Jonathan Morgan

Why organisations work with Jonathan Morgan

• He took Leicester City Women from a regional fourth tier into the FA Women’s Super League, a multi-season programme of promotion and culture change that maps directly onto how organisations actually move performance.
• He carries the LMA Championship Manager of the Year award for the 2020–21 season, a peer-judged recognition from the body that governs professional football management in England.
• He speaks from the manager’s chair rather than the player’s, which is unusual in the sport-to-business category and more useful to executives running teams of their own.
• His media work for BBC Radio Leicester and Sky Sports has trained him to deliver tactical analysis in plain language to non-specialist audiences, which carries directly into corporate stages.

Biography highlights

• Head coach, Sheffield United Women (2023–2024).
• Head coach, Burnley Women (2022–2023); team unbeaten for the first 16 league matches of the season.
• Head coach, Leicester City Women (2014–2021); led the club from FA Women’s Midlands Division One into the FA Women’s Super League for 2021–22.
• LMA Championship Manager of the Year, 2020–21.
• UEFA A Licence holder; UEFA Pro Licence candidate.
• Co-commentator for BBC Radio Leicester and pundit work for Sky Sports.

Biography

Leicester City Women were a regional side outside the top three tiers of English football when Jonathan Morgan took over as head coach in 2014. Seven seasons later they were in the FA Women’s Super League for the first time, with Morgan named LMA Championship Manager of the Year for the 2020–21 promotion campaign.

That arc is the substance of what he carries into a business room. Building a senior team across a long programme of promotions, in a sport where budgets, scrutiny and the public scoreline all move at the same time, is closer to what most executives are trying to do than a single championship-winning season tends to be.

He has held head coach roles since at Burnley Women, where his side began the 2022–23 campaign on a 16-match unbeaten league run, and at Sheffield United Women. Alongside the coaching career he has worked as a co-commentator for BBC Radio Leicester and as a Sky Sports pundit, which shapes the way he speaks on stage: a manager’s read of the game in language a non-specialist can follow.

The corporate brief he handles best is leadership under pressure: how to hold a group together through losing periods, how to absorb scrutiny without losing the room, and how to plan a multi-year build when the league table will not wait for you.

Key speaking topics

• Leadership under pressure
• Building a high-performing team from a low base
• Culture and standards inside elite sport
• Managing scrutiny and external noise
• Decision-making in losing periods
• Long-cycle programmes and promotion campaigns
• Communication and man-management

Ideal for

• Sales and operational leaders running teams through long performance cycles.
• Executive offsites and conferences where leadership is the headline theme.
• After-dinner audiences at sector conferences and customer events.
• HR and people directors examining culture-building inside high-pressure teams.

Audience outcomes

• A working picture of how an elite coach handles losing weeks, public criticism and squad morale at the same time.
• Specific examples from an FA Women’s Super League promotion campaign, with the decisions and trade-offs named.
• A usable language for talking about standards and culture inside a team, rather than as a slogan on a wall.
• A view of leadership from the manager’s seat, not the player’s, that translates more directly to the audience’s own roles.