Dana Potthoff

An old African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone; If you want to go far, go together.” In today’s fast paced and sometimes cut-throat working environment, many companies claim to have a culture of teamwork, but bubbling just below the surface of corporate kumbaya off-sites and motivational memos is an environment in which employees are often more likely to step on one another to get to the top than to lead others to success with them. And even when partnership and collaboration are encouraged, traditional trainings on teamwork tend to focus their message on reliance on others to pull their weight. The result is often stifled growth, slow starts, mediocre results, and high turnover. Own Your Seat argues that to go far, to go fast, and to win, every individual on the team has to take ownership over their own successes, failures, and growth, and lead rather than lean.

In this thought-provoking keynote, Dana reflects on her experience as a Division 1 college athlete as she shares the lessons she learned as part of a winning team at one of the most storied athletic programs in NCAA history. Dana contends that when each individual team member takes ownership over their own place and performance and when each person decides to take accountability for their own place on the team, that team can’t help but win. Dana will unpack the secrets that lead to exponential growth and she’ll challenge audience members to transform their mindsets: Going from, “I rely on them” to, “They can rely on me”; from a place of dependence to dependability.