Talent Retention Strategies

Why organisations work with Lizzy Yarnold One of two athletes in history to defend an Olympic skeleton title, and the only British Winter Olympian ever to retain a gold. The credibility of repeating the result, not just achieving it once, is the central proof point. Speaks from a sport where mistakes are measured in hundredths of a second and decisions happen at 80mph. The transfer to high-stakes commercial decision-making is direct, not metaphorical. Brings the inside view of UK Sport’s Girls4Gold talent-identification programme, a system designed to find and develop performers from outside the obvious pipeline. Useful for HR and talent leaders thinking about non-traditional pathways. Comfortable in honest territory: she retired after a vestibular disorder, a chest infection at the Games, and surgery on her knee and back. The story of what high performance costs is part of the offer, not glossed over. Sits on the British Olympic Association athlete commission and works as a BBC analyst, so the perspective is current rather than retrospective. Biography highlights Olympic gold, women’s skeleton, Sochi 2014 – winning margin of 0.97 seconds, the largest in Winter Olympic skeleton history. Olympic gold, women’s skeleton, PyeongChang 2018 – the first British athlete to retain a Winter Olympic title. World Championship gold (Winterberg, 2015) and European Championship gold (Igls, 2015), completing skeleton’s grand slam alongside Olympic and World Cup titles. Overall Skeleton World Cup winner, 2013-14 season. OBE for services to skeleton (2018), upgraded from MBE awarded in 2014. Honorary doctorate of science, University of Kent (2018). BBC analyst for Winter Olympic skeleton and luge coverage. Member of the British Olympic Association athlete commission. Biography The 2014 Sochi gold was won by 0.97 seconds. In a sport where podium positions are usually settled by hundredths, that margin is closer to a different category of performance than a different result. Lizzy Yarnold won that race after fewer than four years on the international circuit. Then she did it again in PyeongChang, the first British athlete to retain a Winter Olympic title. The route in is worth noting. Yarnold was a club-level heptathlete identified by UK Sport’s Girls4Gold programme in 2008, a scheme built specifically to find Olympic-level athletes from outside the established sporting pipeline. She went from sled debut to Olympic champion in roughly five years, trained at Team Bath, and read Geography and Sport & Exercise Science at the University of Gloucestershire. What organisations get from her is the part of high performance that does not photograph well. The 2018 campaign was run through a vestibular disorder that affected her balance, a chest infection during the Games, and surgery on her knee and back shortly afterwards. The lesson she draws from it is operational rather than inspirational: how to keep making the right small decision when the conditions for the right big one have disappeared. Since retiring she has worked as a BBC analyst for Winter Olympic skeleton and luge coverage and sat on the British Olympic Association athlete commission. Corporate audiences have included Deloitte, Jaguar Land Rover, Eli Lilly, The Pipeline, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance Resilience under pressure Talent identification and non-traditional pathways Goal setting and execution discipline Team performance in elite environments Leadership through preparation Managing change after peak success Ideal for Senior leadership teams entering a second strategic cycle after a major win High-performance and sales teams operating in narrow-margin environments HR and talent leaders rethinking pipelines and identification Graduate, leadership development and emerging-talent programmes Audience outcomes A grounded view of what defending a position takes once the original conditions have changed A specific account of how elite athletes structure preparation, recovery and competition decisions An honest framing of the cost of high performance, useful for wellbeing and retention conversations A model for talent identification drawn from a programme designed to find outliers, not develop incumbents A compelling, named-stakes story of two Olympic finals, told first-hand

Why organisations work with Liz Wiseman She runs two distinct, primary-research-backed frameworks, Multipliers and Impact Players, that name behaviours leaders can change on Monday morning, not abstractions they have to translate. Her Accidental Diminisher diagnostic gives senior leaders a mirror most are not expecting: the well-intentioned habits, rescuing, idea-spraying, pacesetting, that quietly shrink their teams. The Impact Players research, drawn from 170 executives across ten countries, isolates the behaviours of the contributors managers actually depend on, which CHROs use to recalibrate performance criteria and promotion decisions. Seventeen years inside Oracle, including VP of Oracle University, mean she frames leadership in operating terms a senior corporate audience recognises immediately. Named the top-ranked leadership thinker by Thinkers50 in 2019 and recipient of the Thinkers50 Talent Award in 2023, with continued presence on the ranking. Biography highlights CEO of The Wiseman Group, Silicon Valley leadership research and executive development firm. Author of Multipliers (New York Times bestseller), Rookie Smarts (Wall Street Journal bestseller), and Impact Players (Wall Street Journal bestseller). Thinkers50 Leadership Award winner (2019); Thinkers50 Talent Award winner (2023). Former Vice President of Oracle University and global leader for Human Resource Development across a 17-year Oracle career. Contributor to Harvard Business Review and Fortune; guest lecturer at Brigham Young University and Stanford University. Advises and speaks for clients including Apple, Disney, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, and Tesla. Biography The leader who is the smartest person in the room is often the reason no one else in the room is contributing. Liz Wiseman’s research into what she calls Multipliers and Diminishers, published in Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, isolates the specific habits that determine which one a manager becomes, often without realising. The Accidental Diminisher diagnostic that accompanies the work is now used by leadership teams across global corporations. Before The Wiseman Group, she spent seventeen years inside Oracle, latterly as Vice President of Oracle University and global head of Human Resource Development. That operating background runs through the work. Her frameworks are written for executives who have to act on them, not academics describing them. Impact Players, drawn from interviews with 170 executives across ten countries and surveys of 350 managers, asks a different question: what distinguishes the individual contributors that senior leaders actually rely on in high-stakes moments? The findings reshape how CHROs think about promotion, performance criteria, and the behaviours organisations should be selecting for. She was named the top-ranked leadership thinker on the Thinkers50 list in 2019 and received the Thinkers50 Talent Award in 2023. She contributes to Harvard Business Review and Fortune, and lectures at Brigham Young University and Stanford. Her client roster, Apple, Disney, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, Tesla, reflects an unusual fact: organisations with deep internal leadership capability still bring her in. Key speaking topics Multiplier leadership and the Diminisher effect Accidental Diminisher behaviours in senior leaders Impact Players and high-contribution mindsets Leveraging collective intelligence inside teams Rookie Smarts and learning agility under uncertainty Talent identification, promotion, and performance criteria Executive development and leadership capability building Ideal for CHROs redesigning leadership development, promotion criteria, or performance frameworks CEOs and senior leadership teams reviewing how they get more from existing talent Heads of talent and L&D building enterprise leadership programmes Leadership offsites for executive committees and senior management cohorts Audience outcomes Recognition of the specific Diminisher behaviours senior leaders default to under pressure A working vocabulary for the team behaviours that drive disproportionate impact Diagnostic tools, including the Accidental Diminisher profile, that leaders can apply to their own management style Criteria for identifying and developing high-contribution individual contributors A revised view of where untapped capacity sits inside the existing workforce