Elite Speaker Management
Dean Eric Smith
Set It Down
Your leaders look fine. That is the problem.
Keynote speaker and executive coach Dean Eric Smith talks about the weight high-performing leaders carry without ever naming it, and what it is quietly costing them. He gives leaders a practical, evidence-informed way to set it down and lead with the capacity their role was counting on.
They are performing, and no one is asking what it costs them. Dean names the weight most organizations mislabel as burnout, Emotional Overhead, and shows leaders how to release it.
No conversation, no confrontation, nothing required from anyone else, and no one let off the hook.
Fee: $10,000 to $15,000
Home City: Washington State
Key Speech Themes:
- Leadership
- Burnout
- Resilience
Every organization has leaders who are performing well and quietly running on less than they know. Dean Eric Smith has spent 20 years on stages and, since 2013, in one-on-one executive coaching, naming what is behind that gap and building the discipline that sets it down.
He calls that weight Emotional Overhead. The betrayal never dealt with. The conflict never resolved. The decision a leader still replays. It doesn’t make leaders fall apart. It makes them guarded, slower to decide, and less present than they know they can be, while everyone around them assumes they are fine.
The way out is the E.D.G.E. Forgiveness Development Method: a leadership discipline practiced in private that needs nothing from anyone else and lets no one off the hook. Secular. Evidence-informed. Not therapy, and not a motivational talk.
On stage, audiences laugh out loud one minute and wipe away tears the next. Levity is what keeps a room open to the heaviest subject a leader carries. They leave with a name for what they have been carrying, and a first step they can take that day.
Ideal for: executive conferences, leadership summits, healthcare leadership forums, physician and nurse leader events, and executive team offsites. Any room where the strongest leaders look fine and are quietly running on less.
Signature Keynote
The Unburdened Leader
Your leaders aren’t short on capacity. Something is occupying it.
Topics and Descriptions
Two keynotes, one for every leadership room and one built for healthcare. Plus an intensive that takes the work all the way through.
Signature KeynoteThe Unburdened Leader
Your leaders aren’t short on capacity. Something is occupying it. Dean Eric Smith names that occupant, Emotional Overhead, and shows leaders how to set it down and get their full capacity back.
Your leaders look fine. That’s the problem.
They aren’t short on strategy, training, or incentive. Most of them are performing, and performing well.
Which is exactly why no one is asking what it’s costing them.
The betrayal they never fully put down. The conflict they keep managing around instead of through. The decision they still replay. None of it shows up on a balance sheet. All of it shows up in judgment, candor, and how much a leader has left at the end of the day.
Dean doesn’t start with slides. He starts with truth, his own, and the room immediately recognizes itself in it. Through real leadership stories that hit close to home, he makes the science of capacity simple, personal, and impossible to forget.
Audiences don’t just hear about Emotional Overhead. They name their own, in the room.
Audience takeaways:
- A clear map of the Emotional Overhead quietly taxing their judgment, presence, and decisions
- Why sustained, unresolved stress takes the capacities a senior role depends on offline first
- A working introduction to the E.D.G.E. Method, and the first step they can take the same day
- A first look at the H.U.M.A.N. Bridge, which releases the grip of a conflict without excusing the behavior or requiring reconciliation
Format
45 to 60 minutes (customizable). Best for executive conferences, leadership summits, and offsites.
Healthcare KeynoteThe Capacity Crisis
Burnout isn’t an empty tank. It’s an occupied one. Drawing on 13 years inside the healthcare industry and his work coaching physicians today, Dean gives healthcare executives and clinical leaders a way through that respects the gravity of what they carry.
No one in the building works harder than your executive team. And no one’s exhaustion gets less sympathy.
The staffing is unsafe. The administrative burden is indefensible. Neither is the fault of the people delivering care, and neither gets solved by asking anyone to cope better.
But the system is not the only thing occupying their capacity.
They carry the service line they had to close. The physician who left angry. The reduction in force they signed, and the faces attached to it. The job of standing between the board and the medical staff, absorbing the anger of both.
And the weight does not stay private. In a Stanford study published in JAMA Network Open, physician leaders who reported more burnout were rated as less effective by the physicians who report to them.
Your executives are not doing too much. They are carrying too much.
This is not offered instead of fighting for the staffing ratio. It is what makes that fight winnable.
Audience takeaways:
- A clear picture of the Emotional Overhead driving fatigue, moral distress, and reactive decisions
- A working introduction to the E.D.G.E. Method, and a first step they can take in the hardest moments care leadership brings
- A preview of the daily practice that protects clarity and steadiness under sustained pressure
- How to release the grip of conflict without excusing behavior, lowering accountability, or requiring reconciliation
Format
45 to 60 minutes (customizable). Best for healthcare leadership forums, physician and nurse leader events, and system-wide summits.
Keynote + WorkshopThe E.D.G.E. Intensive
A keynote opens the door. This walks them through it. The E.D.G.E. Intensive pairs Dean’s keynote with a hands-on, three-hour workshop, so your leadership team leaves having run the method, not just heard about it.
A great keynote creates a moment. But a moment fades if no one is handed the tools to keep it.
The E.D.G.E. Intensive was built to make the shift stick. In the morning, The Unburdened Leader (or The Capacity Crisis for a healthcare room) reaches everyone. In the afternoon, the Half-Day Workshop takes your leadership team all the way through the work.
Dean takes leaders off the sidelines: naming their own Emotional Overhead, reviewing all five steps of the H.U.M.A.N. Bridge and walking one in full, and building a personal reset practice they will use the same week.
It is the difference between hearing about change and walking out changed.
Audience takeaways:
- A personal map of the Emotional Overhead affecting their leadership
- Hands-on practice with all four steps of the E.D.G.E. Method
- A 30-day on-ramp and a first application step, written in the room against their real challenges
- A daily reset practice already underway before they leave
Format
Keynote (45 to 60 minutes) + Half-Day Workshop (3 hours). Best for executive offsites, leadership development programs, and multi-day conferences.
Dean on stage
Meet Dean
Dean Eric Smith is a keynote speaker, Executive Leadership Coach, and the pioneer of a discipline he calls Forgiveness Development: the practical work of helping leaders find and release the Emotional Overhead quietly draining their capacity. For 20 years he has spoken on forgiveness, and since 2013 he has coached executives and high achievers one-on-one, turning one of life’s most misunderstood ideas into a measurable leadership advantage.
His authority on the subject was not earned in a classroom. When Dean was twelve, his mother was murdered by his stepfather. For years he carried that weight the way many leaders carry their own, silently, insisting he was fine, while it eroded his clarity, his patience, and his presence. He had mistaken functioning for freedom. So he made a different choice: he forgave the man who killed his mother, years of deliberate work that needed nothing from him. Only later did he sit across from him and feel compassion, not anger. In time he befriended him, and eventually helped him forgive himself. None of it was required, and none of it excused what the man did. That journey became the award-winning documentary Live to Forgive, which Dean executive produced.
You don’t have to be falling apart for something unresolved to be costing you.
What Dean discovered is that the weight that held him back is the same hidden bottleneck on leadership everywhere. Unresolved resentment, conflict, and regret never appear on a balance sheet, but they show up in decisions, in candor, and in how much capacity a leader has left at the end of the day. So Dean built the E.D.G.E. Forgiveness Development Method, a rigorous, secular, evidence-informed framework that gives leaders a repeatable way to set that weight down and lead at full strength. Nothing is excused and no one is let off the hook, and nothing is required from anyone else. Not therapy. A discipline leaders can actually use.
The keynote is where the work starts, not where it ends. Organizations continue it with Dean through the E.D.G.E. Intensive, executive coaching, and team coaching.
Offstage, Dean is a husband to his wife, Molly, a proud father of two teenagers, and, by most accounts, a pretty funky beatboxer.
Education, Credentials, and Work
- Master’s in Organizational Leadership
- Author, The Forgiveness Habit
- Executive Producer, the award-winning documentary Live to Forgive
- Creator, the E.D.G.E. Forgiveness Development Method and the H.U.M.A.N. Bridge
- 20 years speaking on forgiveness; coaching executives one-on-one since 2013
- 13 years inside the healthcare industry; coaches physicians one-on-one today
- Led leadership workshops and coaching programs for teams at Boehringer Ingelheim and AstraZeneca
What clients say
“Dean doesn’t deliver a presentation; he creates an experience. With my sales team, it translated directly to stronger performance, increased accountability, and exceptional market share growth.”
“What stood out most was how well he read the room. Ours was an intimate gathering, and Dean took the time to get a feel for the group before he ever stepped up to speak, which meant his message landed exactly right for our audience. He interacted naturally with the women there, and his talk quickly became one of the group’s favorite presentations of the entire weekend. Dean brings a rare combination of professionalism, genuine warmth, and the ability to adapt to any room, whether it’s small and intimate or something larger. If you’re looking for a speaker who will show up prepared, connect authentically with your audience, and leave a lasting impression, we can’t recommend Dean highly enough.”
“I’ve worked with speakers for years, and that was one of the best presentations I’ve ever seen.”
“His message is always passionate and life-changing and we have requests for him to return time and time again.”
“Dean possesses a certain kind of magic. His energy and enthusiasm are unparalleled.”
“Dean’s compassionate and honest approach helps people move beyond hardship, communicate more effectively and discover a healthier, more empowering way forward.”
“Wow, from his silliness and his fun and his energy to his depth and his sophistication... Unbelievable!”
“Working with Dean Smith was one of the best strategic moves I have made in my career. His coaching transformed my leadership from the inside out, and I have never felt more empowered to succeed.”
Bring Dean to your stage.
Tell us about your audience, your dates, and what you need Monday to look like. We will take it from there.