Ronan Harrington | Speaking Topics & Keynote Talks

True Resilience: Ronan’s Jaw-Dropping Personal Story of Triumph from Adversity

In Ronan Harrington’s most celebrated and award-winning keynote, Ronan shares his jaw dropping about the pressures of senior leadership, the last consequences when we get it wrong, and how to transform when adversity strikes. As a futurist to the British Foreign Office, he navigated the corridors of power before being later diagnosed with a lifetime chronic pain condition.  It’s rare to hear a story of triumph from within an ongoing adversity. This is precisely the lucidity, depth and wisdom we need to dig deeper during tough times.

How to Lead Resilient, High-Performance Teams 

Ronan shows executives and people managers how to shift from overwhelmed task coordinators to composed performance conductors and caring people leaders. His keynote is packed with tools to build surplus time to give your team the emotional support and autonomy they need to operate at their best. 

Leaders are shown the mindsets required to transition their team from basic psychological safety to psychological freedom. Equipped with the best collaborative tools, they learn how to make difficult conversations a daily habit, shift from blame to responsibility, and create a culture of masterful appreciation.  The result is a high-performance team where people feel energised to do the best work of their lives. 

Become a High Performer with a Low Risk of Burnout

In our demanding work cultures, far too many of us are operating in an unsustainable state of burnout. But there’s a better way – a path to resilience that unlocks your highest performance without sacrificing your wellbeing.

In this eye-opening and award-winning keynote, Ronan reveal the secrets to achieving sustainable excellence, grounded in cutting edge science of resilience and productivity.

You’ll walk away with:

• A new understanding of what drains versus renews your energy
• Practical, science-backed tools to reset your work practices
• Rituals to prioritise rejuvenation and avoid depletion
• Techniques to inspire resilience as a team and organisational culture

Prepare to experience a profound mind-shift around how to thrive as a high performer in our overstressed world. You’ll emerge with a revitalising new model of sustainable excellence to upgrade your team’s impact. 

The Fearless Organization: Unleash Peak Performance through Psychological Safety

In today’s world, psychological safety is the ultimate game-changer. When people feel safe speaking up and being candid, innovation and productivity explode.

Yet most workplaces inadvertently create cultures of fear that strangles honesty.

In this eye-opening keynote and workshop, you’ll discover:

• Psychological safety: What it is & why it’s critical for high-performing teams
• Relational excellence: Specific skills to build psychological safety over time
• Explore three common work scenarios where we can increase or undermine psychological safety
• Powerful tools to set new standards of excellence 

Through powerful activities and a science-backed framework, you’ll gain tools to make psychological safety second nature. You’ll inspire your team to voice ideas, take risks, and push past fear. Seize this opportunity to nurture a fearless, truth-telling culture that catapults success. 

Take Back Control: How to Master Excessive Workload. 

Knowledge work is broken. We’re drowning in a relentless digital avalanche of tasks, addicted to busyness and reactive “lawn mowing.”  Faced with punishing workloads and the tyranny of 24/7 availability, we end up burned out and delivering diluted impact. There is a better way. In this eye-opening keynote, you’ll master a radical new methodology to reclaim your focus, rejuvenation and ability to create “wow” experiences that drive fierce client loyalty. 

Through powerful insights, interactive exercises and a comprehensive new framework, you’ll learn to:

• Flip the script on toxic productivity norms holding you hostage
• Upgrade your personal energy management for fierce focus and renewal
• Rewrite the client engagement model for sustainable value creation
• Foster a culture of healthy excellence that doesn’t sacrifice wellbeing
• Streamline chaos and upshift to higher-leverage, high-impact work

You’ll emerge with a revitalising new blueprint for driving true excellence. No more settling for fragmented efforts and mediocre results.

Leadership Talk Show: Hard Won Wisdom from the Inside.

Ronan hosts leadership talk shows with a panel of senior leaders from your company.  The theme is typically High Performance Leadership. Ronan asks them for their hard won wisdom and then shares what the research on high performance says, and then leaders on the inside interrogate whether the theory works in practice. This road testing ideas with leaders at the coal face means people are more likely to apply the best insights and tools

Ronan showcases how to drive higher productivity, deepen renewal, change the client/customer dynamic so you both can work sustainably, and set new standards of excellence for your team. 

If your company needs a leadership talk show that gets the wisdom from the inside, and the expertise from the outside, this is the one for you.

Back in the Groove: Power Moves that Boosts Our Mental Health 

Ronan shares the surprising external adjustments that can make us feel more balanced and happy on the inside. 

Together, we’ll learn the power moves most effective in boosting our mental health:

• Taking back control of our work agenda so it becomes manageable
• Tending to the four pillars of our life: home, family, work, and health
• Feeding our brain and body for the most positive outlook
• Becoming your own coach when life pivots are needed 
• Encouraging a culture of openness about our mental health
• The mindsets needed when the going gets tough 

Candour Unleashed: Master the Art of Difficult Conversations

Tough talks at work can be minefields to navigate. Whether you’re giving tough feedback, dealing with underperformance, or discussing sensitive issues like compensation, the stakes are high. One wrong step can demolish trust and create relationships.

In this powerful keynote and hands-on workshop, you’ll be equipped with a game-changing framework called Radical Candour.

You’ll learn how to:

• Build trusting, honest relationships while avoiding brutality
• Say what needs to be said while still caring personally
• Eliminate fear and motivate people rather than hurt them
• Challenge directly while showing you care about each person

Through real-world examples, engaging activities, and proven tools, you’ll walk away able to tackle even the most difficult conversations with confidence and skill. Stop walking on eggshells and start getting real in a way that unlocks peak performance.

Candid communication doesn’t have to be a clash of egos or personal attacks. Master the Radical Candour approach to have caring, productive dialogues that clear the air and move everyone forward. You’ll transform your ability to navigate life’s toughest talks.

Boundless: Shatter the Success Ceiling with Growth Mindset

In the age of relentless disruption, organisations that achieve sustainable high performance aren’t just talented – they’re obsessed with getting better daily. They have an unstoppable growth mindset that powers ongoing adaptation, learning, and performance gains.

This mind-shifting keynote and immersive workshop will equip you with the strategies to activate a transformative, growth-obsessed culture across your teams. You’ll discover:

• The powerful beliefs and behaviours that unleash perpetual growth
• Frameworks to embrace challenges as fuel instead of avoiding them
• How to reframe failure as data instead of something to fear or conceal
• Rituals to nurture proliferating feedback, curiosity and development
• Techniques to role model, motivate and coach a growth mindset daily

Through eye-opening insights, self-assessments and hands-on tools, you’ll transcend the fixed mindsets, competency traps and mental ceilings sabotaging your organisation’s true potential. You’ll cultivate an environment where continuous renewal, upskilling and raising standards is business as usual.

Stop hitting performance plateaus. Never settle for good enough. Whether you’re an established market leader or an ambitious upstart, a limitless growth mindset will prove your ultimate competitive advantage.

Unleash Innovation by Mastering the Experiment Mindset

In this era of constant disruption, the companies that thrive are the ones that innovate relentlessly. But how do you build a culture of unstoppable innovation? By transforming your organisation into a living lab of experimentation.

This high-impact keynote and hands-on workshop will equip you with the strategies to drive a pervasive culture of curiosity, testing, and intelligent risk-taking.

Discover:

• The game-changing mindsets that unleash breakthrough innovation
• Powerful frameworks for rapid experimentation and validated learning
• How to nurture an environment safe for failure, questions, and unconventional ideas
• Best practices for testing, measuring, and pivoting faster than competitors
• Proven techniques to make experimentation a habit across your organisation

Through immersive activities, real-world case studies, and an actionable toolbox, you’ll gain the ability to hardwire a bias toward action over inertia. You’ll empower your people to explore new boundaries, embrace ambiguity, and find new solutions to your biggest challenges.

Future-Proof Your Company: Master the Human Skills for the AI Age

Artificial intelligence is redefining work as we know it. The jobs of tomorrow will be radically different than today. As AI automates routine tasks, the most valuable skills will be the uniquely human ones that machines can’t replicate.

In this thought-provoking keynote and interactive workshop, you’ll gain the essential mindsets and capabilities to future-proof your career in the age of intelligent technologies. Discover:

• The key human skills that will be in exponential demand as AI advances
• How to cultivate creativity, judgement, and high emotional intelligence
• Strategies to continuously reinvent yourself and acquire new abilities
• Techniques to maximise human-machine collaboration and teamwork
• Frameworks to thrive amid constant change and navigate career pivots

You’ll build muscle memory through powerful exercises in skills like complex reasoning, empathy, influential communication, and coaching ability. You’ll learn to pair your human ingenuity with technology for radically improved results.

AI is either the best or worst thing to happen to careers. Those who upskill and embrace hybrid human-machine roles will soar. Those who fail to evolve stagnate. Take charge of your future by mastering the durable skills to adapt and thrive.

How to Embed a Culture of Sustainable Performance

A new model of sustainable performance is emerging that is a win-win for productivity and wellbeing. It creates space through workplace design and cultural norms for deep focus and renewal.  But there is a major obstacle: How do you get leaders to role model new ways of working so they become the new norm for the whole organisation? They have to let go of old ways of working that have led to their career success. 

Ronan shares a new method used by leading companies to overcome old, engrained ways of working. Audiences are introduced to the 3M’s framework: Mindsets, Mechanisms, Modelling, first articulated by leading researcher, Nick Petrie. This method allows them to define, embed and scale any desired leadership behaviour, from sustainable working practices to psychological safety. This is a must see keynote for leaders who want to embed a company wide culture of sustainable high performance. 

After Dinner Entertainment: Open Mic Night / Failure Fest

It’s party time! Often the evening entertainment is fun but not impactful. We’re missing an opportunity to see more of each other and solidify professional relationships.  Employees take the stage, sharing a story, poem, song, or their hilarious story of failure. You will be surprised at their secret gifts and hidden depths! 

At the surface level, it’s some light evening entertainment, but it again serves a deeper purpose: People feel seen, and are celebrated by their peers. That deepening of belonging, the feeling of camaraderie, is the cornerstone of truly great companies.

Ronan is an experienced after dinner host, and makes for an entertaining MC on the night. 

Call +44 1753 439 289 or email Great British Speakers now to book leading performance, burnout and resilience speaker Ronan Harrington for your next live event or corporate video.

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