Colin MacLachlan

Why organisations work with Colin MacLachlan

• He has been the hostage, the hostage negotiator and the hostage rescuer. Very few people on any speaker roster have operated on all three sides of a crisis, and it shows in how he teaches boards to read one.
• His account of the 2005 Basra prison incident, including repeated mock executions before British forces broke through the compound walls, gives senior audiences an unvarnished view of composure under conditions no leadership course simulates.
• As an instructor on Series 1 of Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, he has publicly assessed how ordinary civilians perform under Selection-grade pressure, which translates directly into honest diagnostics of corporate teams.
• He pairs the platform with clinical substance: co-founder of Who Dares Cares, a UK charity supporting Armed Forces and Blue Light personnel with PTSD, so the resilience content is built on years of live casework rather than stage anecdote.
• Author of The Pilgrim: SAS Who Dares Wins (Pen and Sword), endorsed by Bear Grylls, Chris Ryan, Andy McNab and Damien Lewis, which gives buyers a named, citable body of work to brief their leadership against.

Biography highlights

• 22 SAS operator (Mountain Troop), serving in Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.
• Took part in Operation Barras, the 2000 hostage rescue of British soldiers from the West Side Boys in Sierra Leone.
• Central figure in the Basra prison incident of September 2005, captured by Iraqi police and rescued by British forces.
• Instructor on Series 1 of Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins; contributor to Channel 5’s Secrets of the SAS.
• Author of The Pilgrim: SAS Who Dares Wins (Pen and Sword), endorsed by Bear Grylls, Chris Ryan, Andy McNab and Damien Lewis.
• Co-founder of Who Dares Cares, a UK charity supporting Armed Forces and Blue Light personnel living with PTSD.

Biography

Two British SAS soldiers were captured by Iraqi police in Basra on 19 September 2005 and held through a series of mock executions before a Warrior-led assault broke through the compound walls and extracted them. Colin MacLachlan was one of those two men. That single episode shapes how he talks to leadership teams about composure, and why serious audiences listen.

The operational record behind it is equally specific. Mountain Troop in 22 SAS, deployments across Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, and a role in Operation Barras, the 2000 hostage rescue against the West Side Boys. Hostage negotiation, hostage rescue and being taken hostage are three distinct problems. Very few operators have done all three, and that combined perspective is what gives his leadership argument its weight.

The public-facing work gives buyers a body of evidence they can brief against. He was an instructor on Series 1 of Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, putting civilians through Selection-grade pressure on camera, and a contributor to Channel 5’s Secrets of the SAS. His memoir, The Pilgrim: SAS Who Dares Wins, is published by Pen and Sword and carries cover endorsements from Bear Grylls, Chris Ryan, Andy McNab and Damien Lewis.

He also co-founded Who Dares Cares, a UK charity supporting Armed Forces and Blue Light personnel with PTSD. That is what keeps the resilience material honest. When he tells a leadership team how stress shows up inside a person months after the event, the claim is backed by years of clinical casework, not a stage anecdote.

Key speaking topics

• Leadership and decision-making under pressure
• Crisis response and high-stakes negotiation
• Team performance in hostile environments
• Resilience and recovery from acute stress
• Risk assessment and security awareness
• Hostage survival and the psychology of captivity
• Veteran mental health and post-traumatic growth

Ideal for

• Boards and executive committees stress-testing how their leadership team behaves when a crisis is live, not rehearsed.
• CROs, heads of security and business-continuity leads responsible for people in volatile jurisdictions.
• CHROs and wellbeing leads building resilience programmes that need clinical credibility, not motivational theatre.
• Senior leadership offsites where the brief is composure, judgement and team cohesion under sustained pressure.

Audience outcomes

• A concrete vocabulary for making decisions when information is incomplete and the cost of delay is high.
• A sharper read on how individuals and teams actually behave under acute stress, drawn from Selection-grade assessments and live operations.
• A working understanding of hostage and crisis negotiation logic that transfers to hostile commercial situations.
• A more honest view of post-traumatic stress and recovery, useful to anyone responsible for people who have been through a serious event.
• A memorable, citable set of operational examples that senior audiences take back into their own leadership conversations.