Adrian Hayes
Most leadership development is built around ordinary conditions. The decisions that shape an organisation’s future are rarely made in them. Teams that look strong in stable environments fail the moment information thins and the usual playbook stops applying.
Adrian Hayes is a former Airbus Middle East sales director and record-breaking adventurer who helps senior leaders make judgement calls that hold up under pressure.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Adrian Hayes
- Six years as Airbus Middle East sales director, running regional aircraft sales, sits alongside the expedition record. The leadership material draws on both.
- ICF-accredited executive coaching sits behind every session. The expedition material is structured into frameworks for decision-making and team performance that senior teams can take back into the business.
- Direct experience of decisions with fatal consequences. In July 2013 he turned back from K2 with five other teams in dangerous snow; the one party that carried on was killed by an avalanche at Camp 3. In May 2025 he spent around 36 hours alone above Camp 4 on Kanchenjunga with an injured hand, no oxygen, and no water. His position on risk comes from having made those calls himself.
- Arabic and Nepalese fluency, eight years as an officer in the Brigade of Gurkhas, and a working life spent in Hong Kong, Brunei, Oman, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the UAE. The cross-cultural material comes from operating inside those places at working level.
Biography highlights
- Former British Army Gurkha officer, commissioned through the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, with eight years in the Brigade of Gurkhas and postings in Hong Kong, Brunei, and Oman.
- Two Guinness World Records: fastest male completion of the Three Poles Challenge (Everest, North Pole, South Pole) in 1 year 217 days, and the longest unsupported Arctic kite-ski expedition for a 67-day crossing of Greenland in 2009.
- Summited the world’s three highest mountains: Everest (2006), K2 (2014), and Kanchenjunga (2025).
- Former Airbus Middle East sales director for six years, followed by more than twenty years as an ICF-accredited executive coach and keynote speaker.
- Author of Footsteps of Thesiger (2013) and One Man’s Climb: A Journey of Trauma, Tragedy and Triumph on K2 (Pen and Sword, 2019).
- Presenter or featured subject in broadcast documentaries for National Geographic Channel (The Greenland Quest) and Discovery Channel (Footsteps of Thesiger; In Inner Mongolia); Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Biography
In July 2013 six teams on K2 turned back to Base Camp in dangerous snow conditions. One party went on. That night an avalanche destroyed Camp 3, where the other climbers had planned to be sleeping, and killed New Zealand climbers Marty and Denali Schmidt. Adrian Hayes was one of those who had come down. He returned the following year and summited on 26 July 2014.
That is the material he works with. Hayes teaches senior leaders how judgement holds up when the cost of a wrong call is absolute and the usual conditions for clear thinking have gone.
Eight years as an officer in the Brigade of Gurkhas took him to Hong Kong, Brunei, and Oman. Six years as Airbus Middle East sales director followed, running a commercial portfolio in one of the world’s more complex regions. The expedition record built alongside it produced two Guinness World Records. One for the fastest male Three Poles Challenge, in 1 year 217 days. One for a 67-day crossing of Greenland in 2009, the longest unsupported Arctic kite-ski expedition.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an ICF-accredited executive coach. His two books, Footsteps of Thesiger and One Man’s Climb: A Journey of Trauma, Tragedy and Triumph on K2, sit alongside documentary work for National Geographic and Discovery. On 10 May 2025 he summited Kanchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain, completing the three highest mountains on earth. He injured a hand rappelling on the descent and spent around 36 hours alone above Camp 4, without oxygen or water. A Sherpa climber found him at 7,800 metres and brought him down.
Key speaking topics
- Leadership decision-making under uncertainty
- Team performance under sustained pressure
- Cross-cultural leadership in complex markets
- Resilience and mental endurance
- Risk management and recovery from setback
- Responsible leadership and sustainability
Ideal for
- CEOs and executive teams facing major strategic change or commercial pressure
- Boards working through crisis, setback, or leadership transition
- Sales and commercial leadership in complex international markets
- Senior leadership development programmes, particularly cohorts preparing for cross-cultural or high-stakes assignments
Audience outcomes
- A method for making decisions when information is limited and the cost of error is high
- A working account of resilience drawn from the K2 retreat in 2013 and the Kanchenjunga descent in 2025
- Leadership lessons drawn from senior roles in the Gurkhas, at Airbus, and on major expeditions
- What separates teams that hold under sustained pressure from those that fracture
Talks
How teams are built and led when the cost of a bad collective decision is measured in lives, drawn from expedition teams on Everest, K2, and Kanchenjunga.
Key takeaways:
- What separates a team that turns back together from one that fractures under pressure
- How trust and communication hold up when conditions deteriorate faster than the plan
- The team practices Hayes changed between the 2013 and 2014 K2 expeditions, and why
Excellence as something an organisation builds deliberately, from a climber who stopped expeditions for seven years to raise his daughter and came back to summit Kanchenjunga.
Key takeaways:
- The goal-setting method Hayes works from, and where conventional goal-setting breaks
- What a long interruption and a late return say about horizon and pacing on organisational goals
- Mental fitness practices built for expeditions, and how they transfer to sustained commercial performance
Leadership stripped back to clarity, communication, and conviction, tested against eight years commanding Gurkha soldiers and six years running Airbus sales across the Middle East.
Key takeaways:
- What command responsibility in the Brigade of Gurkhas transfers to a civilian leadership role, and what does not
- How leadership language changes when the people you lead do not share your first language or culture
- The difference between decisiveness and speed when a call cannot be reversed
Resilience as a set of practices, built from 36 hours alone above Camp 4 on Kanchenjunga and the depression that followed K2 in 2013.
Key takeaways:
- What Hayes did in those 36 hours without oxygen or water, decision by decision
- Why the 2013 expedition took the longest to recover from, well after he was off the mountain
- Practices for holding judgement together under constant fatigue and stress
Working through setbacks at individual, team, and organisational level, framed around an aborted K2 expedition, a failed first Kanchenjunga attempt in 2024, and the successful one a year later.
Key takeaways:
- How to tell a setback that ends a plan from one that only pauses it
- What Hayes changed between a failed attempt and a successful one, on both K2 and Kanchenjunga
- Where persistence stops being a strength
How people and organisations recalibrate their relationship with risk, from someone who has repeatedly taken calculated risks with fatal downside.
Key takeaways:
- The distinction between risk, uncertainty, and fear, and why each calls for a different response
- Why the K2 turn-back in 2013 was the right call even though the weather cleared the next morning
- How to make a decision that cannot be reversed, and live with it afterwards
The trade-offs inside economic, social, and environmental sustainability treated as one connected system, including the parts Hayes argues get left out.
Key takeaways:
- The case for holding economic, social, and environmental sustainability together rather than separately
- Why Hayes puts population and sovereign debt inside the sustainability conversation, drawn from his work as a patron of Population Matters and CHASE Africa
- Environmental questions that sit outside the net zero frame