Forthcoming Book

CEO
Cadence

The Inner Work of Becoming a Cadence-Based Leader

Most leadership books tell you what to do differently. CEO Cadence is about who you need to become — the internal discipline, the emotional architecture, and the deliberate rhythm that lets great leaders stay effective across the full arc of a tenure.

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CEO Cadence by David Johnston — a leadership book for sitting CEOs

Sample Chapter

"One CEO described this as living behind glass."

Read Chapter 10 — The CEO and Isolation — a complete chapter from the manuscript. The structural loneliness of the role. The psychology behind it. And what it takes to lead with presence from inside it.

Read Chapter 10 →
CEO Cadence books stacked on a marble surface

Leadership runs on cadence — a sustainable internal rhythm most leaders never develop deliberately.

The CEO role is unlike any other leadership position. The decisions are different. The accountability is different. The isolation is different. And the internal demands — what the role asks of you as a person, not just as an executive — are rarely described honestly in the leadership literature that surrounds it.

CEO Cadence is written from inside that experience. It draws on the author's work as an executive coach to sitting CEOs, on leadership research across psychology, organizational theory, and executive development, and on direct engagement with the questions that most leadership books sidestep.

It explores the full arc of the CEO role — the early phase, where identity reshapes itself around new authority; the middle years, where sustained pressure begins to reveal the limits of strategy and willpower; and the late stage, where the question of legacy and relevance requires more than operational excellence to answer well.

This is a book for CEOs who want to lead more deliberately — not louder, not faster, but with greater clarity and internal stability.

Royal Roads UniversityMBA in Leadership · Grad Certificate, Executive Coaching
CECCertified Executive Coach
CHECertified Health Executive
Canadian College of Health Leaders
20+ YearsExecutive leadership &
coaching practice

David Johnston

MBA in Leadership · Graduate Certificate in Executive Coaching · Certified Executive Coach (CEC) · Certified Health Executive (CHE)


David Johnston is an executive coach, leadership educator, and author whose work focuses on the psychological and internal dimensions of CEO leadership. He works with a small number of CEOs and senior executives through his practice, Human Capital Development Inc. He teaches leadership and coaching principles and delivers workshops to organizations.

Over more than two decades, he has worked across healthcare, utilities, manufacturing, and other sectors in both senior leadership and executive coaching roles. He is a Certified Health Executive (CHE) through the Canadian College of Health Leaders and holds an MBA in Leadership and a Graduate Certificate in Executive Coaching from Royal Roads University.

He lives and works in rural Ontario, Canada.

David Johnston, Executive Coach and Author

Conference and Executive Keynotes

David speaks to executive audiences on the hidden psychology of CEO leadership, the emotional architecture of the C-suite, and the internal practices that sustain clarity across the full arc of an executive tenure. Topics are drawn directly from the research and frameworks in CEO Cadence.

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