Executive Development

Why organisations work with Deborah Rowland Her 2015/16 global research, conducted through Behavioural Event Interviews with senior leaders across industries, quantified that leader inner capacities account for over half the success or failure of large complex change – a finding that directly challenges how most organisations design transformation programmes. The Still Moving framework and Change Vitality model give organisations a specific diagnostic language for the leadership dimension of change: eight interconnected skills with a clear evidence base, not another generic competency framework. She spent the first half of her career inside the systems she now advises, as VP of Organisational and Management Development at PepsiCo, Change Lead at Royal Dutch Shell, and People Director at BBC Worldwide. She understands the constraints of the position, not just its theory. Four Wiley-published books, articles in the Harvard Business Review and LSE Business Review, and papers accepted at the Academy of Management give her frameworks independent credibility beyond the consulting relationship. Her most recent book, From Ought to Is (Wiley, 2025), applies the Still Moving thinking directly to polarisation and systemic inertia – relevant to organisations managing post-merger integration, contested cultural change, or restructuring in divided environments. Biography highlights Author of Still Moving: How to Lead Mindful Change (Wiley, 2017, bestseller) and From Ought to Is: Catalysing Change and Movement in a Polarised World (Wiley, 2025); co-author with Professor Malcolm Higgs of Sustaining Change: Leadership That Works (Wiley, 2008) Named on Thinkers50 Radar 2017; ranked 31st on HR Magazine Most Influential Thinkers list 2021 Contributor to Harvard Business Review and LSE Business Review; original research accepted at the 2016 Academy of Management and 2019 European Academy of Management Former VP of Organisational and Management Development at PepsiCo; Change Lead at Royal Dutch Shell; People Director at BBC Worldwide; earlier senior roles at Gucci Group Founder of Still Moving change consultancy; advisory clients include RWE, GlaxoSmithKline, Rolls-Royce, Diageo, Unilever and De Beers Faculty contributor at Henley, Imperial, Tuck and Bath business schools; Advisory Board member, International Institute for Leadership and Safety Culture Double First in Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University Biography Most large-scale transformation programmes fall short not because the strategy is wrong, but because the leaders running them revert to familiar patterns when complexity peaks. Deborah Rowland has devoted three decades to studying that specific failure mode. Her research, conducted through Behavioural Event Interviews with senior leaders across industries and geographies, found that four inner capacities of the leader – staying present, responding intentionally, tuning into the system, and acknowledging the whole – explained over half the reason why big complex change either succeeds or fails. That research was not produced from the outside. Rowland spent the first half of her career as a practitioner, serving as VP of Organisational and Management Development at PepsiCo, Change Lead at Royal Dutch Shell, and People Director at BBC Worldwide, with earlier senior roles at Gucci Group. She has led major restructurings from within, and understands directly the conditions under which change leaders default to unhelpful patterns. That experience is embedded in every practical element of the Still Moving framework she subsequently developed. The intellectual architecture behind the framework spans four published Wiley books. Sustaining Change (2008, with Professor Malcolm Higgs) identified four external practices of effective change leadership. Still Moving (2017) showed that four inner capacities must precede those practices – and that this inner dimension accounted for over half the variance in change success. From Ought to Is (2025) extends the argument to address polarisation and systemic inertia as the specific obstacles leaders now face. Named on the Thinkers50 Radar in 2017 and a contributor to the Harvard Business Review and LSE Business Review, she has also taught at Henley, Imperial, Tuck and Bath. She holds a Double First in Archaeology and Anthropology from Cambridge University – a training in systemic observation that continues to shape how she reads organisations and the people leading them. Key speaking topics Large-scale organisational transformation The inner capacities of change leadership The Still Moving framework and Change Vitality model Systemic change approaches Leading through polarisation and organisational inertia Culture change and movement Executive leadership development in complex environments Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards sponsoring or overseeing major transformation programmes CHROs and senior HR leadership communities Leaders at the top of organisations navigating post-merger integration, major restructuring, or contested cultural change Business school executive education participants on leadership and change programmes Audience outcomes A clear understanding of why leader inner state – not change methodology – is the primary driver of transformation success or failure Practical exposure to the Still Moving eight-skill framework and Change Vitality model as a leadership diagnostic tool Ability to identify specific leadership behaviours that correlate with success in large and complex change Approaches for leading systemic change without defaulting to controlling or directive patterns under pressure A more honest assessment of personal leadership habits that may be slowing organisational change

Why organisations work with Danah Zohar She gave the field two of its named ideas. Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and Quantum Management are her frameworks, not borrowed labels, and they sit on a substantial body of published work. Her management thinking is built on physics and complexity science, not from organisational behaviour. That gives her a different starting point from most leadership voices, and a model that holds up when the operating environment becomes genuinely non-linear. The Haier group in China rebuilt its management system around her concept of “zero distance” between employee and customer, giving her work a named operating reference at one of the world’s largest appliance manufacturers. She brings credentials that are hard to assemble in one speaker: MIT, Harvard, Oxford’s Strategic Leadership Programme, Cranfield, Tsinghua, and induction into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2022. Biography highlights Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, 2022. Named in the 2002 Financial Times Prentice Hall Business Minds anthology of the world’s 50 greatest management thinkers. Teaches in the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at Oxford University’s Said Business School; Visiting Fellow at Cranfield School of Management. Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management and the China Academy of Art; entrepreneurial mentor at Haier. Author of The Quantum Self, ReWiring the Corporate Brain, SQ: Spiritual Intelligence, Spiritual Capital, The Quantum Leader, and Zero Distance: Management in the Quantum Age. Educated in Physics and Philosophy at MIT, with postgraduate work in Philosophy, Religion and Psychology at Harvard. Biography Newtonian management assumes that organisations behave like machines: predictable parts, fixed structures, control flowing from the top. The physics it is built on was superseded a hundred years ago. Danah Zohar has spent her career arguing that the management model needs to catch up, and showing senior leaders what a quantum and complexity-based alternative looks like in practice. Her two named contributions, Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and Quantum Management, treat organisations as complex adaptive systems and treat people as carriers of meaning and purpose, not units of labour. The 12 Principles of SQ, set out in SQ: Spiritual Intelligence, the Ultimate Intelligence and developed further in Spiritual Capital, are drawn directly from the properties of living quantum systems. The work has been picked up where it matters. Haier, one of China’s largest industrial groups, restructured its management system around Zohar’s concept of “zero distance” between employee and customer, the basis of Zero Distance: Management in the Quantum Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). She teaches in the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme, holds a visiting fellowship at Cranfield, and visiting professorships at Tsinghua and the China Academy of Art. For boards and executive teams, the practical question is how to lead a workforce and a strategy when the old assumptions of stability, hierarchy and pure financial logic no longer carry the weight they once did. Zohar offers a coherent answer, built from physics rather than rhetoric, and tested at scale inside one of the most ambitious corporate reorganisations of the last decade. Key speaking topics Quantum Management and the post-Newtonian organisation Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and the 12 Principles Spiritual capital and purpose-driven leadership Complex adaptive systems applied to corporate strategy Meaning, motivation and the future of work Sustainable capitalism and the role of business in society Leading transformation at scale, with reference to the Haier model Ideal for CEOs and executive teams are redesigning operating models for higher autonomy and faster customer response Boards and senior leaders working through purpose, values and the social licence of the business Transformation leads and CHROs running culture and structure change in parallel Strategy and innovation leaders looking for a complexity-based alternative to classical planning Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for treating the organisation as a complex adaptive system, with concrete implications for structure, decision rights and information flow. A clearer link between purpose, meaning and commercial performance, beyond statement-of-values exercises. The Haier “zero distance” case as a worked reference for radical decentralisation at scale. Sharper questions for the executive team about where Newtonian assumptions still shape their planning, structure and incentives. An informed view of where Spiritual Intelligence sits alongside IQ and EQ in leadership development.

Why organisations work with Connie Dieken The Influence360° assessment is the only validated psychometric instrument built specifically to measure how individual leaders influence stakeholders. Organisations gain hard data on a capability they have previously only been able to assess anecdotally – or not at all. The Connect-Convey-Convince® methodology, developed through more than 15 years of research with over 20,000 participants, gives leadership teams a shared, actionable language for a problem most organisations misdiagnose as a personality issue rather than a learnable skill gap. Twenty years interviewing presidents and global CEOs for ABC and NBC gave Dieken direct observational data on how influence operates under pressure and at scale. That empirical foundation is not available from the executive coaching mainstream. Her training programmes are licensed in corporate universities worldwide and both her Wiley books reached No. 1 on Amazon and Audible – which means her frameworks carry weight in the room before she enters it. Membership of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, a highly selective global practitioner community, places her within the most rigorously vetted executive coaching cohort in the world and signals peer-level recognition, not self-designation. Biography highlights Founder of Influence360°, a validated leadership influence assessment, and The Dieken Group, a C-suite executive advisory firm operating on five continents Author of two Wiley bestsellers: Talk Less, Say More (Connect-Convey-Convince® methodology) and Become the Real Deal (Three Layers of Presence and Return on Influence® framework) Five-time Emmy Award winner and inductee of the Radio/Television Broadcasters Hall of Fame, the National Speakers Association Speakers Hall of Fame, and the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame Named Top 10 Executive Coach globally by the Global Gurus organisation; member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches (2019) Guest lecturer in executive education and MBA programmes at Case Western University, Indiana University, and Ohio State University Thought leadership featured in The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times Biography Most leaders believe they are more persuasive than others experience them. Connie Dieken, a broadcast journalist for ABC and NBC for two decades, built her career on closing that gap. Interviewing presidents and global CEOs, she identified the patterns that divided leaders who drove genuine action from those who merely spoke at people. That observation became a research project. Fifteen years of structured study involving more than 20,000 participants produced the Influence360° assessment, a validated instrument for measuring how leaders influence stakeholders. Two Wiley bestsellers followed: Talk Less, Say More, built on the Connect-Convey-Convince® methodology, and Become the Real Deal, which introduced the Three Layers of Presence and the Return on Influence® concept. The Dieken Group now advises C-suite executives at organisations including Coca-Cola, HP, Nestlé, BNP Paribas, and The Cleveland Clinic. Her influence training programmes are licensed in corporate universities on five continents. She is a guest lecturer in executive education at Case Western, Indiana, and Ohio State universities, and a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches. Dieken has been inducted into the Radio/Television Broadcasters Hall of Fame, the National Speakers Association Speakers Hall of Fame, and the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame. She has been named a Top 10 Executive Coach globally by the Global Gurus organisation and has delivered keynotes on four continents to audiences numbering in the thousands. Key speaking topics Leadership influence and stakeholder commitment Executive presence and authentic authority Influential communication under pressure Change leadership and stakeholder buy-in Human influence and decision-making in AI-shaped organisations Presentation strategy and persuasion Leadership assessment and behavioural diagnostics Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating change, mergers, or strategic realignment where stakeholder buy-in is the critical variable CHROs and talent leaders designing executive development programmes where influence and presence are identified capability gaps Sales leadership and commercial functions where the ability to earn commitment is a direct performance driver Boards and executive committees seeking a research-grounded framework for developing leadership effectiveness at the top Audience outcomes A clear diagnostic of their personal influence pattern, including where they are most likely to lose stakeholder commitment and why A three-step methodology – Connect, Convey, Convince – they can apply immediately to high-stakes conversations, presentations, and change initiatives Understanding of the Three Layers of Presence and how inner, outer, and verbal presence affect their credibility with senior stakeholders Frameworks to distinguish between genuine influence and manipulation, and to lead without coercion or compliance-seeking Practical tools for navigating resistance from difficult stakeholders, including those who are dominant, anxious, or disengaged

Why organisations work with Carole Gaskell Her use of Motivational Mapping gives organisations something a standard engagement survey does not: a diagnostic map of where individual and team energy is being lost and why, before it becomes a performance or retention problem. As a Master Certified Practitioner in Neuro-agility, Insights Discovery and Motivational Maps, she brings three complementary frameworks to the same conversation, addressing how people think, what drives them, and how they communicate under pressure. Her book Full Potential Leadership sets out the case for coaching-led culture change: that leaders who cannot identify what motivates their people are operating with a structural blind spot, not a skills gap. Her executive background – Marketing and Acquisitions Director at a UK Plc, involved in both flotation and the sale of the business – gives her credibility in C-suite conversations about performance as a commercial issue rather than a wellbeing one. Five Outperformer of the Year speaker awards and consistent recognition for personal impact on CEO-level audiences reflect a track record of shifting thinking in rooms where change is genuinely hard. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Full Potential Group, one of the UK’s longest-established leadership and executive coaching firms, founded in the late 1990s Author of four books: Full Potential Leadership, Full Potential Coach, Transform Your Life, and Your Pocket Life Coach Master Certified Practitioner in Neuro-agility, Insights Discovery and Motivational Maps Five Outperformer of the Year speaker awards; voted speaker with the most personal impact on CEO and senior leadership audiences Keynote and facilitation work spanning Mercer, Tesco, PwC, NHS, Nationwide Building Society, Heinz, Lend Lease, JLL, Roche, Urenco and Starbucks, among others Speaker at CIPD conferences in the UK and Asia Pacific, Vistage CEO groups and international investment forums Former Marketing and Acquisitions Director at a UK Plc; involved in flotation and the eventual sale of the business Biography Leadership development spending has grown steadily for decades. Engagement numbers have not kept pace. Carole Gaskell, founder of Full Potential Group, has spent more than 25 years working on the reason – and what leadership teams can actually do about it. The diagnostic tools she deploys are specific and measurable. Motivational Mapping identifies nine intrinsic motivators at individual and team level, giving leaders a way to see where energy is being generated and where it is being lost. Insights Discovery profiling and Neuro-agility assessment address the other half of the picture: how people process information, communicate under pressure, and learn. Carole is a Master Certified Practitioner across all three frameworks. Her book Full Potential Leadership argues that high-performing cultures cannot be designed around strategy alone. Leaders who do not understand what motivates their people are solving a human problem with structural tools – and wondering why the results do not last. She makes that argument with organisations, not just to them. Her client work spans Mercer, Tesco, PwC, NHS, JLL and Nationwide Building Society. Conference delivery includes CIPD events in the UK and Asia Pacific and Vistage CEO forums internationally. Before founding Full Potential Group, Carole served as Marketing and Acquisitions Director at a UK Plc, working through flotation and eventual sale. That background sets the frame for how she talks about performance: not as a leadership ideal, but as a commercial outcome that depends on getting the people conditions right. Key speaking topics Motivational intelligence and workforce engagement Leadership culture and high-performance team design Coaching as an organisational capability Neuro-agility and cognitive performance at work Team diagnostics and motivational profiling Employee energy, wellbeing and sustainable performance The future of leadership in changing organisations Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and people directors building engagement and performance strategies that go beyond the annual survey CEOs and senior leadership teams seeking measurable approaches to culture and people performance L&D leaders designing programmes that address motivation and mindset, not just skills Boards and executive teams preparing for significant change where people commitment is the critical variable Audience outcomes A working framework for understanding the nine intrinsic motivators and identifying dominant drivers in themselves and their teams A diagnostic language for motivation that can be applied immediately in 1:1s, team reviews and performance conversations Specific leadership behaviours that build high-performance cultures, and the common patterns that undermine them Practical tools for sustaining motivation and energy through change, pressure and uncertainty A clearer distinction between engagement – a feeling that surveys can capture – and motivation, a variable that can be tracked and acted on

Why organisations work with Barbara Oakley Her “focused mode/diffuse mode” framework gives L&D teams a named, neuroscience-backed model for redesigning how training is structured, not just what it covers. It establishes that structured recovery and retrieval practice matter as much as instruction time, a claim with direct implications for how organisations budget and sequence learning investment. “Learning How to Learn,” co-created with Salk Institute neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, has been taken by over 4 million people on Coursera. That scale of real-world adoption gives her frameworks empirical grounding that no controlled study can fully replicate. Her personal trajectory from U.S. Army linguist to engineering professor, achieved through deliberate adult retraining, is the primary evidence for her central argument that capability can be built at any career stage. For organisations running reskilling programmes, that is more persuasive than theory from a researcher who has never made the journey themselves. “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), a New York Times bestseller translated into 13 languages with over 1 million copies sold, means her frameworks already have traction well beyond corporate learning circles. Audiences often arrive familiar with her work, reducing the credibility gap that typically slows training adoption. The 2023 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, administered through the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and widely considered the field’s most prestigious award, recognised Oakley as the inaugural winner in a new Lifelong Learning category – independent confirmation that her contribution to continuous capability development is field-defining. Biography highlights Distinguished Professor of Engineering, Oakland University; Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning, McMaster University Inaugural winner of the 2023 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education (Lifelong Learning category), administered through the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education Co-creator (with neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, Salk Institute) of “Learning How to Learn” on Coursera – over 4 million enrolled, one of the most widely taken courses in the history of online education Author of “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), a New York Times bestselling science book translated into 13 languages with over 1 million copies sold; subsequent titles include “Mindshift” (2017), “Uncommon Sense Teaching” (2021), and “Learn Like a Pro” (2021) Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal; Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year (2018) Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering; Coursera’s inaugural “Innovation Instructor” Former U.S. Army Captain; recognised as Distinguished Military Scholar Biography In 2014, a Coursera course called “Learning How to Learn” attracted over 300,000 students in its first three runs. It now has over 4 million enrolled, making it one of the most widely taken courses in the history of online education. That appetite reflects a gap most organisational training does not close: a practical understanding of how capability is actually built. Barbara Oakley created that course with neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski of the Salk Institute. She came to the research through direct experience: a former U.S. Army Captain trained as a linguist, she retaught herself mathematics and engineering entirely as an adult. Her own career transition is the most direct demonstration of her central argument – that capability is genuinely malleable, and that the brain can acquire new domains of expertise at any career stage. Her “focused mode/diffuse mode” framework, named in “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), gives organisations a practical model for how concentration, structured recovery, and retrieval interact in the learning process. The book reached New York Times bestseller status and has been translated into 13 languages. Subsequent titles including “Mindshift,” “Uncommon Sense Teaching,” and “Learn Like a Pro” extend the framework into career reinvention, teaching design, and AI-era learning. In 2023, she received the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, the most prestigious award in the field, as inaugural winner in a newly created Lifelong Learning category. She is Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Oakland University and holds a concurrent appointment as Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning at McMaster University. Key speaking topics The neuroscience of effective learning and skill retention Workforce reskilling and adult capability development Learning frameworks for the age of AI Building organisational learning culture Career reinvention and professional mindset The science of effective training design Cognitive performance and focus at work Ideal for CHROs and L&D directors designing or auditing workforce capability programmes CEOs and executive teams navigating AI-driven workforce transition and reskilling investment Corporate universities and internal learning academies benchmarking training effectiveness Boards and transformation leads sponsoring large-scale reskilling or career transition initiatives Audience outcomes A named neuroscience framework (focused vs. diffuse mode) for understanding how attention, structured recovery, and retrieval interact in the learning process Evidence-based techniques (retrieval practice, spaced repetition, the Pomodoro method) that individuals and teams can apply immediately to improve learning retention A reframe of learning ability from fixed trait to trainable skill, with direct implications for how organisations identify, develop, and retain talent Clarity on why conventional training approaches consistently underdeliver, and what research-supported alternatives look like in practice A grounded argument for why adult capability development is achievable at any career stage, drawn from both neuroscience and the speaker’s own documented transition

Why organisations work with Ayse Birsel She brings a method, not a mood. Deconstruction: Reconstruction is a four-step process (deconstruct, point of view, reconstruct, express) developed across two decades of paid client work, and groups can run it on a real problem in the room. Her design credentials are commercial, not theoretical: products and systems for Herman Miller, Toyota, Amazon, IKEA, Knoll, GE and Colgate-Palmolive, with Resolve for Herman Miller named by The New York Times among the defining furniture pieces of the last 100 years. She bridges product innovation and people innovation. The same method behind the Zoë Washlet for TOTO underpins Design the Work You Love, which is why teams leave with a tool they can apply to org design, not just to creativity. She is one of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches, and the cohort itself was formed inside her Design the Life You Love process. That credential signals trust from the most senior coaching network in business. Recognised by Fast Company as one of the Most Creative People in Business and by Thinkers50 on its Radar list of thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisations. Biography highlights Co-founder and Creative Director, Birsel + Seck, New York. Master’s in Industrial Design, Pratt Institute, on a Fulbright Scholarship; undergraduate in Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University. Author of “Design the Life You Love” (Penguin Random House, 2015) and “Design the Long Life You Love” (Running Press, 2022). Thinkers50 Radar list of 30 thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisations. One of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business (2017); member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches. Work in the permanent collections of MoMA, Cooper Hewitt and the Philadelphia Museum of Art; clients include Herman Miller, Toyota, Amazon, GE, IKEA, Knoll, Staples, Colgate-Palmolive and TOTO. Biography Most organisations treat innovation as a personality trait. Ayse Birsel treats it as a process. Deconstruction: Reconstruction, the method she has used at Birsel + Seck for two decades, is built around four steps: take the problem apart, change the point of view, put it back together within real constraints, and give the result a clean form. It is the same logic she has applied to a Herman Miller workstation, a Toyota concept car and a TOTO washlet. Her credentials are commercial. Birsel + Seck, the New York studio she runs with Bibi Seck, has produced work for Amazon, GE, IKEA, Staples, Knoll and Colgate-Palmolive. The Resolve System for Herman Miller has been cited by The New York Times among the defining furniture pieces of the last 100 years, and her work sits in the permanent collections of MoMA, Cooper Hewitt and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She trained at Middle East Technical University and took a master’s at Pratt Institute on a Fulbright Scholarship. The translation from product to people came through her books. “Design the Life You Love” (Penguin Random House, 2015) and “Design the Long Life You Love” (2022) take the same four-step method and apply it to careers, relationships and ageing well. Marshall Goldsmith ran the program himself, and the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches network was formed inside it. She is a member of that cohort and on the Thinkers50 Radar list of thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisations. For corporate audiences, this matters because the method is the product. Teams do not leave with a story about creativity. They leave having deconstructed a real brief, tested a different point of view and reconstructed an option they can take back to the operating model on Monday. Key speaking topics Innovation method and design thinking in practice Deconstruction: Reconstruction as a creative process for teams Designing the work, not just the workplace Life design and career reinvention for senior leaders Creativity under constraint Human-centred product and service design Long-life and longevity design Ideal for Innovation, R&D and product leaders looking for a repeatable creative method. CHROs and learning leaders running senior leadership offsites or executive development programs. Boards and executive teams working through reinvention, succession and second-act questions. Design, marketing and customer experience functions translate creativity into operating decisions. Audience outcomes A working knowledge of the four-step Deconstruction: Reconstruction process applied to a real organisational brief. A different point of view on a problem the team came in with, tested in the room. Language and structure for talking about creativity that does not depend on individual talent. A personal life-design or career-design artefact that senior leaders can take away from the session. Confidence that innovation can be run as a discipline, not staged as a culture programme.

Why organisations work with Annemarie Steen A working method for adaptability rather than a talk about it. Her keynotes ask the room to practise the behaviours she names, so leadership teams leave with something they have already tried, not only heard Faculty credibility on two sides of the discipline: senior facilitator at THNK School of Creative Leadership in Amsterdam and award-winning MBA visiting lecturer at Estonian Business School on Creative and Playful Leadership A clear thesis on why composure and openness matter to commercial decisions, not as soft skills but as the conditions under which good judgement actually happens One of the few European speakers who can hold a serious leadership audience while running an interactive room, useful when a client wants a keynote that does not flatten into a lecture Biography highlights Owner of SteenTrain since 2009, a leadership development practice built around playful, applied-improvisation methods Founder of Play-Break, a concept for short recovery and creativity practices used inside teams and at events Senior facilitator at THNK School of Creative Leadership, Amsterdam Partner at The Core Story, a strategic narrative and storytelling consultancy Visiting lecturer in Creative and Playful Leadership at Estonian Business School for around nine years, awarded Best Visiting Lecturer for the MBA course TEDx speaker (Tallaght, Dublin, 2014, “What happens when you press PLAY”); client work has included the Netherlands Ministry of Defence, KPMG Estonia, the Estonian Employers Confederation, Vlerick Business School and Fontys Biography Most leadership teams know the language of agility and innovation. Far fewer have a working method for the behaviours those words refer to. Steen’s practice fills that gap. She treats playfulness as a discipline, not a mood, and trains senior groups in how to read a room, hold uncertainty without seizing up, and make a decision that is open to revision. The foundation is applied improvisation, taken seriously. At THNK School of Creative Leadership in Amsterdam, where she is a senior facilitator, the methods are used to develop founders and senior leaders running ventures in complex markets. At Estonian Business School, her course on Creative and Playful Leadership has run for around nine years on the MBA, and was awarded Best Visiting Lecturer. The work travels because it is built around behaviours that hold up under business pressure, not just classroom exercises. Her client list reflects that reach. The Netherlands Ministry of Defence, KPMG Estonia, the Estonian Employers Confederation, Vlerick Business School and Fontys have all used her with senior groups. A 2014 TEDx talk in Tallaght, “What happens when you press PLAY”, sets out the underlying argument: that organisations lose access to their own intelligence when they over-perform seriousness, and that recovering creative range is a leadership decision, not a perk. What clients tend to book her for is the combination of a keynote and a room that actually does something. Steen runs the talk as an interactive frame, so a leadership audience leaves having rehearsed presence, listening and response under mild pressure, rather than having taken notes about them. Key speaking topics Playful leadership and leading under uncertainty Applied improvisation for senior teams Creativity, innovation and design thinking in practice Storytelling for business and executive communication Presence, listening and connection at senior level Recovery, attention and team energy at work Ideal for Senior leadership offsites where the brief is to shift behaviour, not deliver information HR, learning and OD leads commissioning executive development on adaptability and creative range Conference organisers looking for an interactive keynote or moderator who can hold a serious leadership room Audience outcomes A direct experience of the behaviours that make a leadership team adaptable, not only a description of them Specific practices for presence, listening and response that can be used inside their own meetings A practical argument for why creative range is a commercial capability, not an HR theme Renewed attention to recovery and energy as inputs to senior decision-making

Why organisations work with Amy Williams She won Britain’s only medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics by 0.56 seconds, in a sport she had taken up eight years earlier, which gives her a concrete account of building elite performance from a standing start that boards and sales leaders respond to. Her book “Talent to Triumph” draws on Dame Sarah Storey, Helen Glover, Colin Jackson, Ellie Simmonds, Rebecca Adlington and Professor Greg Whyte, so the material she brings into corporate rooms is a composite view of how performance is actually built, not a single medal story. She works fluently across BBC commentary, “Ski Sunday” presenting and Channel 5’s “The Gadget Show”, which makes her a reliable booking for events that need a keynote and a host in the same person. The subject she owns is preparation and composure in short execution windows, which translates directly into board, sales kick-off and transformation settings where the moment to perform is finite. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, women’s skeleton, Vancouver 2010, winning margin 0.56 seconds. MBE, 2010 Queen’s Birthday Honours; first female Honorary Freeman of the City of Bath. Author of “Talent to Triumph: How Athletes Turn Potential into High Performance”, Sequoia Books, 2021. BBC skeleton and bobsleigh commentator; co-presenter of BBC Two’s “Ski Sunday” since 2013. Presenter of Channel 5’s “The Gadget Show” since 2014. Honorary Doctorate of Laws, University of Bath, 2017; first Ambassador of the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust, 2019. Biography The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics produced a single British medal. Amy Williams took it, winning women’s skeleton by 0.56 seconds and becoming the first British solo Winter Olympic champion for three decades. She had switched from 400-metre running to skeleton at the University of Bath only eight years earlier, after shin splints ended her track career. Williams retired in 2012 with a ruptured knee and a slipped disc from the ice at Altenberg. What followed was a deliberate second career. She moved into BBC commentary on skeleton and bobsleigh, joined “Ski Sunday” as co-presenter in 2013 and took over as a presenter on Channel 5’s “The Gadget Show” in 2014. That record matters to conference organisers, because it means she is comfortable holding a room and an autocue, not only telling a medal story. In 2021 she published “Talent to Triumph” with Sequoia Books, a working manual on how elite performers turn ability into results. The book pulls in Dame Sarah Storey, Helen Glover, Colin Jackson, Ellie Simmonds, Rebecca Adlington, Jade Jones and Professor Greg Whyte, which is why the material she brings to corporate audiences sounds less like a sporting autobiography and more like a composite view of what high performance requires. The through line for leadership audiences is specific. Skeleton is a sport where preparation runs for years, the run lasts around a minute, and the result is public. That is the shape of most executive moments that matter, and it is the frame Williams uses when she walks a board or a sales team through how composure, marginal gains and trained resilience hold up when the window to execute is short. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery from setback Preparation and discipline under pressure Marginal gains and incremental performance Mindset and confidence in high-stakes moments Team dynamics behind individual performance Olympic-standard goal setting After-dinner speaking and event hosting Ideal for Sales kick-offs and annual conferences that need a performance narrative alongside a keynote host. CHROs and talent leaders running leadership development or high-potential programmes built around resilience. Transformation and change teams about to enter a short, visible execution window. Boards and executive committees looking for an outside voice on composure under public scrutiny. Audience outcomes A concrete account of how elite performers build composure into training, not only into mindset. Specific language for marginal gains drawn from Olympic skeleton preparation, not from cliche. A sharper read on the difference between motivation, which fluctuates, and trained discipline, which holds. Stories drawn from named athletes and coaches in “Talent to Triumph” that leaders can repurpose inside their own teams.

Why organisations work with Amy Edmondson She is the original source of the psychological safety research now cited by Google, the NHS, and most leading management programmes, not a downstream interpreter of it. Her frameworks come from two decades of field research inside hospitals, manufacturing plants, and Fortune 500 teams, not from theory or anecdote. She translates an idea that leaders often misread as softness into operational language about error rates, learning speed, and innovation throughput. Her Right Kind of Wrong work gives executives a practical taxonomy of failure types, separating the failures organisations should prevent from the failures they should encourage. Thinkers50 ranked her the world’s number one management thinker in both 2021 and 2023, which signals her standing among the practitioners and academics buyers most respect. Biography highlights Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School. Ranked #1 on the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers in 2021 and 2023. Winner of the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2023 for Right Kind of Wrong. Author of seven books, including The Fearless Organization, Teaming, and Right Kind of Wrong. Recipient of the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award (2019) and Talent Award (2017). PhD in Organizational Behavior, AM in Psychology, AB in Engineering Sciences, Harvard University. Biography The most expensive errors inside large organisations are rarely caused by people who do not know what to do. They are caused by people who know, and choose not to say. Decades of research at Harvard Business School have made that pattern visible, and have given senior leaders a vocabulary for it: psychological safety. Amy Edmondson built that vocabulary. As Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, she has spent more than twenty years studying teams in hospitals, manufacturing operations, technology firms, and government. Her 1999 paper in Administrative Science Quarterly is the academic anchor for an idea now used inside Google’s people analytics, NHS quality improvement work, and most credible executive education curricula. The work has expanded from a single concept into a coherent body. Teaming examined how cross-functional groups learn fast enough to keep up with the work in front of them. The Fearless Organization gave leaders a step-by-step model for making honest contribution the norm, not the exception. Right Kind of Wrong, which won the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year in 2023, separates the failures organisations should engineer against from the failures they should be willing to commission. Thinkers50 has ranked her since 2011 and named her the world’s number one management thinker in 2021 and again in 2023. That recognition matters because it tracks how often working executives, not academics, cite her frameworks when they describe what they are trying to change inside their own organisations. Key speaking topics Psychological safety and team performance Learning from intelligent failure Teaming in cross-functional and high-stakes work Leadership in high-reliability environments Organisational learning Innovation cultures and candour Leading through error and recovery Ideal for C-suite and board audiences in healthcare, aviation, financial services, and other high-stakes industries CHROs and chief learning officers redesigning culture and capability programmes Heads of innovation and R&D leaders building teams that need to fail intelligently Executive education and leadership development cohorts inside large organisations Audience outcomes A working definition of psychological safety that separates it from comfort, niceness, or lowered standards A taxonomy of failure types that leaders can apply to their own portfolio of decisions Specific leader behaviours that increase the rate at which problems surface early A clearer language for talking about error, candour, and accountability inside the organisation Evidence-based responses to the common executive objection that psychological safety reduces performance pressure

Why organisations work with Allyson Stewart-Allen She has worked with more than 260 businesses across 27 countries, including named clients such as BAE Systems, HSBC, Lufthansa, NBCUniversal, Shell, Burberry and Chanel, which means her advice is calibrated against live transatlantic deal flow rather than secondary research. Working with Americans, now in its second edition with Routledge, is the most specific practitioner handbook on US business culture from a non-American authority, and it gives organisations a shared reference point before she walks into the room. She is the first two-time winner of the European Foundation for Management Development Excellence in Practice Award, for programmes delivered with Lufthansa at London Business School and BAE Systems at Oxford Saïd, which is rare independent recognition of how her work lands in executive development. Her teaching affiliations at Saïd Business School (Oxford) and the Møller Institute (Cambridge) place her inside the senior-executive programmes her audiences attend; she speaks to issues she also teaches on. Her media track record, including BBC, CNN, Sky News, Financial Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal, makes her a credible voice for high-profile internal events and externally facing client conferences. Biography highlights CEO and founder of International Marketing Partners Co-author of Working with Americans: How to Build Profitable Business Relationships (Routledge, second edition) First two-time winner of the European Foundation for Management Development Excellence in Practice Award, for programmes with Lufthansa (London Business School, 2009) and BAE Systems (Saïd Business School, Oxford, 2012) MBA from the Drucker School, Claremont Graduate University, where she studied under Peter Drucker; BSc International Business, University of Southern California Teaching affiliations with Saïd Business School (Oxford) and the Møller Institute (Cambridge) Regular commentator for BBC, CNN, Sky News, Financial Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal Biography US market entry is one of the most consistently over-promised and under-delivered strategic moves a European or Asian company can make. Allyson Stewart-Allen has spent her career working on the other side of that problem. As CEO and founder of International Marketing Partners, she has advised more than 260 organisations in 27 countries on how to internationalise their brand, their sales approach and their leadership style without losing what made them work at home. Her grounding is unusual. An MBA from the Drucker School under Peter Drucker himself, a BSc in International Business from USC, and a London-based practice that has worked with Accenture, BAE Systems, Burberry, Chanel, HSBC, Lufthansa, NBCUniversal, SABMiller and Shell. The resulting point of view is specific rather than diplomatic: most companies fail internationally for reasons that were visible at the approval stage and deferred by the people in the room. Her book Working with Americans, co-authored with Lanie Denslow and published by Routledge in a second edition, is the practitioner text in its category. It remains the reference most widely used by European and Asian professionals trying to build durable commercial relationships with US counterparts. The programme work is comparable in scale: she is the first two-time winner of the EFMD Excellence in Practice Award, for leadership programmes with Lufthansa at London Business School and BAE Systems at Oxford Saïd. The teaching continues at Saïd Business School and the Møller Institute at Cambridge, alongside non-executive and advisory roles at the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the British Business Excellence Awards and the Chief of Staff Association. For organisations planning significant international moves, that combination is unusual: an operator with an academic footprint, a published author in the room, and a commentator whose voice their leadership team has already seen on the BBC or FT. Key speaking topics International growth strategy and market entry US market entry and transatlantic commercial culture Global brand building and brand internationalisation Corporate diplomacy and cross-cultural leadership Reputation strategy for globally facing organisations Building and running international teams Ideal for CEOs, CCOs and CMOs committing to US or multi-market expansion Boards and executive committees pressure-testing an international growth plan before approval Heads of international, regional presidents and business unit leaders operating across US, UK, EU and Asia Leadership development and talent functions designing programmes for globally mobile executives Audience outcomes A practical diagnostic of where a planned international expansion is most likely to fail, based on patterns from 260-plus client engagements Specific frameworks for US market entry and working across US-international commercial relationships, drawn from Working with Americans A sharper view of how global brand decisions translate into local commercial outcomes Reference points from named client programmes recognised by the EFMD, applicable to the audience’s own sector

Why organisations work with Vinh Giang His communication framework is rooted in the psychology of illusion; specifically, how professional magicians manage audience perception, belief, and attention. This gives organisations access to a model of influence that is empirically grounded in audience psychology, not generic presentation technique. His signature concept: that every professional has a habitual voice, not a natural one, and that this voice can be deliberately rebuilt, gives individuals a concrete, actionable framework rather than general advice about confidence or impact. He built 52Kards, an online magic education platform that reached 800,000 students globally, demonstrating that he has applied the same principles of skill transfer and engagement he teaches to others at commercial scale. The STAGE Academy programme translates his performance methodology into structured organisational training, giving companies a repeatable development pathway, not a one-off motivational event. He was named South Australia’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2013 and has delivered over 80 live events internationally, including a TEDx appearance at Macquarie University: his credibility is practitioner-built, not academic. Biography highlights Co-founder of 52Kards (formerly Encyclopedia of Magic), an online education platform with over 800,000 enrolled students worldwide CEO of Luminary Productions, a training, development, and video production company Creator of the STAGE Academy, a structured public speaking and communication programme for professionals South Australia Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2013) Multiple award-winning performer at the Adelaide Fringe Festival: Top Voted Show and Top Reviewed Show, three consecutive years (2012-2014) TEDx speaker, Macquarie University, on communication and professional performance Biography Vinh Giang’s central argument is that most professionals communicate well below the standard their thinking deserves, and that the gap between expertise and expression is a learned problem with a learnable fix. His methodology doesn’t come from corporate training or academic research. It comes from 15 years of studying what professional magicians do: how they control attention, manage belief, and shape the experience of an audience in real time. The insight he took from performance is precise. Robert-Houdin’s principle: that a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician, reframes communication as a discipline of craft, not personality. Applied to business, this means that a leader’s authority in a room is not fixed. It is a set of habits, many of them inherited from childhood, that can be replaced with deliberate ones. That argument is the foundation of the STAGE Academy, his structured communication programme for professionals. Giang is not a theorist. He dropped out of a commerce and law degree at the University of Adelaide to build 52Kards, an online magic education platform that eventually reached over 800,000 students worldwide. That business – built before the term “creator economy” existed – earned him the South Australia Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2013. His performance work at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, where his shows won Top Voted and Top Reviewed for three consecutive years, gave him a practical laboratory for the same principles he now teaches to senior professionals. His clients have included Microsoft, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The organisations that engage him are not looking for motivational uplift; they are investing in a measurable upgrade in how their people present, persuade, and lead under pressure. Key speaking topics Performance-based communication for leaders The psychology of influence and audience perception Vocal presence and professional authority Storytelling and high-stakes persuasion Confidence and mindset in professional communication Communication as a teachable skill set Entrepreneurship and the business of building trust Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite executives seeking to sharpen influence and executive presence Sales and commercial leaders whose teams communicate and persuade in high-stakes environments CHROs and L&D leads commissioning communication capability programmes Conference audiences drawn from professional services, financial services, or technology – where credibility depends on the ability to make complex ideas land clearly Audience outcomes A concrete model for understanding why their current communication habits underperform, and what specifically to change Practical tools for rebuilding vocal presence and delivery authority, drawn from professional performance training A framework for structuring high-stakes communication; presentations, negotiations, and leadership conversations, that moves audiences to action Greater awareness of the gap between how they intend to come across and how they are actually received A shift from treating communication as a soft skill to treating it as a professional discipline with measurable standards

Why organisations work with Travis Bradberry His four-quadrant EQ model – self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management – gives HR and L&D teams a structured, easy-to-assess framework that can be integrated into existing leadership development and performance programmes, rather than treated as a standalone concept. TalentSmart’s reach into more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies means Bradberry’s frameworks have been stress-tested at enterprise scale across sectors and leadership levels, rather than drawn from a single industry or a handful of client cases. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 has sold over 3 million copies and been translated into 28 languages – a degree of market validation that signals genuine professional resonance, and that typically eases internal buy-in when positioning an EQ-based leadership initiative. His dual Ph.D. spanning both Clinical and Industrial-Organizational Psychology grounds a high-profile popular message in the research disciplines most directly relevant to behavioural change at work; a combination few speakers in the EQ space hold. With 2.5 million LinkedIn followers and Top Voice designation, his platform reflects an active, senior professional audience and demonstrates Bradberry’s credibility. Biography highlights Dual Ph.D. in Clinical and Industrial-Organizational Psychology, California School of Professional Psychology Co-author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 – the bestselling EQ title in its category, with over 3 million copies sold and translated into 28 languages across 150+ countries Co-founder and President of TalentSmart (later TalentSmartEQ) – the EQ assessment and training business embedded in more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies Author of subsequent titles including Emotional Intelligence Habits and The New Emotional Intelligence; total book sales across all titles exceed 5 million copies Chief People Scientist at LEADx, a mobile-first leadership development platform applying behavioural science and AI to EQ training at scale LinkedIn Top Voice with over 2.5 million followers; written for or covered by Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and TIME Biography The performance gap that most leadership development programmes fail to close is not a knowledge gap. Leaders who derail by alienating teams, making reactive decisions under pressure, or losing influence at senior levels, rarely lack technical expertise. The pattern that consistently predicts who performs and who struggles sits elsewhere: in the ability to perceive, regulate, and apply emotional information at the moments that matter most. Dr. Travis Bradberry holds a dual Ph.D. in Clinical and Industrial-Organizational Psychology and has spent his career making that domain measurable and actionable for organisations. As co-founder of TalentSmart, he built the dominant infrastructure for EQ assessment and training, working with more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. The company’s proprietary Emotional Intelligence Appraisal and associated training programmes embedded EQ into leadership development at a scale most researchers and authors never reach. His co-authored book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 became one of the most widely read management titles of its generation, selling over 3 million copies and appearing in 28 languages across 150 countries. The book’s four-quadrant model gave organisations a structured, assessable framework rather than an abstract aspiration. Subsequent works including Emotional Intelligence Habits and The New Emotional Intelligence extend that framework with more recent research in neuroscience and habit formation. As Chief People Scientist at LEADx, Bradberry’s current work focuses on applying EQ research through AI-assisted behavioural coaching at scale; a model increasingly relevant to organisations that need leadership development to produce lasting behavioural change beyond the classroom. His writing has reached a global executive audience through Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal. Key speaking topics Emotional intelligence and leadership performance Self-awareness and self-management at work Measuring and developing EQ in organisations Behavioural science of decision-making under pressure Leadership effectiveness and derailment Talent development through emotional intelligence Performance culture and workplace behaviour Ideal for CHROs and People leaders designing or refreshing leadership development programmes Executive teams and senior leadership cohorts working on behavioural effectiveness and team dynamics L&D leads building EQ capability into management pipelines Organisations implementing performance culture or investing in measurable behaviour change Audience outcomes A clear understanding of the four-quadrant EQ model and how each domain directly affects leadership behaviour and organisational outcomes Awareness of how EQ predicts performance across roles and levels, grounded in TalentSmart’s enterprise-scale data Practical strategies for developing self-awareness and self-management under pressure – applicable immediately in leadership practice Frameworks for integrating EQ assessment into existing coaching, development, and performance programmes A sharper distinction between EQ as an abstract concept and EQ as a measurable, developable capability – with implications for how organisations design and evaluate leadership investment