![Amer Kaissi - <p data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Dr. Amer Kaissi helps leaders combine humility, ambition, trust and accountability to build stronger teams and workplace cultures.</p>](/media/fmxnzl0f/amer-kaissi-hero-13.jpg?width=1920&height=3413&format=webp)
Dr. Amer Kaissi helps leaders combine humility, ambition, trust and accountability to build stronger teams and workplace cultures.
5 of 5
The best leadership keynote I have ever attended!
JIM SCOGGIN, CEO
Methodist Health System, Dallas
Dr. Amer Kaissi is a leadership keynote speaker, award-winning Professor of Leadership at Trinity University, executive coach and author who brings 25 years of leadership research into the realities leaders face every day. With adjunct appointments at Columbia University and the University of Colorado Denver, he combines evidence-based insights with practical examples that audiences can immediately understand and apply.
Having worked with hundreds of executives, leaders and teams around the world, Dr. Kaissi explores how humility, ambition, trust and accountability can transform leadership. He is the author of five books, including Humbitious: The Power of Low-Ego, High-Drive Leadership and his newest book, The Positive Intent Mindset: Exceptional Leadership Through Trust & Accountability. His keynotes help leaders rethink established behaviors, strengthen workplace cultures and lead more effectively through change.
Dr. Amer Kaissi is a leadership keynote speaker, award-winning Professor of Leadership at Trinity University, executive coach and author who helps leaders understand what effective leadership looks like when organizations, teams and expectations are changing.
Over the past 25 years, Dr. Kaissi has researched, understood and evaluated evidence-based practices that help leaders act with greater intentionality and create positive, accountable workplace cultures. His approach combines thorough research with practical examples, making complex leadership ideas relevant to the challenges executives and teams encounter in their everyday work.
Dr. Kaissi has spoken on leadership topics at more than 350 organizations, leadership conferences, corporate events and retreats. His academic work is complemented by adjunct appointments at Columbia University and the University of Colorado Denver, while his experience as an executive coach gives him a close view of how leadership principles translate into real behavior.
Book Dr. Amer Kaissi for your event to give leaders a research-backed and practical perspective on building trust, strengthening accountability, changing mindsets and leading teams more effectively.
A central strength of Dr. Amer Kaissi’s work is the connection between leadership research and practical application. For 25 years, he has focused on the evidence-based practices that enable leaders to become more intentional about their behavior and the cultures they create.
That perspective extends beyond his academic work. As a sought-after executive coach, Dr. Kaissi has worked closely with hundreds of leaders and teams around the world. His coaching focuses on applying leadership practices in ways that change mindsets and behaviors and, ultimately, transform teams.
This combination of researcher, professor and coach allows Dr. Kaissi to address leadership from several perspectives. He understands the evidence behind effective leadership, while his extensive coaching experience provides insight into what happens when those ideas meet the pressures and complexities of organizational life.
For audiences, this creates a keynote experience grounded in research without becoming overly theoretical. Dr. Kaissi translates evidence into clear ideas and practical examples that leaders can connect to their own roles, teams and organizations.
One of the defining ideas in Dr. Amer Kaissi’s work is humbitious leadership: combining humility with ambition.
His research and coaching practice show that humility is a leadership strength, particularly when paired with the drive and ambition required to achieve meaningful results. Leaders do not have to choose between being humble and being ambitious. The combination can create a powerful approach to leadership in which low ego exists alongside high drive.
This idea is explored in his book Humbitious: The Power of Low-Ego, High-Drive Leadership. It challenges leaders to examine how they show up, how their mindset influences the people around them and how they can pursue ambitious goals without allowing ego to undermine relationships or team culture.
Through his keynotes, Dr. Kaissi helps audiences explore leadership behaviors that can support stronger teams and more effective workplace cultures. His work gives leaders a framework for thinking differently about ambition, humility and the way they influence others, particularly when navigating change.
Dr. Kaissi’s newest book, The Positive Intent Mindset: Exceptional Leadership Through Trust & Accountability, builds on another important principle in his work: assuming positive intent.
When leaders assume positive intent, they can replace judgment with curiosity and give people the benefit of the doubt. This does not mean abandoning accountability. Instead, Dr. Kaissi shows how trust and accountability can work together to create healthier and more effective relationships within teams and organizations.
His work demonstrates how this positive intent mindset can help leaders:
Replace immediate judgment with genuine curiosity and a willingness to understand.
Strengthen trust and collaboration while maintaining positive accountability.
Improve engagement and create conditions in which workplace well-being can flourish.
For leaders working through uncertainty and change, these ideas offer a practical way to reconsider how they respond to colleagues, employees and difficult situations. By changing the mindset behind their reactions, leaders can influence the quality of communication, relationships and accountability throughout their teams.
Dr. Amer Kaissi is the author of five books related to leadership and high performance. His books include Humbitious: The Power of Low-Ego, High-Drive Leadership and The Positive Intent Mindset: Exceptional Leadership Through Trust & Accountability.
His leadership insights have also reached broader audiences through media appearances, including the Harvard Business Review podcast and numerous other media outlets.
Across his work as a professor, author, speaker and executive coach, Dr. Kaissi returns to a clear leadership challenge: how can leaders create environments where people are trusted and supported while still being held accountable for meaningful results?
His answer brings together humility and ambition, curiosity and accountability, research and practical action. When leaders become more intentional about these combinations, engagement can improve, collaboration and trust can become stronger, and well-being can flourish.
With experience speaking at more than 350 organizations, conferences, corporate events and retreats, Dr. Kaissi brings these ideas to audiences in a format designed to make leadership research useful and applicable. His keynotes are particularly relevant for leaders and organizations seeking to transform mindsets and behaviors, strengthen team cultures and lead more effectively through periods of change.
Dr. Kaissi lives in San Antonio with his wife and has two grown children in college.
![Amer Kaissi - <p data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Dr. Amer Kaissi helps leaders combine humility, ambition, trust and accountability to build stronger teams and workplace cultures.</p>](/media/g21dwgi1/amer-kaissi-bio-4.jpg?width=1920&height=1080&format=webp)
5 of 5
The best leadership keynote I have ever attended!
JIM SCOGGIN, CEO Methodist Health System, Dallas
Keynote by Dr. Amer Kaissi:
In today’s dynamic business landscape, improving employee engagement and sparking their innovation and creativity is an uphill battle for most leaders.
In this session, Amer shows that leaders who have the confidence to make hard decisions in uncertain environments and the humility to admit mistakes, can better connect with their team members, while empowering them to integrate novel ideas into how they solve problems.
Building on the latest research evidence and his experience as a coach with high-level executives, he makes a convincing argument that humbitious leadership is the best way to lead for the future.
In this transformative talk, leaders will be able to immediately implement proven strategies to:
Available as a leadership keynote, half-day workshop or full-day workshop.
Keynote by Dr. Amer Kaissi:
We live in a very negative and divided world, made worse by social media and cable news. Many employees bring some of that negativity with them to work. They don’t trust their colleagues, and they hesitate to collaborate.
As a result, employee engagement suffers, trust is diminished, and well-being is compromised. In this session, Amer shows that part of the reason for these problems is assuming negative intent. He argues that leaders who assume positive intent towards their team members can build strong and long-lasting relationships with them.
Building on the latest research evidence as presented in the new book “The Positive Intent Mindset” and his experience as executive coach, Amer shows that accountable positivity (positive intent coupled with accountability), can lead to cultures of trust & collaboration where leaders and team members work together to serve their stakeholders.
He shares case studies and specific take-home behaviors that apply accountable positivity to improve relations in teams at all levels.
In this transformative talk, leaders will be able to immediately implement proven strategies to:
Available as a leadership keynote, half-day workshop or full-day workshop.
Keynote by Dr. Amer Kaissi:
Amidst the unrelenting organizational changes, leaders may hesitate to hold their team members accountable for fear of driving them over the edge.
They default to “comfort cultures” where low performance is tolerated and difficult conversations are avoided.
Amer argues that the best leaders are those that balance psychologically safe cultures where team members can speak up and contribute, with accountability systems where high performers thrive.
Drawing on the latest research and examples from his coaching practices, he shares how leaders can build and maintain psychological safety while having necessary difficult conversations.
In this transformative talk, leaders will be able to immediately implement proven strategies to:
Available as a leadership keynote, half-day workshop or full-day workshop.
Watch Amer Kaissi in action
