Blaire Palmer
Senior teams keep running playbooks that worked a decade ago and wondering why engagement, trust, and pace are all slipping at once. The habits that built the company have become the ceiling on what it can do next. Fixing that means looking hard at leadership behaviour, not at another strategy deck.
Blaire Palmer is a leadership consultant and author who helps senior teams confront the behaviours and assumptions that quietly limit their organisation’s capacity to change.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Blaire Palmer
- She brings a BBC journalist’s instinct for the question leaders are avoiding, then makes the boardroom answer it in plain language.
- Her book Punks in Suits gives organisations a shared vocabulary for why old management habits, not strategy, are the real brake on growth.
- She has coached boards and executive teams across Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, so the challenge lands with commercial credibility.
- She runs That People Thing as her own consultancy, which means the keynote is the leading edge of a deeper body of work on leadership transformation, not a standalone act.
Biography highlights
- Chief Executive and founder of That People Thing, a leadership consultancy working with boards and executive teams on culture and change.
- Author of four books including Punks in Suits: How to Lead the Workplace Reformation (Rethink Press, 2024) and What’s Wrong with Work? (John Wiley and Sons, 2010).
- Former producer on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, where she spent a decade in UK news and current affairs.
- Trained as one of Europe’s first accredited executive coaches after leaving the BBC.
- Named clients include Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Govia Thameslink Railway, and Centre for Army Leadership.
- Regular contributor to Medium and Authority Magazine on leadership and the future of work.
Biography
Most organisations are not structured to change. They are structured to protect the habits that made them successful, and the people defending those habits are often the most senior in the room. Palmer’s work starts from that observation and builds out.
She spent a decade as a producer on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, interrogating ministers and chief executives at eight minutes past seven in the morning. The habit of asking the uncomfortable question did not leave her when she moved into coaching at 29. It became the method.
Since then she has spent more than two decades advising boards and executive teams at Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She founded That People Thing to house that work. Her fourth book, Punks in Suits: How to Lead the Workplace Reformation, published by Rethink Press in 2024, sets out the argument that entrenched management orthodoxy, not competitive pressure, is what stalls most organisations trying to evolve.
What a senior team gets from her is rare in the category. She has the reporter’s ability to cut through executive language, the coach’s patience to stay with a difficult conversation, and a published thesis specific enough to be argued with. That makes the keynote a starting point for a real internal debate rather than a motivational interval.
Key speaking topics
- Leadership behaviour and change
- Workplace reformation and culture
- Trust and candour in senior teams
- Future of work
- Decision-making under pressure
- Leadership myths and orthodoxies
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees facing a culture or performance inflection point.
- CHROs and chief people officers leading leadership development at scale.
- CEOs integrating acquisitions or navigating a strategic reset.
- Leadership conferences for senior management populations.
Audience outcomes
- A clearer view of which leadership habits are acting as a ceiling on organisational performance.
- A specific argument, drawn from Punks in Suits, that senior teams can take back into their own decision forums.
- Language for the conversations leaders have been avoiding with peers and direct reports.
- Recognition that culture and strategy move together, and a concrete starting point for aligning them.
Talks
A provocation drawn from her 2024 book, arguing that nineteenth and twentieth century management assumptions are the real constraint on modern organisations.
Key takeaways:
- Why command-and-trust is a false choice, and what replaces it
- The management habits most likely to quietly kill engagement
- A practical test for whether your leadership model is fit for the next decade
A talk on building organisational appetite for continuous change through human connection rather than internal communications campaigns.
Key takeaways:
- Why change fatigue is usually a leadership problem, not a workforce problem
- The difference between communicating change and building belief in it
- What leaders do differently in organisations that change well
An examination of four outdated leadership beliefs that senior teams still operate on without noticing.
Key takeaways:
- The myths that quietly shape promotion, reward, and decision rights
- Where each myth came from and why it persists
- What senior teams can replace them with
Videos
Testimonials
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |
| Asia Pacific | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Europe | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |
| Middle East & Africa | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| South America | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| United Kingdom | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |
| US East Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US West Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Virtual | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |