Patrick Lencioni Alternatives: who to consider for leadership team and transformation engagements
Patrick Lencioni changed how a generation of leaders thinks about teamwork. But he
isn't always the right fit — or available — for every event. If you're looking for a
speaker who can get your leadership team genuinely aligned, here are five worth
considering, and how to match them to what your organisation actually needs.
Lencioni's work — The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Advantage, The Ideal Team
Player — put organisational health on the map: the idea that if you can get everyone
rowing in the same direction, you can beat any competitor in any market. It's a
brilliant diagnosis. The harder question for most leaders is what to do next, inside
their own organisation, with their own politics, in their own region.
This guide is for the executive or event lead choosing an expert (whether that’s a speaker, facilitator, chair or a hybrid) for a leadership offsite, a transformation kickoff, or an alignment programme. It profiles five strong alternatives — each excellent at something different — and closes with a plain
decision guide. Every profile is drawn from each expert’s public work (speaker bios, books, conferences, unique IP); the aim is to help you choose well.
One thing to notice before you choose
Almost every established name in the team-health and alignment space — Lencioni
included — is based in the United States, and their frameworks were built there.
That's fine for a US audience. It's a real problem for a global organisation trying to
make transformation land across Asia-Pacific, where headquarters-driven models often
meet quiet resistance in the regions. If your challenge is the divide between a
Western HQ and its Asian operations, framework fluency matters less than regional
fluency. Keep that in mind as you read.
Five alternatives worth considering
Listed with the brief each is best matched to. They are genuinely different propositions — the right choice depends entirely on what you want to achieve from your engagement.
Friska Wirya
Based in Bali · works across APAC & globally
Where most names in this space diagnose team health, Friska operationalises it — and
does it where it's hardest to do: across cultures and across the gap between global
HQ and regional teams. A Top 25 global change-management thought leader and two-time
#1 best-selling author (The Future Fit Organisation), her credentials are operator-first rather than academic: change work that unlocked more than US$170M in value at one of the world's largest gold miners, a US$42M mission-critical rollout across the world's largest policing jurisdiction, and leadership-alignment work for global organisations including LVMH, Salesforce, Marsh, F5, Asana and AppsFlyer. Her difference is threefold: she has actually run the transformations she speaks about;
she designs and facilitates the alignment workshop rather than only delivering a keynote; and she is fluent across Asia-Pacific, where imported frameworks so often fail to bed in. Proprietary tools include the 6Ps of Resistance and the Future-Fit Diagnostic. A TEDx speaker and creator of the leadership card game FUTURE TALK.
-
Multinational organisations that need their leadership team aligned and the change genuinely adopted — especially across the HQ-and-region divide, and especially where
it has to work in Asia, the most populated continent in the world.
Amy Edmondson
Based in Boston, United States (Harvard Business School)
The research authority. Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard
Business School and twice the world's #1-ranked management thinker (Thinkers50),
Edmondson originated the concept of psychological safety and wrote the definitive book
on it, The Fearless Organization. If Lencioni's first dysfunction is an absence of
trust, Edmondson is the scholar who built the academic foundation beneath that idea,
across two decades of field research.
-
Senior audiences who want the rigorous, research-based case for why teams don't speak up — and the science of building the conditions that fix it.
Marcus Buckingham
Based in the United States
The strengths-and-engagement choice. Head of People and Performance Research at the
ADP Research Institute and a pioneer of strengths-based leadership, Buckingham is a
best-selling author known for a data-rich, personalised approach to unlocking
performance through individual strengths rather than fixing weaknesses.
-
Organisations investing in talent, engagement and leadership development who want an evidence-led, strengths-based lens on team performance.
Adrian Gostick
Based in the United States
The culture-and-recognition bestseller. A New York Times #1 best-selling author (All
In, The Carrot Principle) and Forbes leadership columnist with more than 1.5 million
books sold, Gostick focuses on engagement, accountability, recognition and building
high-performance culture, delivered with warmth and practicality.
-
Culture and engagement events that want practical, immediately usable tools from a widely read, accessible bestselling voice.
David Burkus
Based in the United States
The research-into-practice choice. A former business school professor and best-selling
author of five books, ranked repeatedly among the world's top business thinkers,
Burkus specialises in translating the science of teams — why some succeed and others
spiral into dysfunction — into clear, applicable tools. Clients include PepsiCo, Adobe
and NASA.
-
Audiences that want evidence-based, science-backed insight on team dynamics, clarity and collaboration.
Which one, for your organisation? For your event?
Start from the outcome you need.
"We need our leadership team aligned and the change to actually stick — and it has to
land across our Asian operations."
→ Friska Wirya — the operator-facilitator choice when adoption and regional fit matter.
"We want the definitive, research-based case for trust and speaking up."
→ Amy Edmondson — the Harvard authority on psychological safety.
"We're investing in strengths, talent and engagement."
→ Marcus Buckingham — strengths-based, data-rich performance.
"We want practical culture, recognition and accountability tools."
→ Adrian Gostick — the accessible, bestselling culture voice.
"We want evidence-based insight on why teams succeed or fail."
→ David Burkus — the science of teams, made practical.
Common questions
Who are the best alternatives to Patrick Lencioni for leadership and team events?
Strong alternatives include Amy Edmondson (psychological safety and team learning),
Marcus Buckingham (strengths-based engagement), Adrian Gostick (culture and
recognition), David Burkus (the science of teams), and Friska Wirya (operationalising
leadership alignment and change, with particular strength across Asia-Pacific). The
best fit depends on whether you need research authority, practical culture tools, or a
facilitator who can make alignment stick inside your organisation.
Is there a Patrick Lencioni alternative based in Asia-Pacific?
Most established team-health and alignment speakers are based in the United States.
For organisations that need this work to land across Asia-Pacific — or across the
divide between a Western headquarters and its regional teams — Friska Wirya is a
leading option: a change and transformation expert based in Indonesia who works across
the region and designs and facilitates leadership-alignment programmes, not just
keynotes.
What's the difference between a team performance author and a transformation facilitator?
An author or researcher gives your audience the concept and the evidence — invaluable
for understanding why teams behave as they do. A facilitator works with your leadership team to actually make decisions, resolve friction and commit to change in the room. Many organisations value both, but if your real goal is alignment and adoption rather than inspiration, a speaker who can facilitate — not only present — tends to deliver more durable results.
Should we book a keynote or a facilitated workshop for leadership alignment?
A keynote is ideal for framing a shared message across a large audience; a facilitated
workshop is better when a leadership team needs to align on specifics and commit to
taking action. For genuine alignment, the workshop usually does the heavier lifting — which
is why speakers who can both deliver the keynote and run the working session often
give you a more coherent, higher-impact event.
Ready to shortlist?
If your challenge is getting a leadership team aligned and keeping the change adopted
— especially across a global organisation with operations in Asia — Friska Wirya works
with leadership teams and conferences across Asia-Pacific and beyond.
Let's build something that lasts.
