Why I speak

For thirty years I sat in the audience. Sales kick-offs, leadership summits, regional conferences in hotel ballrooms that all smelled of the same carpet. Every so often a speaker set the room alight, and I walked out buzzing. By Monday I was back in the same meetings, carrying the same tensions.

I build my talks for Monday. They draw on ancient Greek wisdom, three decades leading businesses across Europe, Asia and Australasia, and eleven years on a South London door. They're honest, sometimes uncomfortable, and they stay with people.

 

Keynotes

Two keynotes, one conviction: leadership is personal before it becomes professional. The Power Within is built for the conference stage. Behind the Tough Guy is for rooms small enough to get personal.

 

The Power Within: Aligning Who You Are with How You Lead

40 minutes · conference keynote

Pressure rarely finds a leader short of capability. It finds the places where who they are and how they lead have drifted apart.

Built on my book The Power Within, this talk draws on the nightclub doors of my twenties, three decades in senior leadership, and the oldest instruction carved at Delphi: know thyself. It's about a quieter kind of power. It lets a leader be challenged without becoming defensive, and succeed without getting lost.

Leaders leave with three questions to live with:

• Where am I performing strength instead of practising alignment?

• What part of me takes over under pressure?

• What would change if I trusted the power already within me?

Best for: conferences, leadership summits and book-led events.

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Behind the Tough Guy

45 minutes · keynote and facilitated conversation

In 1981 I was a young doorman in South London, wearing a hard face because I believed that was what strength looked like. It took me years, and one night I have never fully put down, to understand what the toughness was protecting.

Behind the Tough Guy takes that persona apart in public, and invites every leader in the room to look honestly at their own. It's the most personal talk I give, and the only place I tell the whole story.

Leaders leave with:

• A clear sight of the armour they lead from, and what it costs the people around them

• Language for the conversations their teams have been avoiding

• A measure of strength that holds up under real pressure

Best for: intimate leadership offsites, senior team retreats, L&D and executive development programmes.

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Other formats

The Right Question

Fireside chats and peer forums

The most useful thing one leader can offer another is rarely an answer. It's the question nobody else in the room was willing to ask. An unscripted conversation on asking it, and on being asked it.

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Shaped to your audience

Before we agree anything, I'll want to understand who will be in the room, what they're carrying, and what you need them to leave with. In person or virtual; based in Singapore and available internationally.

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Planning an event?

Tell me about your audience and your date. I read and reply to every enquiry myself.