perks. But what these engagement programs actually do, Cy Wakeman says, is inflate expectations and sow unhappiness, leaving employees unprepared to adapt to even minor changes necessary to the organization’s survival. Rather than driving performance and creating efficiencies, these programs fuel entitlement and drama, costing millions in time and profit.
It is high time to reinvent leadership thinking. Stop worrying about your employees’ happiness, and start worrying about their accountability. Cy Wakeman teaches you how to hire “emotionally inexpensive” people, solicit only the opinions you need, and promote self-awareness in your whole team. No Ego disposes with unproven HR maxims, and instead offers a complete plan to turn your office from a den of discontent to a happy, productive place.
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