Executive Development

Why organisations work with Roberto Forzoni Authored the textbook the Football Association embedded into its national coaching curriculum (The Official FA Guide to Psychology for Football, Hodder, 2004). The intellectual model has been tested at scale across FA coach education, not only in private practice. Built the “Team Murray” multidisciplinary support model during his tenure as National Performance Psychologist at the Lawn Tennis Association, 2007 to 2009. The structure has since been adopted by other federations and players as a template. Has done the hands-on work alongside the consultancy. First-team coaching roles under Steve Coppell at Crystal Palace, Brentford and Brighton; performance psychology at West Ham United, Southampton, Charlton and Norwich City. He has been in the dressing room when pressure broke a team and when it did not. Holds an MSc in Sport Sciences (Distinction) from Brunel University and BASES accreditation, with applied training in CBT, motivational interviewing and solution-focused practice. The clinical depth is unusual for a performance speaker. Standing BBC consultant on performance and mindset for more than two decades, with further contributions on Sky and Al Jazeera. The perspective has been publicly tested over time, not assembled for the stage. Biography highlights Lead author of The Official FA Guide to Psychology for Football (Hodder & Stoughton, 2004), embedded by the Football Association into its national coaching curriculum. National Performance Psychologist at the Lawn Tennis Association from 2007 to 2009. Created the “Team Murray” multidisciplinary support model during Andy Murray’s early Grand Slam years. First-team coaching and performance psychology roles across eight Premier League clubs, including West Ham United, Southampton, Brentford, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Charlton Athletic and Norwich City. MSc Sport Sciences (Distinction), Brunel University. BASES-accredited Sport Psychologist, with further training in CBT, motivational interviewing and solution-focused practice. BBC consultant on performance and mindset across BBC TV and BBC Radio for more than two decades, with further contributions on Sky and Al Jazeera. Psychological coach to Olympic and World Championship athletes, including heavyweight Derek Chisora’s preparation for his title fight against Tyson Fury and Olympic sprinter Ashleigh Nelson. Biography The West Ham squad that brought in Roberto Forzoni as performance psychologist was running a 23% win rate. Nine games later, after the team had completed a Premier League double over both Manchester United and Arsenal, the win rate sat at 78%. The intervention was psychological. That kind of recovery has shown up repeatedly across Forzoni’s thirty years inside elite sport. He has held first-team coaching and performance psychology roles at eight Premier League clubs, including West Ham United, Southampton, Brentford and Crystal Palace. He prepared heavyweight Derek Chisora for the title fight against Tyson Fury, and built the “Team Murray” multidisciplinary model during Andy Murray’s early years on the tour. The published work sits in football. Forzoni is the lead author of The Official FA Guide to Psychology for Football, the textbook the Football Association embedded into its coach education programme in 2004. The intellectual base draws on an MSc in Sport Sciences (Distinction) from Brunel University, BASES accreditation, and applied training in CBT and solution-focused practice. More than two decades of BBC consultancy on performance and mindset have put the perspective into wide public circulation. What Forzoni brings into a corporate room is a particular reading of senior team behaviour under pressure. The patterns he watches for were diagnosed in dressing rooms and on Centre Court. Composure narrows under scrutiny. Strong personalities stop bringing their best to the group when results turn. For Forzoni, these are coachable problems, drawn from the same evidence base a relegation-threatened Premier League squad would use. Key speaking topics Performance psychology Team dynamics under pressure Composure and emotional regulation in senior leadership Recovery from public setback Mindset and behavioural change in elite environments Wellbeing and sustained performance Ideal for Senior leadership teams under sustained external scrutiny or after a publicly visible setback CEOs and executive committees in restructure, post-merger integration or change cycles, where the constraint has become team behaviour CHROs and L&D directors building team-effectiveness and resilience programmes for senior talent High-stakes client-facing teams in sales, professional services and trading environments Audience outcomes A specific language for the behaviours that hold a team together under pressure and the behaviours that split it apart The techniques used inside Premier League dressing rooms and Grand Slam tennis to regulate nerves and recover after a public setback An honest read of the gap between a leadership team’s stated values and how it actually behaves when results stall Composure approached as a deliberate behaviour leaders can train, with specific drills Forzoni uses inside elite sport The discipline of asking “Did I work as hard as I could today?” as a daily performance check, a question Forzoni draws from elite athletes

Why organisations work with René Carayol His SPIKE framework (Strengths Positively Identified Kick-Start Excellence) gives leadership teams a diagnostic for identifying the two or three individual strengths that drive high performance, rather than a generic conversation about development areas. It changes how teams are built, not just how leaders think. His case for inclusive leadership is grounded in firsthand board experience, including appointment as a Non-Executive Director of the Inland Revenue in 2001, at a time when no diversity representation existed at that level in UK public institutions. The argument carries a credibility that cannot be borrowed from research alone. Coaching and advisory engagements with senior leaders across business and government: clients and counterparts include Ralph Hamers (former CEO, ING and UBS), Sir Richard Branson, and Sir Tony Blair His “Everybody In, Nobody Out” framing positions inclusion as a performance architecture rather than an HR compliance function, directly relevant to organisations where DEI has stalled because it has not been connected to business outcomes. His executive and governance track from Marks & Spencer, PepsiCo, and IPC Media to Inland Revenue board and Computacenter plc, means his observations on leadership culture are drawn from the inside of institutions, not from coaching their periphery. His academic teaching (Cass Business School, MSc in Management) and media fluency (BBC, Channel 4, Sky News) mean he can move between rigorous argument and compelling narrative in a single session. His events consistently produce behavioural commitments rather than inspiration that dissipates. Biography highlights Decade-long career at Marks & Spencer (Senior IT Manager); IT Systems Director, PepsiCo; CIO then Managing Director of IPC Electric, IPC Magazines, driving Europe’s largest MBO at £860m, culminating in the sale to AOL Time Warner Non-Executive Director, Inland Revenue (appointed 2001); current Independent Non-Executive Director, Computacenter plc (FTSE-listed), sitting on Audit, Nomination and Remuneration Committees Executive Vice President for ESG, Medallia; member of the Global Executive Leadership Team Visiting Professor, Cass Business School; lectured on MSc in Management programme MBE (2004), services to the business community; undergraduate degree, London School of Economics; Honorary Doctorate, University of Roehampton Author, SPIKE: What Are You Great At?; co-author, Corporate Voodoo (third edition) and My Voodoo Broadcaster and commentator: BBC Two, Channel 4, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, Sky News; former Sunday Telegraph Business Reporter columnist Biography Most leadership cultures are built around a small number of star performers at the top. SPIKE, René Carayol’s published strengths framework, challenges that model directly. The argument comes from someone who has led, governed, and coached at the highest levels of British and international business. Carayol spent a decade at Marks & Spencer in senior IT roles, then moved to PepsiCo as IT Systems Director before joining IPC Magazines as CIO. He rose to Managing Director of IPC Electric, the internet business at the centre of Europe’s largest MBO, a £860 million transaction that ended with the sale to AOL Time Warner. He went on to serve as Non-Executive Director of the Inland Revenue through its merger into HMRC, and currently sits on the board of FTSE-listed Computacenter plc. SPIKE (Strengths Positively Identified Kick-Start Excellence) is the framework that emerged from this experience. Its core argument: every person carries at least one genuine strength, and organisations that build around those strengths consistently outperform those that manage around weaknesses. For Carayol, this is inseparable from the business case for inclusive leadership. His mantra, “Everybody In, Nobody Out,” frames inclusion as a performance imperative, a position he holds with authority as one of the first Black men to serve at board level in a major UK institution. As Visiting Professor at Cass Business School and a regular voice on BBC Radio 4, Sky News, and Channel 4, his thinking reaches well beyond the conference circuit. His books, SPIKE: What Are You Great At? and the co-authored Corporate Voodoo, now in its third edition, extend his frameworks to leadership teams at scale. He was awarded an MBE in 2004 for services to the business community. Key speaking topics Strengths-based leadership Inclusive leadership and culture Leadership and business transformation Collaborative leadership Corporate culture and performance Executive coaching and personal effectiveness Diversity, equity and inclusion Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite executives in FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 organisations navigating culture change or post-merger integration CHROs and Chief People Officers building inclusive, high-performance leadership cultures Board directors and non-executive directors focused on governance, leadership accountability, and succession Transformation leads and executive development programmes where the shift from management to leadership is the central challenge Audience outcomes A working understanding of the SPIKE framework and how to apply it to individual development, team design, and succession planning A reframed case for inclusive leadership as a performance architecture, not a compliance exercise – with the language to make that argument inside their own organisations Practical distinctions between management and leadership behaviours, grounded in frontline C-suite and board experience Insight drawn from Carayol’s direct coaching relationships with named CEOs and institution heads; World Bank, Barclays, ING, Generali, rather than theoretical constructs Clarity on how culture and leadership interact in practice, and what leaders can do immediately to change the pattern

Why organisations work with Ramon Vullings A named, written methodology for cross-industry innovation, set out in Not Invented Here (BIS Publishers, with Marc Heleven), that gives innovation teams a shared language and a repeatable process rather than a one-off creativity session. The ideaDJ framework: a specific operating model for combining and adapting external ideas across silos, used in executive programmes at Antwerp Management School, Fontys and IE Business School. A working bridge between corporate and academic practice. Former PwC Consulting and IBM operations leader, now executive professor at three European business schools, with material that holds up in front of senior practitioners. Chair of the European Association for Creativity and Innovation, with access to a peer network of innovation specialists across Europe and a long view on what is actually working in the field. A clear position on failure tolerance, framed through “nearlings” rather than abstract permission to experiment, that gives leadership teams something concrete to take into governance and incentive design. Biography highlights Author of four management books, including Not Invented Here: Cross-Industry Innovation (BIS Publishers, with Marc Heleven) and Creativity in Business. Executive Professor at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Antwerp Management School, and IE Executive Education at IE Business School in Madrid. Chairman of the European Association for Creativity and Innovation (EACI). Advisor to the Global Innovation Institute (GInI). Former Global CRM Operations Manager at PwC Consulting and EMEA CRM Learning and Knowledge Lead at IBM Business Consulting Services. Founder of innovation consultancy Twinkeling and co-founder of innovation network 21 Lobsterstreet. Biography Most original ideas are not original. The strongest commercial innovations of the last twenty years are recombinations of methods, business models and design patterns lifted from one industry and reapplied in another. Ramon Vullings built a career arguing this point and turning it into a method that innovation teams can actually run. The argument is set out in Not Invented Here: Cross-Industry Innovation, co-authored with Marc Heleven and published by BIS Publishers. The book gives leaders a structured way to find working answers in adjacent sectors and translate them into their own context, and it has been translated into five languages and sold over 60,000 copies. Three further books, including Creativity in Business and Great Leaders Mix and Match, extend the same logic into idea generation, leadership behaviour and complex problem-solving. The credibility behind the method is operational, not only academic. Before founding his consultancy Twinkeling, Vullings ran global CRM operations at PwC Consulting and led EMEA CRM learning and knowledge at IBM Business Consulting Services after the IBM acquisition. That background shows up in the work: the focus is on processes leaders can sponsor, governance models that tolerate productive failure, and innovation as a managed discipline rather than a creativity workshop. He now teaches the method as Executive Professor at Fontys, Antwerp Management School and IE Business School, chairs the European Association for Creativity and Innovation, and advises the Global Innovation Institute. For senior teams trying to break a sector-bound innovation pattern, his contribution is a vocabulary, a framework, and a network that have all been pressure-tested on practitioners. Key speaking topics Cross-industry innovation The ideaDJ framework and remix strategy Innovation methodology and idea management Cross-silo leadership Creativity in business Risk tolerance and productive failure Ecosystems and innovation partnerships Ideal for Chief innovation officers, CSOs and corporate strategy leads running innovation portfolios that have plateaued. R&D and product leadership teams in mature industries seeking analogies from outside their sector. Executive education cohorts and leadership programmes in regulated or engineering-heavy industries. Heads of transformation looking to embed innovation as a managed discipline rather than an event series. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for cross-industry innovation, including ideaDJ, copy-adapt-paste, and “nearlings”. Examples of analogies transferred between sectors that audiences can map onto their own portfolio. A clearer test for which external ideas are worth importing and which break on contact with the operating model. Concrete governance and incentive moves to raise tolerance for productive failure without losing discipline. A method audiences can run inside their teams without external facilitation.

Why organisations work with Ram Charan The Leadership Pipeline gives boards and CHROs a six-passage diagnostic framework – built from research across more than 100 global corporations – for selecting, developing, and assessing leaders at each organizational level. Most leadership development programmes describe this kind of architecture in principle. Charan operationalized it. His co-authored book Execution made a specific argument that most organizations resist: strategy failure is a discipline failure, not a strategy failure. Spending 150 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list suggests the argument landed. The named disciplines it identifies – talent selection, operating reviews, and decision accountability – give executive teams something to act on, not just reflect on. Client relationships at GE (approximately four decades) and DuPont (approximately three) are not testimonials. They are evidence of how a working model holds up under repeated stress at the apex of large, complex organizations. He originated business acumen as a teachable, measurable organizational capability rather than an executive personality trait. The curriculum built around What the CEO Wants You to Know has been adopted at major corporations as a tool for developing commercial judgment across all levels of leadership. His work on corporate governance, including Boards That Lead (co-authored with Dennis Carey and Michael Useem), gives directors specific tools for managing the boundary between governance and management – one of the most contested and consequential relationships in any large organization. Biography highlights Harvard Business School MBA and DBA; graduated Baker Scholar with high distinction Former faculty member at Harvard Business School, Northwestern University (Kellogg School of Management), Wharton School, and GE’s Crotonville Leadership Institute Co-author of Execution (with Larry Bossidy, 2002) – number 1 Wall Street Journal bestseller and New York Times bestseller for 150 weeks Author and co-author of more than 30 books with over 4 million copies sold in more than twelve languages; publisher record via ram-charan.com Distinguished Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Time, and Chief Executive; listed on Thinkers50 Long-term advisor to GE, DuPont, Bank of America, KLM, Verizon, Novartis, 3M, and the Tata and Aditya Birla Groups Biography Most organizations can articulate their strategy clearly. Fewer can explain why it consistently fails to arrive at the front line. Ram Charan has spent four decades working inside that gap – as an advisor to CEOs and boards at GE, DuPont, Bank of America, and some forty other major corporations across multiple continents. His 2002 book Execution, co-authored with former Honeywell CEO Larry Bossidy, made an argument that is still unsettling to senior teams: the problem is not the strategy, it is the absence of named disciplines for making it real. The book identified three of those disciplines – talent selection, operating reviews, and decision accountability at the CEO level – and spent 150 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The Leadership Pipeline, developed with Stephen Drotter and James Noel, pressed the argument further. It defined six discrete passages through which leaders must develop, with distinct skills, time allocation, and values required at each stage. The model is now used as a standard succession architecture at major corporations worldwide. Charan trained at Harvard Business School, graduating Baker Scholar with high distinction before joining its faculty. He later taught at Northwestern’s Kellogg School, at Wharton, and at GE’s Crotonville Leadership Institute. He left full-time academia in 1978 to consult – a decision shaped by a conviction, present from the start, that the real problems of business are not solved in classrooms but inside the operating decisions that organizations make every day. His body of work – more than thirty books, including What the CEO Wants You to Know, Boards That Lead, and Global Tilt – is structured around a single question: what does it actually take to build an organization that delivers? Directors, CHROs, and CEO teams use his frameworks not because they are theoretically elegant but because they name things that were previously unnameable – and give senior leaders something concrete to do on Monday morning. Key speaking topics Execution as organizational discipline Leadership Pipeline and succession architecture Business acumen as a teachable capability Corporate governance and board-CEO relationship Growth strategy and profitability fundamentals Global competition and emerging market strategy Talent development and leadership readiness Ideal for CEOs and board directors working on succession planning, governance accountability, or the gap between strategic intent and operational performance CHROs and talent leaders designing or overhauling leadership development and succession frameworks Senior executive teams where strategy is consistently better-articulated than delivered Leadership development programmes at global corporations seeking an established, research-backed architecture Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying where the leadership pipeline is blocked and what specific actions unblock it A clear distinction between strategy and execution, and the named disciplines – talent, decision-making, and operating process – that close the gap Practical tools for assessing leadership readiness at each stage of the organizational hierarchy A framework for structuring the board-CEO relationship and understanding when governance becomes leadership An understanding of business acumen as a measurable, developable skill applicable across organizational levels – not just at the top

Why organisations work with Pierluigi Collina He is the only figure in global sport who achieved celebrity status not as a player or coach but as the person whose sole function was to make consequential public judgments under pressure – his perspective on authority and decision-making has no direct equivalent in the business speaker market. His post-playing career adds institutional weight that most performance speakers cannot match: two decades in senior governance roles across Serie A, UEFA, and FIFA, including leading the global implementation of VAR – the most disruptive change to officiating rules in the sport’s history. My Rules of the Game, translated into more than ten languages across twenty countries, demonstrates that his framework for elite performance and disciplined decision-making has cross-cultural resonance far beyond football. His economics background (cum laude, University of Bologna) and career as a financial consultant mean his analytical lens on preparation, risk, and judgment is grounded in professional rigour, not athletic instinct alone. For organisations working through governance reform, accountability culture, or leadership under scrutiny, he offers a case study of sustained credibility at the highest levels of a globally watched, deeply contested environment. Biography highlights Refereed the 2002 FIFA World Cup Final (Brazil v Germany), the 1999 UEFA Champions League Final (Manchester United v Bayern Munich), the 1996 Olympic Games Final, and the 2004 UEFA Cup Final Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee for six consecutive years, 1998–2003; Serie A Referee of the Year six times Chairman of the FIFA Referees Committee since January 2017; previously UEFA Chief Refereeing Officer and Chairman of the Referees Committee (2010–2018); Chairman of the Serie A referees committee (2007–2010) Led preparation and training of referees for VAR introduction at the 2018 FIFA World Cup Author of My Rules of the Game (Macmillan, 2003), translated into more than ten languages across twenty countries Economics graduate cum laude, University of Bologna; former professional financial consultant Appointed Commendatore of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2003); Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Hull (2004) Biography Making a decision that 1.2 billion people will immediately scrutinise is not a leadership metaphor. For Pierluigi Collina, it was the 2002 FIFA World Cup Final – the most-watched sporting event on the planet, and the last in a career that also included the 1999 Champions League Final and the 1996 Olympic Games Final. What those moments produced was not simply a record of high-profile matches, but a working methodology for sustained authority under conditions of total public exposure. Collina was named IFFHS World’s Best Referee six consecutive years from 1998 to 2003 – a period that also produced My Rules of the Game, his account of the preparation, discipline, and judgment required to perform at the top of an intensely adversarial profession. Translated into more than ten languages across twenty countries, the book demonstrated that his thinking on decision-making under pressure had relevance well beyond the sport. His economics degree cum laude from the University of Bologna and a parallel career as a financial consultant are consistent with a mind that approached officiating analytically, not intuitively. His retirement from the pitch in 2005 opened a second, structurally significant chapter. He led the Serie A referees committee, moved to UEFA as Chief Refereeing Officer, and since January 2017 has served as Chairman of the FIFA Referees Committee. In that role, he was central to the design and implementation of VAR – the most consequential change to football’s decision-making infrastructure in modern times – preparing referees globally for a system that required them to re-examine, in public and in real time, decisions already made. For organisations grappling with accountability culture, judgment under scrutiny, and the conditions under which authority holds – or fails – Collina brings something rare: not a sporting story applied to business by analogy, but a career-long, institutionally tested practice of making high-consequence decisions when the cost of error is immediate and the audience is watching every call. Key speaking topics Decision-making under public scrutiny Authority, credibility, and trust in leadership Performance preparation and elite standards Governance and institutional integrity Conflict management and de-escalation Accountability and rule-based leadership Technology-led change in high-stakes environments Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating high-visibility, high-accountability environments Boards and governance professionals addressing decision-making culture and institutional integrity C-suite and executive development programmes focused on judgment, authority, and performance under pressure Transformation leads and HR directors building accountability frameworks within complex organisations Audience outcomes A structured understanding of how preparation, not instinct, is the foundation of sound judgment under pressure Practical perspectives on how authority is built and maintained – and the specific behaviours that erode it A framework for making and communicating consequential decisions in ways that command trust rather than invite challenge Clearer thinking on the relationship between governance structures and individual performance standards Concrete examples of how high-stakes decision-making principles from elite sport translate to organisational and leadership contexts

Why organisations work with Peter Fischer Brown He brings an operator’s view of brand strategy. Years inside Orange Business and KPMG mean he reads brand as a P&L and procurement question, not a marketing artefact. He teaches B2B value creation at Esade Business School, so the frameworks he uses in the room have been pressure-tested with MBA and executive cohorts who push back hard. His membership of the Medinge Group gives him a serious intellectual home for “brands with a conscience” arguments, separate from the agency circuit that usually owns the topic. He works in English, German and Spanish across Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, which makes him useful for groups whose brand and culture questions cross those markets. His coaching qualification from Henley and his executive coaching practice mean he can move between keynote framing and small-group leadership work in the same engagement. Biography highlights Founder of FischerBrown, an international brand and corporate strategy consultancy. Former Director of Strategy for Orange Business and Ambassador of Strategic Branding for the Orange Group; former Manager and Consultant at KPMG. Academic Collaborator at Esade Business School, Barcelona, teaching MBA and Executive programmes on B2B value creation and leadership with conscience. Member of the Medinge Group; contributing author on the Slow Food Movement in “Brands with a Conscience” (Medinge Group, 2016). Contributor to the Radix think tank on European centre-ground politics and democratic participation. MA in Modern Languages and Literature and MPhil in International Relations, both University of Cambridge; Professional Certificate in Executive Coaching, Henley Business School. Biography Most “purpose” programmes break the moment they hit procurement, pricing or a difficult supplier decision. The brand line survives in the campaign and disappears in the operating model. Peter Fischer Brown works at exactly that seam, where a values-led brand position has to be defended in B2B negotiations, capital allocation and the everyday behaviour of senior leaders. He spent the formative part of his career inside the operating side of two demanding environments. At KPMG he advised on corporate and marketing strategy. At Orange he was Director of Strategy for the B2B business and Ambassador of Strategic Branding for the wider France Telecom group, running brand and strategy across European, Middle Eastern and Latin American markets. That history is why his brand frameworks read as commercial first and editorial second. Today he runs FischerBrown and teaches at Esade Business School in Barcelona, where his MBA and Executive sessions focus on B2B value creation and on leadership with conscience. The Medinge Group, of which he is a long-standing member, gives him a serious intellectual home for the latter; his chapter on the Slow Food Movement in the group’s 2016 book “Brands with a Conscience” is a worked example of how a values-led proposition can become a category position. The work that sits outside the brand spine sharpens it. As a Radix contributor he writes on the “radical centre” in European politics; he is a qualified executive coach through Henley; his linguistic and musical training (Cambridge, Trinity College London) feeds the cross-disciplinary keynotes he gives on cosmopolitanism and the art of business. Senior teams book him when they need someone who can argue brand and purpose in the same register as a CFO, and then sit with the leadership team afterwards. Key speaking topics Brand and corporate strategy Brands with a conscience and purpose-led positioning B2B value creation Leadership with conscience Sustainability and the brand promise Cosmopolitanism and cultural identity as competitive advantage The art of business: learning from the creative and performing arts Ideal for CMOs and brand directors in B2B and consumer businesses under pressure to make a purpose claim operational CEOs and strategy leads working through a brand or positioning reset Boards and leadership teams wrestling with ESG and purpose credibility HR and executive development leads commissioning leadership-with-conscience programmes for senior cohorts Audience outcomes A sharper view of where brand sits in the operating model, not only in marketing A vocabulary for discussing purpose in front of a sceptical CFO or procurement audience Specific examples of values-led brands that have held up commercially, and ones that have not A clearer framing of leadership credibility when a business is being asked to behave consistently across markets

Why organisations work with Peter Anderton His TEDxDerby talk “Great Leadership comes down to only two rules” is used inside MBA programmes and gives senior teams a shared, memorable language for leadership that survives the room. He treats organisations as systems, drawing on his Chartered Engineer background and early career as a manufacturing systems engineer at ICI, which lands credibly with technical directors and operational leadership teams. He has worked inside leadership populations at Jaguar Land Rover, 3M, KPMG, HSBC, Atkins and NHS leadership academies, so the content arrives already tested against complex matrixed organisations. He cuts through the leadership-development noise. Two rules, three secrets of high-performing teams, applied to the specific bottleneck the senior team is currently sitting on. He is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, which gives the work professional weight with HR and people directors commissioning leadership programmes. Biography highlights Founder of Internal Alignment, a leadership consulting and executive development practice. TEDxDerby speaker, “Great Leadership comes down to only two rules”, used in MBA curricula internationally. Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Chartered Engineer; began career as a manufacturing systems engineer at ICI. Named client work includes Jaguar Land Rover, 3M, KPMG, HSBC, Atkins, Huntsman, Equifax and NHS leadership academies. Signature frameworks: “The Two Rules of Leadership” and “CPR: Connection, Purpose, Results” for high-performing teams. Biography The hardest leadership transition is the one nobody schedules. A capable individual gets promoted, then promoted again, until the job is no longer about what they personally deliver but about what their team delivers without them. That shift is where most leadership development quietly fails. It teaches more models when what the leader needs is fewer. This is the territory Peter Anderton has built his work around. As founder of Internal Alignment, he works with directors, MDs and senior teams who have outgrown their own operating habits and need to convert personal capability into team capability. His TEDxDerby talk, “Great Leadership comes down to only two rules”, is now used in MBA programmes internationally and sets out the spine of his thinking: leadership is not about the leader, except in the specific way that it entirely is. His credibility is unusual for the field. Anderton is a Chartered Engineer who started his career as a manufacturing systems engineer at ICI, and he still reads organisations as systems rather than as cultures. That framing travels well into technical and operational businesses such as Jaguar Land Rover, 3M, Atkins and Huntsman, and into financial and professional services including HSBC, KPMG and Equifax. He is also a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, which anchors the work in the professional standards people directors recognise. What he gives a senior team is compression. Two rules of leadership, three components of a high-performing team in his CPR model: Connection, Purpose, Results. The argument is that most leadership populations do not need more frameworks; they need to act differently on the few that matter. That is the bet his clients are buying when they put him in front of their leadership cohorts. Key speaking topics Leadership fundamentals for senior leaders and directors Leadership in the age of AI and exponential change High-performing teams The leadership transition from doer to enabler Executive development and leadership populations Change leadership and the human side of transformation Difficult conversations and leadership courage Employee engagement through leadership behaviour Ideal for Director, MD and senior leadership populations making the shift from individual contributor to team leader. CHROs, people directors and L&D leaders commissioning flagship leadership programmes. Executive teams in technical, engineering, manufacturing or operationally complex businesses. Senior leadership cohorts inside organisations going through restructure, integration or sustained change. Audience outcomes A shared, memorable language for leadership across a senior cohort, anchored in the Two Rules. A clearer read of where each leader is personally creating the bottleneck their team is working around. Practical handles for handling difficult conversations without the usual avoidance and rework. A working model for high-performing teams using Connection, Purpose, Results. Renewed confidence that leadership effectiveness is a small set of disciplined behaviours, not a longer reading list.

Why organisations work with Pete Cohen A named, co-authored framework (STOP 2 THINK) for the specific moment a leader switches from reactive to intentional response, applied directly inside meetings and high-pressure conversations. A coaching track record that crosses elite sport and corporate leadership, including Ronnie O’Sullivan’s 2004 World Snooker title and senior teams at Dell, IBM, Pfizer and Heineken. Twelve years as resident Life Coach on ITV’s GMTV plus a presenter slot on Discovery’s “The Coach”, which means he reads a room and a camera in a way few corporate speakers do. Twenty plus published titles including “Habit Busting” and “Fear Busting”, giving the keynote content a tested behavioural backbone rather than a one-off thesis. A delivery style built for leadership audiences fatigued by abstract wellness content, focused on what to do in the next conversation, not the next quarter. Biography highlights Resident Life Coach on ITV’s GMTV for twelve years. Presenter of “The Coach” on the Discovery Channel. Author of around 20 books including “Habit Busting”, “Fear Busting”, “Shut the Duck Up”, “Life DIY” and “Sort Your Life Out”. Co-developer of the STOP 2 THINK leadership framework with Professor Dr Ray Sylvester. Performance coach to Ronnie O’Sullivan, Sally Gunnell, Ellen MacArthur, Roger Black, the Kent Cricket team and Arsenal Football Club. Keynote speaker for organisations including Dell, IBM, Pfizer, Novartis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Heineken, Boots, Four Seasons Hotels and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Biography Most leadership failures under pressure are not failures of intelligence. They are failures of pause. The leader keeps moving when the situation has changed, and the team carries the consequences for weeks. STOP 2 THINK, the framework Pete Cohen co-developed with Professor Dr Ray Sylvester, treats that pause as a trainable leadership behaviour, not a personality trait. Cohen has spent more than thirty years working at the intersection of psychology, sport and corporate performance. As resident Life Coach on ITV’s GMTV for twelve years and presenter of “The Coach” on the Discovery Channel, he learned to translate behavioural science into language that lands in seconds. The same instinct shapes how he works with executive teams. His sports coaching list includes Ronnie O’Sullivan in the run-up to his 2004 World Snooker title, Olympic hurdler Sally Gunnell, sailor Ellen MacArthur, and sprinter Roger Black. The corporate list is equally direct: Dell, IBM, Pfizer, Novartis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Heineken, Boots, Four Seasons Hotels and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Across both, the brief is the same. People who already perform at a high level need a way to recover composure inside the moment, not after it. The published work, around twenty titles including “Habit Busting” and “Fear Busting”, gives the keynote content its behavioural foundation. The STOP 2 THINK keynote is the operating layer on top: simple tools a leader can apply in the next meeting, not the next offsite. That is what senior teams under restructure, transformation or sustained market pressure tend to be looking for, and what most wellbeing programming does not deliver. Key speaking topics Leadership behaviour under pressure The STOP 2 THINK framework Composure and decision-making in uncertainty Behavioural change and habit formation Performance psychology Resilience for senior teams Mindset for leadership in restructure and change Ideal for CEO, COO and senior leadership teams holding decisions through restructure or market shock CHROs and people directors briefing leadership development at executive level Sales and commercial leaders managing high-pressure performance cycles Boards and partner groups looking for behavioural rather than motivational content Audience outcomes A named behavioural pause point leaders can use in the next meeting, not the next quarter A clearer read on the difference between reactive habit and intentional decision in their own leadership Practical language for coaching their direct reports through pressure moments Evidence-grounded confidence that composure is a trainable behaviour, not a personality trait A simpler internal vocabulary for decision quality under stress

Why organisations work with Patrick Cordingley He commanded 12,000 troops in the largest British armoured deployment since the Second World War, and can speak to high-stakes decision-making from inside the moment, not as analysis after the fact. His account of that command, In the Eye of the Storm, reached number one on the UK non-fiction bestseller list, giving boards a published, scrutinised record of how he led, not a curated anecdote set. He brings the discipline of military preparation to civilian audiences without translating it into platitudes; the link he draws between rehearsed routine and operational composure is concrete and usable. He carries credibility with senior audiences that few business speakers can match: a DSO for combat leadership, an OBE for sustained public service, and years as a BBC commentator on conflict. Biography highlights Commanded the 7th Armoured Brigade, the Desert Rats, during the 1991 Gulf War. Awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for leadership in combat. Promoted to Major General; held General Officer Commanding Eastern District and General Officer Commanding 2nd Division. Final military posting as Senior British Loan Service Officer to the Sultan of Oman; retired in 2000 after 35 years of service. Author of In the Eye of the Storm: Commanding the Desert Rats in the Gulf War (Hodder and Stoughton, 1996), a number one UK non-fiction bestseller. Appointed OBE in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to the National Memorial Arboretum; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Biography The 7th Armoured Brigade was the first British formation deployed to the Gulf in 1990, and the largest British armoured commitment since D-Day. Its commander spent the months before combat solving a problem most senior corporate leaders never face: how to keep 12,000 people performing at the edge of their training, in a desert, against an enemy whose intentions were unclear, with the eyes of the British public on every decision. That commander was Patrick Cordingley. The brigade fought through the ground campaign with low casualties and high tempo, and Cordingley was awarded the DSO. He published In the Eye of the Storm with Hodder and Stoughton in 1996. The book reached number one on the UK non-fiction bestseller list and remains the primary first-person record of British armoured command in the Gulf. After the Gulf, Cordingley was promoted to Major General. He held General Officer Commanding Eastern District and then 2nd Division, before a final posting as Senior British Loan Service Officer to the Sultan of Oman. He retired in 2000 after 35 years of service and spent eight years chairing a technology company, alongside work as a BBC military commentator on conflict and defence. His public service since has been substantial. He chaired the National Memorial Arboretum Appeal and the Defence and Security Forum, and was appointed OBE in 2017. For senior audiences, what he offers is rare: a credible account of leading a large organisation through a real test, told by someone who has spent the last two decades thinking about what transfers and what does not. Key speaking topics Leadership under operational pressure Decision-making with incomplete information Team performance and trust at scale Preparation, rehearsal, and operational readiness Composure and confidence in senior command Lessons from military command for civilian leaders Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing high-consequence decisions Senior leadership offsites focused on resilience and command under pressure Programmes for newly senior leaders building executive presence After-dinner audiences at corporate and association events seeking serious content rather than entertainment Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what genuine preparation looks like, and how it changes behaviour in the moment of decision. A direct, first-person account of leading a large team through a high-stakes operation, with the reasoning behind specific decisions made transparent. A working distinction between confidence as performance and confidence as the product of rehearsal. A more sober view of how teams hold together when information is incomplete and the cost of error is real.

Why organisations work with Oscar van Weerdenburg He brings a published, evidence-based diagnostic. The Intercultural Readiness Check, co-developed with Ursula Brinkmann and built on a dataset of roughly 30,000 international respondents, lets leaders move from impression to assessment. He is part of the Trompenaars lineage. His work began with Fons Trompenaars at the University of Amsterdam in 1992, and his frameworks sit inside the Trompenaars Hampden-Turner network rather than alongside it. His M&A and integration track record is operational. He has been brought into post-deal integration work at major European and global firms to handle the cultural friction that derails synergy targets. He teaches inside INSEAD Executive Education and has lectured at Michigan Business School and Rotterdam School of Management, so the same content runs in front of senior leaders before it reaches their teams. His delivery is Anglo-Dutch in register: direct, often dryly funny, low on jargon. Buyers report sessions that are usable on Monday morning, not just well-received in the room. Biography highlights Co-author, Intercultural Readiness: Four Competences for Working Across Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), with Ursula Brinkmann. Co-founder and Managing Director, Intercultural Business Improvement (IBI), founded 1996. Co-creator of the Intercultural Readiness Check, drawn from a 15-year research programme of roughly 30,000 respondents. Visiting professor, INSEAD Executive Education; former lecturer at Michigan Business School and Rotterdam School of Management. Long-standing partner in the Trompenaars Hampden-Turner network, with collaboration with Fons Trompenaars dating to 1992. Lecturer of the Year 2008, Chalmers Professional Education. Biography Most cross-border failures inside multinationals are not strategic. They are cultural. Synergy targets in M&A slip, global rollouts stall, and senior hires struggle because the assumptions people carry about hierarchy, conflict, and time were never made visible. That is the territory Oscar van Weerdenburg has worked in for more than three decades. He began this work in 1992 with Fons Trompenaars at the University of Amsterdam, the partnership that became the foundation of modern intercultural management consulting. In 1996 he co-founded Intercultural Business Improvement with the psychologist Ursula Brinkmann. Together they built the Intercultural Readiness Check, a diagnostic drawn from a fifteen-year research programme of roughly thirty thousand respondents across four continents and published as Intercultural Readiness: Four Competences for Working Across Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). The IRC is what separates his practice from consulting impressionism. It gives leaders a measurable read on four competences that predict whether their teams can actually work across cultures, and it sits inside the Trompenaars Hampden-Turner network rather than competing with it. He teaches the underlying material on INSEAD Executive Education programmes and has lectured at Michigan Business School and Rotterdam School of Management, with a client list that includes Shell, HSBC, Qantas, BASF, PepsiCo and Goldman Sachs. What buyers tend to value is the operational edge. He has been brought into post-merger integrations and global team builds where cultural friction was already costing money, and he leaves leaders with vocabulary and a diagnostic, not abstractions. Chalmers Professional Education named him Lecturer of the Year in 2008 for the same reason: the room walks out with something usable. Key speaking topics Cultural intelligence as a measurable capability Leading multicultural and global teams Cultural integration in mergers and acquisitions International negotiation Strategic dilemmas in global business Cross-cultural leadership development The Intercultural Readiness Check as a leadership diagnostic Ideal for CHROs and global L&D leads building intercultural capability across regions M&A integration leads and post-deal sponsors handling cultural fit and synergy execution Global team leaders, country heads, and matrixed senior managers with cross-border accountability Executive education and leadership programme directors at multinationals Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the cultural assumptions that drive most cross-border friction Familiarity with the four intercultural competences measured by the IRC and how to apply them A clearer read on where their own team or deal is most exposed to cultural breakdown Practical moves for international negotiation, integration, and global team design they can use the following week

Why organisations work with Oliver Kahn He is the only goalkeeper in history to be named best player of a FIFA World Cup, a credential that earns immediate attention from any audience and frames the conversation around individual performance under maximum visibility. He has held leadership roles on both sides of the touchline: 49 times captain of the German national team and CEO of FC Bayern Munich AG between 2021 and 2023, giving him a working vocabulary for boardrooms as well as dressing rooms. His MBA from Privatuniversitaet Schloss Seeburg, with a thesis on strategic management in professional football, gives him an analytical frame for talks that goes beyond anecdote. He speaks with first-hand authority on the technical content of composure, recovery from public failure, and what it costs to sustain elite standards across a 14-year run at one club. Biography highlights 86 caps for Germany; 49 as captain. 2002 FIFA World Cup Golden Ball winner, the only goalkeeper to receive the award. Eight Bundesliga titles and the 2000–01 UEFA Champions League with FC Bayern Munich. Four UEFA Best European Goalkeeper awards and three IFFHS World’s Best Goalkeeper awards. CEO of FC Bayern Munich AG from July 2021 to May 2023. MBA, Privatuniversitaet Schloss Seeburg (2012); ZDF football analyst since 2008; author of “Ich. Erfolg kommt von innen.” (riva Verlag, 2008). Biography Pressure is what separates the people who win things from the people who almost do. The 2001 UEFA Champions League final went to a penalty shoot-out against Valencia. Bayern Munich’s goalkeeper saved three of them, was named man of the match, and added a Champions League winner’s medal to a set that already included a UEFA Cup, a German title, and the captaincy of the national side. Twelve months later, Oliver Kahn became the only goalkeeper in the history of the FIFA World Cup to be named the tournament’s best player. Germany lost the final to Brazil and he made a costly error on the opening goal, playing through a torn ligament. The Golden Ball was awarded after that match, alongside the Lev Yashin Award for best goalkeeper. The two together describe how his peers and the international press read his career: the most demanding individual position in the sport, played at the highest level for two decades. The numbers from the club career are unusual even in elite football. Eight Bundesliga titles, six DFB-Pokal wins, four consecutive UEFA Best European Goalkeeper awards from 1999 to 2002, three IFFHS World’s Best Goalkeeper honours, two German Footballer of the Year trophies. Kahn played 557 Bundesliga matches for Bayern, the most by any goalkeeper in the league’s history. The second career is what makes him unusual on a corporate stage. He took an MBA at Privatuniversitaet Schloss Seeburg in 2012 with a thesis on strategic management in professional football, worked as a ZDF analyst across multiple international tournaments, and served as CEO of FC Bayern Munich AG from July 2021 until May 2023. His book “Ich. Erfolg kommt von innen.” was published by riva Verlag in 2008 and remains the published source for his thinking on the inner conditions of sustained performance. Key speaking topics Composure and self-leadership under pressure High-performance culture in elite teams Accountability at the individual position Recovery from public failure Leadership transitions from operator to executive Mental preparation and the psychology of winning Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards setting the tone on accountability and standards Sales organisations and front-line revenue teams operating under monthly and quarterly visibility Senior leaders moving from operating roles into executive seats Annual leadership conferences and corporate kick-offs anchored on performance and resilience Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of composure as a trained capability, not a temperament Specific reference points from elite sport for how teams sustain standards across years, not seasons A direct account of what high-pressure decision-making feels like at the position where every error is visible Language for talking about accountability inside a team without it becoming punitive A sharper view of the difference between individual excellence and team performance, from someone who held both responsibilities

Why organisations work with Oliver Bierhoff His perspective is executive, not athletic. He spent 18 years running one of world football’s most scrutinised national programmes – managing coaching changes, institutional restructuring, and major tournament cycles – as a director, not a player. He has managed through both sides of accountability. He was part of Germany’s 2014 World Cup-winning operation and was the senior official who left following the 2022 Qatar group-stage exit. Few speakers can speak with equal authority about sustaining success and owning failure. The structural reform he led at the DFB – unifying men’s football, women’s football, and the national academy under one strategy for the first time in German football history – is a transferable case study in how large institutions resist and achieve meaningful integration. His current advisory roles span strategy consulting (McKinsey & Company), American professional sport (New England Patriots), and sports investment (FINVIA Sports GmbH) – he is operating at the intersection of sport, finance, and organisational strategy, not stepping back from it. He holds a Diplom-Kaufmann in business economics and conducted his studies by correspondence during his playing career, a signal of intellectual intent that goes beyond the typical athlete-to-speaker trajectory. Biography highlights Scored the first «Golden Goal» in major international football history – Germany’s Euro 96 final – and earned 70 caps, scoring 37 goals for the national team Serie A top scorer in 1997–98 (27 goals); Serie A champion with AC Milan in 1998–99; holds the league record for most headed goals in a single season (15) Appointed Germany’s first national team manager in 2004; part of the management structure that delivered the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2017 Confederations Cup Served as DFB Director of National Teams & Academy from 2018–2022; first to unify women’s football, men’s football, and the national academy under a single organisational strategy in German football history Business Advisor to the New England Patriots (DACH region); Senior Advisor at McKinsey & Company; Chairman and Co-Founder of FINVIA Sports GmbH Diplom-Kaufmann in business economics, University of Hagen, completed by correspondence during his professional playing career Biography Oliver Bierhoff scored the first Golden Goal in major international football history in Euro 96 and went on to become Serie A’s leading scorer, a champion with AC Milan, and a 70-cap Germany international. Most sports speakers stop there. What followed was the more instructive part of his career. In 2004, he was appointed Germany’s first national team manager – a role created specifically to bridge players, coaches, sponsors, and the football association across multiple coaching cycles. He held that responsibility through the 2014 FIFA World Cup win in Brazil and the 2017 Confederations Cup, before being elevated to Director of National Teams & Academy in 2018. In this role, he integrated men’s football, women’s football, and the DFB Academy under a single department and unified strategy – the first time this had been done in German football history – and launched the «Project Future» youth development programme in partnership with the German Football League. That tenure ended in December 2022, when Germany were eliminated in the group stage of the Qatar World Cup. Bierhoff accepted accountability and left by mutual agreement. That willingness to be held responsible for outcomes – not just processes – is the thread that runs through everything he says about performance culture and leadership under scrutiny. Since leaving the DFB, he has moved into strategic advisory work at a level that goes beyond sport: Senior Advisor at McKinsey & Company, Business Advisor to the New England Patriots for their DACH market expansion, and Chairman and Co-Founder of FINVIA Sports GmbH, a sports investment vehicle. He holds a business economics degree completed by correspondence during his playing career. The organisations that work with him are not looking for a former footballer with motivational stories. They are looking for someone who built systems, owned consequences, and kept operating. Key speaking topics Building performance cultures in institutional organisations Leadership continuity across coaching and management transitions Accountability and decision-making under public scrutiny Structural integration and organisational reform in complex institutions Translating elite team sport into business performance frameworks Pressure, resilience, and the psychology of competitive environments The business of sport: investment, strategy, and international expansion Ideal for Executive leadership teams and C-suite audiences focused on performance culture and organisational resilience CHROs, Chief People Officers, and transformation leads navigating structural change Organisations rebuilding or reorienting after public setbacks or leadership transitions Sports business, private equity, and investment audiences interested in the intersection of elite sport and institutional strategy Audience outcomes A clearer framework for distinguishing performance culture from performance results, and why the gap between them causes most high-profile failures Practical perspective on managing accountability across leadership transitions without sacrificing stability Insight into how institutional restructuring actually works at executive level: what changes, what resists, and what determines whether integration sticks A more honest lens on public failure: what it demands of leaders, how to process it, and how to use it without being defined by it Transferable lessons from an 18-year executive career in one of world sport’s most scrutinised environments