The Truthful Leader
Why we lie. Why it doesn’t work. And what to do instead.
COMING
IN
2026!
The ability to tell the truth is central to building great businesses and creating societies where people flourish. Honesty, healthy scepticism, and the capacity to sort fact from fiction and ‘lean in’ to hard conversations help drive everything from innovation and transformation to engagement and wellbeing.
Yet it’s never been harder to commit to telling the truth. From well-meaning mistakes to deliberate bad faith propaganda, we are living through a plague of misinformation… and the explosion of Generative and Agentic AI and rise of algorithmic media means it risks getting worse, not better.
The Truthful Leader unpacks the dawn of this disinformation age, examining its causes and effects on how we lead our teams, our organisations and our societies.
And for managers, entrepreneurs, leaders - or even concerned citizens - who wish to fight back against this tidal wave of tripe, it offers a toolkit to help us restore our relationship with the truth, create cultures of truth-telling in our businesses, and improve our personal and professional results in ways that really matter.
About the Author: Dominic Thurbon
Dom is co-founder at Alchemy Labs, and has over 17 years’ experience as a senior executive, successful entrepreneur, and internationally engaged speaker, researcher and writer who helps organisations “do” behaviour change in the face of external disruption.
At just 23, he was founder and Chief Creative Officer at Karrikins Group, a consultancy he grew to over 100 staff across Australia, New Zealand and North America (acquired by EY in 2019). He was also co-founder and director at EI, an AI-enabled technology company providing on-demand wellbeing solutions (acquired by Qoria in 2022).
As a senior executive, Dom spent five years as a Partner at EY, one of the world’s largest professional services Firms. As a researcher and writer, he has co-authored and led research on best-sellers published in over 15 countries on subjects as diverse as behaviour change, strategy, leadership and the future of work and education.
Dom has been architect of multiple-award winning behaviour change programs that have reached over 500,000 people per year. Over his career, he has spoken to a combined audience numbering in the tens of thousands across Australasia, Europe and North America, with clients spanning financial and professional services, technology, FMCG, pharmaceutical and automotive industries, as well as working extensively in education, Government and not-for-profit sectors.
His publications include (as co-author) Matter: Rising Above the Competition to Become the Obvious Choice, Purpose-Driven Leadership, and Talent Magnets: Attracting Top Staff; (as lead researcher) Flip: How counter-intuitive thinking is changing everything and Game On: How video games change work.
Dom is also a previous world top-10 debater, Tottenham Hotspur tragic, and hasn’t quite given up the dream of becoming a rockstar with his band The Glorious Fourth.
Visit his personal website at www.domthurbon.com.