KEYNOTE
Create a Culture of Results
Soft Like a Brick
How to have effective hard conversations that produce a culture of results.
The best leaders don’t avoid tough conversations—they master them. In Soft Like a Brick, Ben Ward equips leaders with the courage and clarity to deliver truth with care. You’ll learn how to lead friends without playing favorites, challenge with connection, and turn feedback into fuel. This keynote will transform how your leaders build trust, handle conflict, and create a culture of high accountability and deep respect.
The New Standard for Leading with Courage and Connection
This keynote is about:
In today’s high-performance world, the easy part is setting standards. The hard part—the real leadership—is holding to them with clarity and care.
One of the greatest failures in leadership is avoiding the conversations that matter most. Not because leaders don’t care—but because they do… and they’re afraid it will blow up. That fear becomes the silent killer of culture, trust, and performance.
In Soft Like a Brick, Ben Ward delivers a transformative framework for having tough conversations that motivate instead of deflate—rooted in decades of real-world sales leadership. These are the tools that help leaders stop avoiding and start aligning, challenge without crushing, and inspire accountability while preserving connection.
Soft Like A Brick
How to have effective hard conversations that produce a culture of results.
Soft Like A Brick
How to have effective hard conversations that produce a culture of results.
The Impact of Soft Like a Brick
This keynote teaches leaders the exact skillset to be both deeply caring and unapologetically clear. Your team will learn how to deliver feedback that lands, build trust through honesty, and challenge their people to rise—without breaking rapport.
You’ll discover:
- Why most leaders blow up their own culture by avoiding accountability
- The 3 “pre-checks” before any hard conversation
- 5 Power Phrases that disarm resistance and increase connection
- How to lead friends without playing favorites
- The holy grail: delivering correction that inspires commitment
Because when your people know you care deeply and expect greatly, they’ll follow you anywhere.
This isn’t about being “nice.” It’s about being Soft Like a Brick—a leader with a heart strong enough to care, and a spine strong enough to lead.
TESTIMONIALS
What people are saying about Ben's Keynotes
Chad Willardson
Founder of Pacific Capital & Elevated
Oriya Hirschhorn
Event Planner, Elevated
Tiffany Cook
Entrepreneur, Veteran Sales Leader
