Keynote: Building Leadership, 1% at a Time

The talk starts from the idea that leadership is not a job title. Ellis argues that everyone leads through influence, and that most leaders unintentionally destroy value by wasting the energy their people bring to work. He describes six ways this happens: exhausting staff, excluding them, getting work they are unwilling to do, assigning work they cannot do, producing ineffective results, and pulling against the wider organisation's direction.

He groups the remedies into wellness, inclusion, inspiration, development, planning and alignment, and applies each at the individual, team and organisational level. Examples include ending long incident shifts after eight hours with a fresh team, tracking whether staff actually use their vacation, and assuming good intent when a colleague causes friction. He also covers small everyday inclusions, celebrating finished security fixes, involving teams in hard decisions, giving feedback by describing evidence and impact before suggesting changes, and building development plans for the middle of a team rather than only the top performers and those being managed out. Planning is framed around preparedness and flexibility, and alignment around a shared vision and keeping oversight of processes.

He closes by encouraging listeners to find their weakest leadership skill and improve it by about one percent each day, since small gains compound. The talk suits anyone who manages people or wants to lead without a formal role.