Finding the right keynote speaker for your association conference is one of the most consequential decisions you will make as an event organiser. Unlike corporate events where attendance is mandatory and budgets are flexible, association conferences rely on voluntary attendance from members who have paid their own way. Your keynote speaker is the single biggest factor in whether members register, stay engaged, and feel their investment was worthwhile.   According to the Profe

Finding the right speaker for a school business manager conference is one of the most consequential decisions a conference committee will make all year. The wrong choice leaves delegates politely checking their phones, while the right speaker shifts how an entire profession approaches its work for months afterwards. School business managers, bursars, and school business leaders sit at the intersection of finance, compliance, people management, facilities, risk, and community

Finding the right leadership speaker for your independent school is one of the most consequential decisions you will make this academic year. The wrong choice wastes a precious INSET day, leaving staff disengaged and your professional development budget lighter with nothing to show for it. The right choice shifts how your senior leadership team thinks about governance, culture, and strategy for months afterwards.   The challenge for headteachers, bursars, and deputy heads acr

Patrick Lencioni argues that meetings are the most important activity in any organisation, and that bad meetings are the root cause of most organisational dysfunction. In Death by Meeting, he identifies four distinct types of meetings that every leadership team needs: daily check-ins, weekly tacticals, ad hoc topicals, and quarterly offsites. Each serves a different purpose, and confusing them is the primary reason meetings fail.   Most leaders approach meetings as a single c

You already know the conversation you need to have. You have known for weeks, maybe months. You can picture the person's face. You can feel the knot in your stomach when you think about sitting down and saying what needs to be said. But you have not done it. And every day you do not, the problem gets a little worse.   You are not alone. Research from the Chartered Management Institute found that 57 percent of people would do almost anything to avoid a difficult conversation.

A reward centred leader is someone who pursues a leadership role primarily for the personal benefits it provides: status, power, compensation, and control. In The Motive, Patrick Lencioni argues that the reason a person becomes a leader is the most important and most overlooked factor in determining their effectiveness. Leaders who are motivated by rewards rather than responsibility create organisations that suffer from the five omissions of a reward centred leader.   Lencion