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Gartner Expert
Rob O'Donohue
VP Analyst, KI Leader
Rob O'Donohue is a Vice President Analyst in Gartner’s CIO and Executive Leadership Research Team focusing on C-Suite Dynamics, Executive Leadership Development, How to use AI to Augment Leadership, Developing Personal and Team Brand, and Building High Performance Leadership Teams and Culture.
Here, he advises CIOs and Executives across the C-Suite on skills and competencies needed to thrive as an executive leader, how to create and sustain a culture of high performance in the leadership team and across the organization. Rob also focuses research and advice on how to improve employee engagement, driver behavior change, and improve motivation at work.
Rob creates evidence-based actionable research to empower Executive Leaders lead more effectively. Rob also runs workshops and client briefings covering high performance teams and culture, behavior change, and coaching effectiveness. Rob has also written extensively on Neurodiversity at Work.
Rob holds is a certified Executive Coach with the ICF (ACC) and uses his experience to help executives think differently and challenge their own assumptions about work.
Rob co-presented with opening keynote at the IT Symposium Barcelona in November 2025.
Previous experience
Rob brings over 23 years' experience to Gartner and has held senior IT leadership positions in large multinationals in the Financial and Tech industries.
He's most recently held Director positions at Dell & EMC focusing on Leadership Development, Talent Management, Strategy, IT Transformation, Business Operations, and successfully built & lead several PMO iterations over the last number of years. He's held a voluntary Communications Director role for the PMI Ireland Chapter.
In parallel, he's been coaching leaders & high performing teams for the last decade.
He's lectured on Emotional Intelligence for Leaders at the Irish Management Institute and has a passion for helping individuals and teams get clear on their purpose and then create a plan and actions to achieve it.
Rob is hugely passionate about and committed to helping others improve and grow and created a self-improvement platform and podcast focused on this, called 1% Better, in 2017. To date, he's interviewed 100's of leaders from all professions, sharing their inspirational stories to help others learn, take action and improve.
Professional background
Capmark , Infrastructure Manager, 7 years
Dell, Director for PMO & Leadership Development, 4 years
EMC, Director of PMO, Strategy, Business Operations, 8 years
Areas of coverage
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CIO Leadership of People, Culture and Change
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Executive Leadership
Education
Rob is a qualified Executive Coaching and holds an ACC with the International Coaching Federation (ICF).
BSc in Information Technology with NUI, Galway.
Diploma in Data Business with IMI/UCC.
Rob has held the PMP with the PMI.
Top Issues That I Help Clients Address
Executive Leadership Development and Personal Branding
Leading Up, Down, Across, Out, and from Within
Improving Employee Engagement and Motivation
Developing High Performing Leadership Teams and Culture
How to Use AI to Augment Leadership and Management