Andrew Bryant
Most leadership development assumes the leader is already steady. They often are not. Senior people are being asked to lead through restructure, AI disruption, and team fatigue at the same time, and the gap between what they expect of themselves and what they can sustain is widening. The organisations that close that gap treat self-leadership as a capability to be built, not a personality trait to be assumed.
Andrew Bryant is a leadership author and coach who built the practitioner field of self-leadership, helping senior leaders deliver results without burning out themselves or their teams.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Andrew Bryant
- He authored the McGraw-Hill book that defined self-leadership for a generation of corporate practitioners, and his research has been cited in more than 150 academic papers and dissertations.
- His 2026 Wiley book Potential-ize introduces the IGNITE Framework, a six-element model for leaders who need to combine human judgement with AI capability rather than be displaced by it.
- He has coached senior leaders inside Singapore Airlines, Microsoft, SAP, Deutsche Bank, and Nokia, so the work is tested against real operating pressure, not a coaching practice that lives only in workshops.
- He carries the Certified Speaking Professional designation from the Professional Speakers Association of Australia and has chaired the speaker associations of both Singapore and Spain, which means executional reliability on stage is a known quantity.
- The President of Singapore has formally recognised his work twice, in 2018 and 2020, for self-leadership programmes that produced measurable outcomes with disadvantaged teenagers and women leaders.
Biography highlights
- Founder of Self Leadership International, established 1999, with clients in over 40 countries.
- Co-author of Self-Leadership (McGraw-Hill, 2012) with Dr. Ana Lucia Kazan, a defining text in the field.
- Author of The New Leadership Playbook (2022) and Potential-ize: How Leaders Unlock Human Potential in the Age of AI (Wiley, 2026).
- Certified Speaking Professional, Professional Speakers Association of Australia, 2009.
- Past President of Asia Professional Speakers Singapore (2015 to 2016) and Professional Speakers Association Spain (2021 to 2023).
- Acknowledged twice by the President of Singapore, in 2018 and 2020, for community leadership programmes.
Biography
Self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your own thinking, feeling and actions toward a defined objective. That definition, written by Andrew Bryant and Dr. Ana Lucia Kazan in their 2012 McGraw-Hill book, is now cited in more than 150 academic papers. It is also the operating idea behind a coaching and keynote practice that has run for more than twenty-five years.
The argument is simple. Leaders who cannot regulate their own attention, energy and reactions cannot reliably lead anyone else through change. Bryant founded Self Leadership International in 1999 and built the methodology out of work with named global organisations, including Singapore Airlines, Microsoft, SAP, Deutsche Bank and Nokia. The 2022 follow-up book, The New Leadership Playbook, translated the underlying research into twelve concrete leadership conversations that teams actually need to have.
His 2026 Wiley book, Potential-ize: How Leaders Unlock Human Potential in the Age of AI, extends the work into the live boardroom question. The IGNITE Framework, six elements covering Inspire, Guide, Nurture, Integrate, Transform and Evaluate, is built for leaders who need to combine human judgement with AI capability without losing either. It is the same intellectual line, applied to the workforce conversation that buyers are having now.
Bryant carries the Certified Speaking Professional designation from the Professional Speakers Association of Australia and has chaired the speaker associations of both Singapore and Spain. The President of Singapore acknowledged his community work formally in 2018 and again in 2020. The credentials are useful as proof of seriousness, but the more practical point for a buyer is that he is one of the very few speakers who can credibly claim to have shaped the leadership category he speaks on.
Key speaking topics
- Self-leadership
- Leadership in the age of AI
- Executive presence and personal effectiveness
- Workplace mental health and resilience
- Psychological safety and high-performing teams
- Leading change and restructure
- Human potential and talent development
Ideal for
- CEO, COO and senior leadership teams under pressure to deliver during restructure or AI adoption.
- CHROs and Heads of Leadership Development building self-leadership capability across mid and senior cohorts.
- Boards and executive committees commissioning offsites on resilience, composure and decision quality.
Audience outcomes
- A working definition of self-leadership that leaders can apply to their own behaviour the next day, not just discuss in the abstract.
- The IGNITE Framework as a structured way to think about unlocking team potential alongside AI capability rather than against it.
- A direct view of how composure under pressure compounds into team performance and retention.
- Specific leadership conversations, drawn from the twelve plays in The New Leadership Playbook, that managers can run with their own teams.
- Named tools from Bryant’s Self-Leadership Resilience Stack, including the Evening Review and the View from Above, for regulating pressure before it compounds into burnout.
Talks
Shows leaders why returns on AI spending depend on human capability, using the IGNITE Framework from Bryant’s 2026 Wiley book.
Key takeaways:
- The six IGNITE stages (Inspire, Guide, Nurture, Integrate, Transform, Evaluate) for leading transformation without losing the team
- A diagnostic for locating where a current change effort is stalling
- A working formula for human-AI effectiveness in what Bryant calls the Co-pilot Economy
Equips senior leaders to make decisive calls with incomplete information, built on the Riding the Dragon model from Potential-ize.
Key takeaways:
- The Riding the Dragon model for converting volatility into competitive position
- A personal Uncertainty Quotient, and how to expand it deliberately
- The practical difference between firefighting and leading, and how to move from reactive mode into strategic ownership
Distils the field Bryant defined into three trainable competencies that underpin every other leadership capability.
Key takeaways:
- The three-competency model: self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-learning
- Techniques for sustaining performance under pressure, drawn from work with elite athletes and senior executives
- The evidence base for self-leadership as the foundation of effective leadership, from the McGraw-Hill text cited in more than 200 academic papers
Makes the strategic case that self-leadership prevents the crises wellness programmes are built to treat, with tools leaders can use the same day.
Key takeaways:
- The Self-Leadership Resilience Stack, combining Stoic practice, behaviour-change science, and Psychological Capital research
- Same-day tools including the Evening Review, the View from Above, and the WOOP method for converting intention into follow-through
- The commercial case for treating mental health as an upstream capability, not a downstream cost
Defines the four competencies leaders need for the decade ahead: Human-AI Symbiosis, Distributed Intelligence, Learning Velocity, and Ethical Evolution.
Key takeaways:
- A framework for the four Leadership 4.0 competencies and where each applies
- Case studies on human-AI integration from organisations including Klarna and Patagonia
- Practical approaches for raising learning velocity across teams