Shola Richards
Workplace Kindness, Culture and Connection
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Fee Range: Contact Speaker Exchange Agency
- CEO and Founder of Go Together Global®
- Best-selling author of three books—Making Work Work, Go Together, and Civil Unity
- Testified before the House of Representatives on how to bring more civility to Congress
- Host of The Kindness Extremist Podcast (listened to in 98 countries)
- Delivered keynote talks on kindness in three different continents
- Appeared in major media such as CBS Mornings, Forbes, Black Enterprise, Complete Wellbeing India, and Business Insider Australia
- Fun Fact: Nicknamed “Brother Teresa”
*Fee ranges are presented as a guideline only. Speaker fees are subject to change without notice. For an exact quote, please contact your Speaker Exchange Agency representative.
Shola Richards speaks about workplace transformation, but he didn’t start out as a fighter. For years, he waited for someone else to step up when he faced bullying and workplace dysfunction. When no one came, he realized a simple truth: what you allow is what will continue. He had to become his own hero. That realization changed everything.
Today, he’s a workplace kindness expert and global keynote speaker whose work has taken him from testifying before Congress to speaking across three continents. Real kindness, he argues, takes guts. It requires you to fight incivility instead of managing it, to care about people and problems that don’t directly affect you, and to refuse to let harmful dynamics slide just because it’s easier to stay quiet.
His message has reached audiences at organizations including Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Kaiser Permanente, Mayo Clinic, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, and dozens of other major companies and institutions worldwide. Major media outlets like the Today Show, CBS This Morning, and Forbes regularly feature his insights.
His three bestselling books have become essential reading for leaders worldwide. Civil Unity: The Radical Path to Transform Our Discourse, Our Lives, and Our World earned praise from Mel Robbins as “an incredibly powerful and compelling guide to restoring much-needed kindness to our divided world.” Go Together: How the Concept of Ubuntu Will Change How You Live, Work and Lead won the Gold Medal at the 2025 Independent Publisher Book Awards. And Making Work Work: The Solution for Bringing Positive Change to Any Work Environment hit #1 New Release in both “Workplace Culture” and “Human Resources” categories on Amazon.
His podcast, The Kindness Extremist, tackles the hard conversations that actually matter, helping listeners navigate conflict, set boundaries without losing compassion, and turn moments of tension into opportunities for real change.
When you’re strong enough to be kind, you don’t just change your workplace—you become the leader people choose to follow, and the organization competitors wish they could build.
Organizations succeed or struggle based on how people treat each other. And right now, silos and disconnection are costing organizations more than money…they’re costing them their best people.
In The Courage to Go Together™, Shola Richards introduces a powerful framework for transforming fragmented teams into unbreakable forces of connection and performance.
Grounded in the transformative Ubuntu philosophy—“I am, because we are”—this keynote reveals three simple but strategic questions that dissolve silos, strengthen civility, and unlock the kind of culture that drives breakthrough performance.
Applied consistently, they become the difference between teams that merely coexist, and teams people never want to leave.
PERFECT FOR LEADERS AND TEAMS:
- Feeling disconnected—with brilliant individuals who can’t perform as a true team.
- Losing ground to the hidden costs of incivility—lower innovation, higher turnover, and weakened performance.
- Ready to replace surface-level interactions with genuine connection that drives results.
AUDIENCES WILL WALK AWAY WITH:
- The three essential questions that instantly improve team cohesion and build cultures of accountability and care.
- Practical strategies to overcome the most common barriers to unity, including proven ways to defuse cynicism and resistance.
- The self-awareness tools to recognize how individual behaviors impact the team—and the courage to consistently choose connection.
When teams have The Courage to Go Together™, they turn challenges into fuel for extraordinary performance.
When the pressure never lets up, the strongest leaders and teams don’t just survive…they rise.
In a world of competing priorities, mental health struggles, and constant change, real resilience isn’t about “sucking it up.” It’s about building genuine strength from the inside out.
In Unstoppable Resilience™, Shola Richards delivers the proven strategies used by high performers to stay strong, focused, and effective, no matter the challenge. Beyond quick fixes, he shares the keys to building unstoppable teams who consistently bring their best, even under intense pressure.
When teams embrace these principles, they gain the clarity, energy, and confidence to face any challenge head-on…and come out stronger on the other side.
PERFECT FOR LEADERS AND TEAMS:
- Watching burnout spread despite wellness initiatives that aren’t moving the needle on engagement or retention.
- Managing the overwhelm of team members balancing intense work demands with personal stress, anxiety, or mental health challenges.
- Needing practical strategies to support struggling colleagues without becoming overwhelmed themselves.
AUDIENCES WILL WALK AWAY WITH:
- A resilience framework that empowers individuals to sustain peak performance under any conditions.
- Clear strategies to handle current pressures—whether professional challenges, personal setbacks, or organizational uncertainty.
- Personalized resilience commitments with built-in accountability to create lasting change—not just temporary motivation.
Unstoppable teams don’t just survive tough seasons. They emerge stronger, more resilient, and more committed to shared success.
Most teams believe they must choose between being kind or delivering results. That false choice is driving top talent away, stalling momentum, and putting long-term success at risk.
In Strong Enough to Be Kind™, Shola Richards shatters this myth with a revolutionary truth: kindness isn’t just nice to have…it’s your competitive advantage.
Through three strategic pillars—Start Within, Just Today, and Go First—audiences gain the understanding and tools they need to build cultures that thrive in uncertainty, confront destructive behaviors head-on and deliver results competitors struggle to match.
PERFECT FOR LEADERS AND TEAMS:
- Building high-performing cultures where people thrive in uncertainty and grow stronger through every challenge.
- Committed to leading through change in ways that strengthens trust, morale, and well-being.
- Wanting to stop problematic behaviors before they take root to protect trust and team performance.
- Embracing courageous conversations that strengthen relationships and results.
AUDIENCES WILL WALK AWAY WITH:
- A proven framework to transform workplace culture and drive measurable business impact.
- Inner strength strategies to sustain meaningful change in even the toughest environments.
- Access to the Strong Enough to be Kind™ self-assessment to identify your strengths and growth opportunities for workplace kindness (Assessment Link).
- Clear proof that kindness is a competitive advantage—fueling retention, innovation, and teams that invest in each other’s success.
When you’re Strong Enough to Be Kind™, you don’t just change your workplace. You become the leader people choose to follow, and the organization your competitors wish they could build.
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