Dr. Thom Mayer

Leadership is Worthless…But Leading is Priceless: What I Learned from 9/11, the NFL, and Ukraine

Dr. Thom Mayer has led a life at the forefront of leading through some of the most prominent crises of our generation, including serving as the Command Physician at the Pentagon on 9/11, Incident Commander for the US’s first bioterrorism incident, Medical Director of the NFL Players Association, and leading a Mobile Emergency Team during the Ukraine invasion. This keynote is a contrarian approach to leadership, which is: Leadership is worthless…because it is a noun – something you say. But Leading is priceless…because it is a verb – the things you do, all day, every day, in every walk of life.

Dr. Mayer challenges his audiences to ask the right question – “How will I lead myself and my team today?” By helping them to embrace that leading occurs – no matter what job you do – in everything you do, he inspires others to lead themselves, their teams, and their families

Filled with stories and examples from Dr. Mayer’s career as “The Master of Disaster,” leading at the forefront of crises on the world stage, this presentation challenges but also inspires new and practical approaches to leading your life in times of crisis.

Making Failure Your Fuel: A Key Aspect of Leadership is Worthless…But Leading is Priceless

In his book “Leadership is Worthless…But Leading is Priceless” Dr. Thom Mayer presents many actionable yet contrarian concepts. One of the most intriguing of these is the idea of “Making Failure Your Fuel,” which builds upon the idea that innovation, which is an essential skill in these turbulent times, occurs not at the speed of genius, creativity, or intelligence, but rather at the speed of…trust. And the only way we can trust ourselves and our teams to innovate is to develop and perfect the talent of making failure our fuel.

Using stories and personal experiences from the NFL, the US Women’s’ National Soccer Team (including Mia Hamm and Abby Wambach), 9/11 at the Pentagon, Ukraine, Capital One, and world history and literature, this talk examines the details of using failure to motivate success, including:

• Failure is not the opposite of success-it is an integral part of success
• Failure motivates-Tom Brady and the NFL Draft
• Developing Your Failure Muscles-11 ways to use failure as fuel
• The Healing Power of Failure
• Limits Begin Where Vision Ends
• Taking ourselves lightly-and failure as our fuel

As Senator Mark Warner said in his comments on Dr. Mayer’s book, “Perhaps the greatest lesson Dr. Mayer has to offer is not to be discouraged by failure, but rather to use it as fuel-to take risks and get yourself back in the game. Leaders of all stripes can learn much from reading this book.” You can learn much from this talk.