Self Leadership and
The New Leadership Playbook
Blog by Andrew Bryant

Since the Ancient Greeks, oratory, public speaking, and debates, have shown the power of the spoken word to influence and make an impact.

Not everyone wants to be a Professional Speaker, but everyone can become more professional when speaking to an audience.

Public Speaking and Leadership

Effective communication is a vital skill that every successful leader must possess. Leaders can inspire, influence, and direct their teams to achieve organizational goals through communication.

Whether it is the company kickoff, a team meeting, or presenting to the board, leadership requires confident and effective public speaking skills. 

Leadership requires courage and so regardless of your level of comfort with public speaking, this is a pill you will have to learn to swallow if want to be successful. Having been a professional speaker for nearly 25 years and coached hundreds of people to speak with confidence and gravitas, this blog is designed to sugar-coat that pill. 

It Starts with...

When you're looking for a global motivational speaker for your company's event or conference, you want to make sure you find someone who can really make an impact. A top motivational speaker can give your audience the insights and boost they need to reach their goals in a complex global environment.

So, what should you look for when choosing a global motivational speaker? Here are the top 12 things to consider when selecting a top speaker for your event.

1. Knowledge and Experience: It’s important to find a speaker who has a deep understanding of the subject matter and can provide insight and knowledge about their topic. Look for someone with years of experience across multiple cultures with engaging stories that reinforce their points.
2. Passion and Enthusiasm: It should go without saying that a top global speaker should be passionate about their message and be able to captivate a diverse audience with their enthusiasm. They should be able to make the...

Technology companies love to be ‘market leading’ and be featured in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant but despite cutting-edge technological advancements, unless the leadership of these companies addresses the people issues, growth will be short-lived.

Employee Burnout

In a recent research report “The State of Burnout in Tech”, 30,000 IT professionals were surveyed across 33 countries:

• 56% of men and 69% of women can’t relax once their workday is over
• 43% feel disengaged from their work, and 27% don’t see the value in it
• 51% feel they are achieving less than they should

Tech burnout is caused by unrelenting stress and manifests as exhaustion, cynicism, and negative self-evaluation. The burnout problem stems from the early days of Silicon Valley, where working until you drop was a badge of honor.

The 'burn and churn' attitude of leadership has an actual human cost, with two out of five tech professionals, and 50% of IT security employees, suffering...

Getting the right keynote speaker on the right topic is key to a successful conference or event. Booking an Astronaut, TV Star, or Gold Medal Winner to speak, will almost certainly be inspirational, but will be expensive and not necessarily address some of the issues facing your company or your audience.

Mindset matters and so do insights and practical strategies that the audience can execute to make a tangible difference. The following list of topics and speakers was compiled to provide a balance of motivation, mission, and methodology. While no such list can be fully comprehensive and inclusive, we hope it triggers your critical thinking about selecting the right speaker and topic for your event.

1. Business Creativity, Change, and Innovation

Creativity is a critical business skill that will help us move forward. To manage change and be innovative we need ideas. Almost everyone agrees that creativity is important, but not everyone is confident that they are creative, and...

Motivational speakers can be a powerful tool to help you engage your teams and create a positive, productive workplace. A well-known motivational speaker can help to inspire and motivate team members, helping to increase their motivation and performance. They can also provide valuable insight and guidance, helping to build team unity and create a sense of purpose.

Providing a New Perspective

Providing a new perspective is an effective way to engage your team and motivate them to achieve their goals. A motivational speaker with experience and deep insights brings a fresh outlook to the table and provides ideas for different tactics and strategies to facilitate your team to reach their goals.

They can challenge outdated thought processes and provide a new perspective on how to approach and solve problems. By introducing an outside expert, the team can gain valuable knowledge and ideas that can help them come up with innovative solutions. Additionally, the...

The term "business motivational speaker" can seem generic and vague, possibly like something from the TV Show, The Office. Far from being comical, a business motivational speaker is someone who inspires, informs, and motivates audiences to think differently, feel differently, and act differently. They are typically hired to speak at conferences, seminars, and other events to help motivate and inspire business professionals to reach their goals.

The professional, rather than the comical, business motivational speaker typically has deep subject matter experience that they can use to energize and motivate employees to take action. They will often provide strategies to help their audience reach their goals, with a mindset of enthusiasm and positivity.

Delivering results is essential for any team or organization, but delivering results when employees are fatigued, stressed, or unclear of priorities is impossible. A business motivational speaker is not a...

Whether in a one-to-one conversation or giving a presentation, you owe it to yourself and to your audience not to be boring.

The number one reason for boring your listeners is being too focused on yourself and or your topic. This could be because you are nervous and shy, or because you have not yet realized a fundamental truth that is attributed to Theodore Roosevelt:

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care"

3 Strategies for How Not to Be Boring

1. Be Curious

A great maxim for connecting with people and not boring them to death is, "if you want to be interesting, be interested." Be interested in the people you are speaking with, ask questions, and listen carefully to what they say. When you do this, you can connect what you want to say with their worldview.

Curiosity and open-mindedness will also mean that you can talk on multiple topics and have interesting perspectives.

2. Be Passionate

A guaranteed way to not be boring is to be...

If you want to be a better leader, presenter, or influencer then you must embrace diagrams or models to amplify your message.

The human brain is brilliant at pattern recognition but has a limited capacity for language or numerical manipulation.

“A picture is worth a thousand words” 

When it comes to ideas and information, a diagram or model communicates much more effectively than words. Here are seven of the many diagrams that I use in my leadership coaching, and keynote speeches. 

1. Find your Sweet Spot

Success in life and career is a Venn diagram. You must find your passion, but passion alone is not enough, you must develop your talent and find a market for your skills. 

Jim Collins used this diagram in his book, 'Good to Great'. The Japanese have a concept, Ikigai which means reason for being. The Japanese diagram has a fourth circle, what the world needs. Imagine doing what you love, doing what you are good at, and being paid for it, and it makes a...

Whether it is for the company conference, sales kickoff, or client event, somebody inevitably searches for ‘the best motivational speaker’. Most professional speakers and subject matter experts despise this term, but it is the number one Google search phrase, for this role.

Every corporate event can be improved with a top motivational speaker who tells great stories and elevates the thinking beyond the spreadsheet and PowerPoint presentations, but who is the best motivational speaker for your conference or event?

Getting a Top Motivational Speaker 

Getting a top motivational speaker depends on your budget and their availability but there are other factors to consider:

1. What outcome are you looking for, how do you want the audience to think, feel, and act differently after the speech?
2. How much is your audience ready to be challenged? Or are you looking for corporate entertainment?
3. What is the theme of your event?

If your motivational speaker provides the keynote,...

Motivational talks have long been a popular corporate practice. These talks or speeches encourage managers and employees to stay focused and motivated to reach their goals. By inspiring and encouraging employees to strive for excellence, motivational talks are an effective tool for achieving organizational goals. This blog will discuss how motivational talks can achieve goals in your organization.

Hear From Inspirational Speakers

An effective motivational speech is a great way to boost morale in the workplace. Giving employees a chance to listen to inspirational stories and advice from a knowledgeable speaker, helps them create a positive and productive work environment. Typically a speaker will share stories and anecdotes that enable employees to reframe their perspective of their work and to push themselves to higher levels of performance. They motivate and encourage employees to reach their goals and explore new opportunities. 

Learn from One Another

Motivational talks also...