Mark Denton
Around the world race skipper, Leadership, Team and Resilience Expert
- Multi-award-winning keynote speaker, recently voted ‘Bookers Choice’ at the 2024 Speaker Awards
- Led an Amateur Team to success in the ‘World’s Toughest’ Around-The-World Yacht Race
- Shares the secrets and rewrites the rules of how to achieve the seemingly impossible, when facing constant adversity, change, and competition
CHECK AVAILABILITY
Mark Denton's videos
What Mark Denton's clients say
Here is some of the feedback from audiences and clients who have worked with Mark.
CHECK AVAILABILITY
Available for
Mark’s Speaking Topics
Languages:Â
- English
Click the button below to check Mark’s fees and availability for your event.
CHECK AVAILABILITY
Mark Denton's 2025 biography
Meet Mark Denton
Mark is a Leadership, Team, Resilience and Navigating Change Expert, and multi-award winning keynote speaker, most recently voted the ‘Bookers Choice’ at the Speaker Awards 2024, judged by Speaker Bureau owners and Professionals with a combined 65 years of booking speakers and beating 168 others to the top spot.
As a professional sailor and Captain, he’s raced in many of the sport’s most gruelling events. But it was the opportunity to lead an amateur team in the ‘world’s toughest’ around-the-world yacht race that was to be his making, an experience so rich that it’s Mark’s sole focus for his speeches.
This epic event sees 12 teams in identical yachts vying for glory across 10 months and 32000 miles, the ‘wrong way’ around the world. But these are not crewed by hardy professionals from the rarefied world of elite sport. Rather 100% amateurs, male and female, of different ages, backgrounds and nationalities, 70 % having never sailed before!
It’s the toughest Leadership and Team challenge in the book, and the ultimate laboratory to discover what culture really allows a disparate group of people to achieve the extraordinary when facing constant adversity, change and competition. And the results were surprising, in many ways rewriting the rules of how Leaders and Teams need to be to thrive in a brave new world.
And so it’s been Mark’s mission since to share the learning, recognising that the parallels for business were remarkable. And his audiences from many of the world’s greatest Organisations agree, captivating them in over 31 countries to date, and with consistent 5 star reviews.
Mark Denton's 2025 talks & topics
LEADERSHIP: ‘BRAVING UNCERTAINTY’ - rewriting the rules for a brave new world
‘BRAVING UNCERTAINTY’ is Mark Denton’s signature Leadership Keynote, taking audiences on a roller-coaster of a journey through the twists, turns, triumphs and tears of leading an amateur team to success in the world’s toughest around-the-world yacht race.
This gripping multi-media account, challenges many of the existing outdated beliefs of how a Leader should be, rewriting these with new and proven frameworks that deliver sustained performance for a brave new world. Mark will inspire and equip your leaders to:
- Blur the lines between Individual, Team and Organisation Purpose
- Let go of control in favour of collaboration
- Value being vulnerable rather than being invincible
- Overcome obstacles with questions not answers
- Set bold goals and achieve more than you ever thought possible
And it’s all summarised neatly in his 3C’s model of how leaders need to be to deliver sustained performance in these turbulent times: Compassionate, Collaborative and Courageous.
Great for: Challenging mindsets of Leaders & Managers at every level, and for educating those looking to step up
TEAMWORK: ‘TOGETHER WE TRIUMPH’ - making the impossible possible
‘TOGETHER WE TRIUMPH’ is Mark Denton’s signature Teamwork Keynote, an ‘edge of your seat’ multi-media journey through the ups, downs, twists and turns of an amateur team taking part in the ‘world’s toughest’ around-the-world yacht race.
This gripping account also reveals what allowed this team to thrive when facing constant adversity, change and competition. Mark summarises these into the 3 cultural factors that teams must embrace in order to achieve the seemingly impossible, no matter how choppy the waters:
- Safe: Create an environment of psychological safety that supercharges collaboration and unlocks high performance
- Happy: Prioritise Team, Customer & Stakeholder happiness to achieve sustained success
- Fast: Embrace experimentation and reframe failure as the catalyst for learning, innovation and agility
Great for: All staff conferences and department events with a mix of Leaders and Team Members
RESILIENCE: ‘NAVIGATE THE STORM’ - 8 steps to unstoppable
‘NAVIGATE THE STORM’ is Mark Denton’s signature ‘Resilience’ keynote, a roller-coaster multi-media journey through the ups, downs, twists and turns of an amateur team taking part in the ‘world’s toughest’ around-the-world yacht race.
And as the gripping account unfolds, Mark shares his unique perspective on what kept him and the team resilient, including top-tips on how to nurture the 8 key factors summarised in the ‘Navig-8 Compass Model’; Purposeful Direction, Collaboration, Emotion Regulation, Optimism, Creativity, Anticipation, Courage and Persistence.
This simple but comprehensive framework that’s shared with attendees post event, equips them to:
- Recognise that resilience is multifaceted and accessible to all
- Understand the different factors, and why each are key
- Learn practical ways of accessing these, to get back on track
- Navigate any storm in their personal or professional lives
Great for: Leadership/Management conferences and All-Staff conferences, especially where Organisations are facing turbulent times
NAVIGATE THE STORM – READY TO RACE
A deep dive into the pre-race preparations that the team did to build a high performing culture for the race ahead, based on the eight key factors in the CULTIV-8 Compass; Establishing and aligning around your True North (purpose) and your North Star (vision), establishing customer needs in relation to that, and the same for your employees. Identifying critical operational success factors, and agreeing what behaviours will be required to deliver all this by encapsulating them in a set of Values. And lastly, having an enabling structure and the right supporting systems that allows the team to optimally perform.
NAVIGATE THE STORM – STORM TO PERFORM
A deep dive into Leg one of the race when performance was suffering in the early stages due to the team experiencing some classic dysfunctions including internal competition, silo working, poor communication, unhealthy conflict and a lack of accountability to voice the issues due to low psychological safety and trust. But on day 3, Mark decided it was time to build psychological safety and confront the issues, unite the team to overcome the challenges, set new goals, gather diverse perspectives and ideas as to how to move forward, experiment with solutions, establish effective communication channels, and focus on delivering the results which are the 8 factors within the COLLABOR-8 Compass.
NAVIGATE THE STORM – LIFT THE TROPHY
A deep dive into what it took to turn the team around from a mixed set of results through Legs 1,2,3 of the race to emphatically win leg 4. Topics covered and summarised in the DOMIN-8 Compass include building psychological safety, setting big bold goals, establishing critical success factors, challenging self-limiting beliefs, creativity and innovation to introduce fresh approaches, trying ideas out with low-risk experiments, learning from failure, and executing with courage and persistence