Will Greenwood

Why organisations work with Will Greenwood

• His book World Class is built on interviews with more than 100 elite performers across sport and business, including Sir Clive Woodward, Rio Ferdinand, and Dame Carolyn McCall, giving his framework (celebrating difference, forging togetherness, accelerating growth) a research depth that distinguishes it from speaker anecdote.
• He was joint-top try scorer in the 2003 World Cup and central to the squad’s performance, not an observer of a winning culture but a direct participant in building one, which gives his account of accountability and standards an authority that is hard to replicate.
• His role as Chief Customer Officer at Afiniti means his thinking extends into live commercial application; AI-driven customer experience strategy, giving him credibility with boards and executive teams beyond sport.
• His named concept TCUP (Think Correctly Under Pressure) gives leaders a transferable mental model for individual and collective performance under stress: a specific takeaway rather than an inspirational experience.
• An Economics degree from Durham, a career as a City trader before turning professional, and more than 15 years as a Sky Sports analyst add analytical credibility that supports board-level conversations on performance, leadership, and organisational change.

Biography highlights

• 55 England caps, 31 international tries: England’s third-highest international try scorer; joint-top scorer at the 2003 Rugby World Cup
• Three British & Irish Lions tours: South Africa (1997), Australia (2001), New Zealand (2005)
• Co-author of World Class: How to Lead, Learn and Grow like a Champion (Penguin/Ebury Edge, 2021), with Ben Fennell, former CEO of Bartle Bogle Hegarty; built from interviews with 100+ elite performers across sport and business
• Long-standing rugby analyst and presenter, Sky Sports; weekly rugby columnist, The Daily Telegraph
• Chief Customer Officer (UK), Afiniti: an AI company focused on customer experience optimisation, since 2020; earlier career as a financial trader at Midland Global Markets (HSBC)
• MBE; Doctor of Civil Law honoris causa, Durham University; BA in Economics, Durham University

Biography

England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup squad produced one of the most studied high-performance environments in sport. Will Greenwood was not a bystander: he was joint-top try scorer at the tournament, central to the team’s culture and to the trust structures that drove its performance. That first-hand experience of what a winning team actually looks and feels like from the inside is the foundation of everything he brings to organisations.

Greenwood developed that thinking further in World Class: How to Lead, Learn and Grow like a Champion, co-authored with Ben Fennell, former CEO of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and published by Penguin in 2021. The book is built on interviews with more than 100 elite performers, from Sir Clive Woodward and Rio Ferdinand to Dame Carolyn McCall, and identifies three organising principles: celebrating difference, forging togetherness, and accelerating growth. It is a framework, not a memoir.

His credibility in the room is reinforced by a career that has never stayed still. He read Economics at Durham, traded at Midland Global Markets in the City before turning professional, and has held a C-suite role at AI company Afiniti since 2020. More than 15 years as a Sky Sports analyst, and a long-running column in The Daily Telegraph, have built a discipline of translating elite performance into clear, repeatable language.

His concept TCUP (Think Correctly Under Pressure) sits at the centre of his speaking framework: the idea that in the critical moments, individual responsibility and mental clarity are the things that separate teams who deliver from teams who don’t. It is the kind of practical, named concept that organisations can take back into the room and use.

Key speaking topics

• High-performance team leadership
• Standards and accountability culture
• Trust and cohesion under pressure
• Peak performance and mental discipline
• Learning, growth and continuous improvement
• Change management and mindset shift
• Leadership lessons from elite sport environments

Ideal for

• Senior leadership and executive teams building or re-setting high-performance culture
• Chief People Officers and HR Directors leading culture transformation programmes
• Sales and commercial leadership audiences where team dynamics directly affect performance
• Boards and C-suite audiences on sustained organisational performance and resilience under pressure

Audience outcomes

• A named, research-based framework (celebrating difference, forging togetherness, accelerating growth) drawn from 100+ interviews with elite performers across sport and business
• Practical understanding of the specific behaviours, standards and trust structures that distinguish high-performing teams from merely capable ones
• The TCUP model (Think Correctly Under Pressure), a transferable tool for individual and collective performance in high-stakes situations
• A reframed perspective on how organisations respond to setback, injury to performance, and the change of pace that comes with transition – grounded in lived experience, not theory
• Language and reference points that leadership teams can take back into internal conversations on culture, accountability and performance