‘BRAVING UNCERTAINTY’ is Mark Denton’s signature Leadership Keynote, taking audiences on a roller-coaster of a journey through the twists, turns, triumphs and tears of leading an amateur team to success in the world’s toughest around-the-world yacht race.

This gripping multi-media account, challenges many of the existing outdated beliefs of how a Leader should be, rewriting these with new and proven frameworks that deliver sustained performance for a brave new world. Mark will inspire and equip your leaders to:

• Blur the lines between Individual, Team and Organisation Purpose
• Let go of control in favour of collaboration
• Value being vulnerable rather than being invincible
• Overcome obstacles with questions not answers
• Set bold goals and achieve more than you ever thought possible

And it’s all summarised neatly in his 3C’s model of how leaders need to be to deliver sustained performance in these turbulent times: Compassionate, Collaborative and Courageous.

Great for: Challenging mindsets of Leaders & Managers at every level, and for educating those looking to step up

‘TOGETHER WE TRIUMPH’ is Mark Denton’s signature Teamwork Keynote, an ‘edge of your seat’ multi-media journey through the ups, downs, twists and turns of an amateur team taking part in the ‘world’s toughest’ around-the-world yacht race.

This gripping account also reveals what allowed this team to thrive when facing constant adversity, change and competition. Mark summarises these into the 3 cultural factors that teams must embrace in order to achieve the seemingly impossible, no matter how choppy the waters:

• Safe: Create an environment of psychological safety that supercharges collaboration and unlocks high performance
• Happy: Prioritise Team, Customer & Stakeholder happiness to achieve sustained success
• Fast: Embrace experimentation and reframe failure as the catalyst for learning, innovation and agility

Great for: All staff conferences and department events with a mix of Leaders and Team Members

‘NAVIGATE THE STORM’ is Mark Denton’s signature ‘Resilience’ keynote, a roller-coaster multi-media journey through the ups, downs, twists and turns of an amateur team taking part in the ‘world’s toughest’ around-the-world yacht race.

And as the gripping account unfolds, Mark shares his unique perspective on what kept him and the team resilient, including top-tips on how to nurture the 8 key factors summarised in the ‘Navig-8 Compass Model’; Purposeful Direction, Collaboration, Emotion Regulation, Optimism, Creativity, Anticipation, Courage and Persistence.

This simple but comprehensive framework that’s shared with attendees post event, equips them to:

• Recognise that resilience is multifaceted and accessible to all
• Understand the different factors, and why each are key
• Learn practical ways of accessing these, to get back on track
• Navigate any storm in their personal or professional lives

Great for: Leadership/Management conferences and All-Staff conferences, especially where Organisations are facing turbulent times

A deep dive into the pre-race preparations that the team did to build a high performing culture for the race ahead, based on the eight key factors in the CULTIV-8 Compass; Establishing and aligning around your True North (purpose) and your North Star (vision), establishing customer needs in relation to that, and the same for your employees. Identifying critical operational success factors, and agreeing what behaviours will be required to deliver all this by encapsulating them in a set of Values. And lastly, having an enabling structure and the right supporting systems that allows the team to optimally perform.

A deep dive into Leg one of the race when performance was suffering in the early stages due to the team experiencing some classic dysfunctions including internal competition, silo working, poor communication, unhealthy conflict and a lack of accountability to voice the issues due to low psychological safety and trust. But on day 3, Mark decided it was time to build psychological safety and confront the issues, unite the team to overcome the challenges, set new goals, gather diverse perspectives and ideas as to how to move forward, experiment with solutions, establish effective communication channels, and focus on delivering the results which are the 8 factors within the COLLABOR-8 Compass.

A deep dive into what it took to turn the team around from a mixed set of results through Legs 1,2,3 of the race to emphatically win leg 4. Topics covered and summarised in the DOMIN-8 Compass include building psychological safety, setting big bold goals, establishing critical success factors, challenging self-limiting beliefs, creativity and innovation to introduce fresh approaches, trying ideas out with low-risk experiments, learning from failure, and executing with courage and persistence