Blaire Palmer

Blaire Palmer is at the forefront of new thinking about what it means to lead in the 21st century.

According to Blaire, most of what you’ve been told about leadership is outdated.

Future of Leadership expert Blaire Palmer draws on more than 20 years of experience challenging, provoking and guiding senior leaders as they try to figure out how their people and organisations can thrive in these fast-changing times.

Our relationship with work is on the verge of disruption, which we haven’t seen since the industrial revolution. That means the expectations of our people, the environment which brings out their best and even the role that business plays in the wider world are up for reinvention.

Covering hybrid working, empowerment and engagement, diversity and equity, leadership and motivation and anticipating future work trends, Blaire busts myths about leadership and change and stimulates audiences with real-life stories and fresh ideas to rethink what it means to lead in the 21st Century.

“We just wanted to let you know that Blaire was fantastic yesterday.  She was so engaging, funny, and on topic and had everyone in the room listening intently.  Her presentation was definitely a highlight of the day.  The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Please thank Blaire for us – she was amazing”.
Jane Spriggs, NTT Data

As a Producer on the BBC’s ‘Today‘ programme in the 90s, Blaire spent a decade breaking stories and shaping the UK news agenda before her fascination with leadership and change led her to train as one of the UK’s first corporate coaches.

Two decades on, she gives audiences unparalleled insight into what’s happening in the most innovative Boardrooms in the UK and Europe, trends she’s spotting in her work, and what works (and doesn’t) when it comes to change and leadership in real businesses.

As an author, Blaire’s books include:

• The Hyper-creative Personality: How to Focus Your Ideas and Become the Most Successful Person You Know.
• The Recipe for Success: What Really Successful People Do and How You Can Do It Too.
• What’s Wrong with Work: The five frustrations of Work and How to Fix Them for Good.

Blaire Palmer – Keynote Speaker:

Blaire realised that there is something about the workplace that stops people from doing their best work. The standard models about motivation, change, culture and leadership were just academic theories – they didn’t work on the ground. This is even more true today when we must recalibrate how to lead our businesses in an unfamiliar and volatile post-pandemic world.

Audiences want to know what leaders in other companies are doing in these uncertain times. How they engage and motivate people, how to improve retention and attract the right talent in a competitive market, and how to lead confidently through change.

Blaire draws on her real experiences working with businesses across industry sectors and presents a new kind of leadership based on authentic human connection, trust, empowerment and continual innovation. She shares practical tips that mean audiences can start collaborating more enthusiastically, support their teams to solve gritty problems, create safe spaces where people can speak up and speak out, and feel inspired and energised about the future.

Lively, thought-provoking, witty, and direct, Blaire encourages audiences to challenge everything they think they know about leadership.

Known for combining warmth and charm with a no-nonsense, straight-talking style, she inspires audiences with her fresh ideas.

• Forget everything you thought about leadership.
• Put all the books down!
• Ignore the wise words your first boss told you a million years ago.
• The world has changed, and none of it matters now.

Furthermore, in 2023, in partnership with the Open University, Blaire wrote a report on the link between L&D and well-being. The report takes a close look at how training and career development can have a proactive impact on well-being in the workplace.

Speaking Topics:

• Busting the Myths of Leadership
• Change and the Journey of Change
• Leadership and Authenticity
• The Link between L&D and Well-being
• Mental Health
• Motivating yourself and others
• Teamwork and collaboration
• Trust and the search for meaning and purpose
• Breaking down hierarchy and silos
• Diversity and Inclusion
• The role of “followers” in business and the role of “leaders.”
• Trust, credibility and presence
• Breaking down hierarchy and silos
• Organisational Culture Change
• Hybrid working and collaboration
• Empowerment and Employee Engagement
• The Future World of Work

Popular Keynotes Speeches by Blaire:

Busting the Myths of Leadership
How do we lead in this ‘post-Covid’ world of work? Well, it starts by rejecting conventional wisdom about leadership… the rules of work that evolved in the 19th and 20th Centuries and focusing instead on the power of authentic human connection, trust and the wisdom of the people you hired. To do that, leaders need to change how they see themselves and their role in the business and empower their people to be great.

Blaire draws on more than 20 years of experience working as a coach and confidante to senior leaders and their teams and presents her practical yet powerful guide to becoming the leader your people need you to be. Lively, funny and thought-provoking, Blaire makes audiences confident to try something new.

Busting the Myths of Change
The rules of change are changing. It’s not about selling people on ‘The Why’ anymore. Now, they need to feel THEY are leading the change. In this keynote, Blaire draws on more than two decades of running leadership and culture change programmes to explain how to create passionate enthusiasm for change throughout your organisation.

News: Blaire’s next book (due for release in 2024)
Punks In Suits – How to Lead the Workplace Reformation.

This book is a call to action for Gen X leaders to shake up how we work before they hand in their laptops for the last time. They can either sneak out the back door when they retire, knowing they colluded with a broken system and got away with it, or they can leave behind a way of working that creates a sense of purpose, makes their organisation a force for good in the world and sets the business up to thrive in an uncertain, ever-changing future.

Blaire discusses workplaces where human and non-human (AI/Bots) employees will work side by side, where the humanity in human employees will be liberated to truly innovate, connect, wrangle with tough ethical questions and drive continuous change and improvement, and how the role of leaders needs reconfiguring to enable this to happen. There’s a price to pay – those leaders who embrace this opportunity will have to give away the power they’ve worked so hard to accumulate. The prize is knowing they made a difference and left their organisation better than they found it. 

Please get in touch with us to check availability and fee or to book business speaker Blaire Palmer.