Business

At the time of booking, Spirit was a business that is facing major change after four successful years and I wanted a speaker that could without being too “corporate”, speak to the team and our key suppliers about how to maintain performance & collaboration in an environment of change. Damian took time and interest in our situation, challenges and required outcome of the day and put together a session that was really engaging and left the audience wanting more!

Personally I found Damian’s approach really refreshing, engaging and perfectly balanced to both business and personal life situations with great examples to reflect on.

The feedback from all attendees has been positive with a common theme of finding the event uplifting from the norm and I would have no hesitation in recommending Damian.

Vance Fairman-Smith, Head of Supply Chain and Purchasing, Spirit

In 2015 I was lucky enough to meet Damian on an internal development course. I can safely say that in the last 26 years no external speaker has come close to Damian in both landing a message with simplicity whilst engaging with a room for the better part of a day.

Damian has the unique ability in my view of bringing the real world into the theoretical world. His personal style of being relaxed along with his sense of humour, added to his knowledge is a powerful force and creates an immediate relationship with his audience.

In 2016 I had the opportunity to invite Damian to join our team for a morning and I can see this relationship adding real value as we move forward.

Chris Revell, National Shrinkage & Compliance Manager, Retail Argos

Damian helped us in shaping a successful, vibrant and inspiring conference. He affiliates with the audience and he was able to adapt his speech to the target as well as to our specific needs.

He was brilliant in connecting our purpose of the meeting (Teamwork, personal responsibility, future orientation) to clear outstanding examples. Feedback from our people confirmed a positive feeling.

Federico Sarzi Braga, Country Business Manager, Nestlé Waters UK

I’ve known and worked with Damian for a number of years. In particular, I hired Damian to deliver a workshop for me in 2008 with a very challenging set of goals. I needed the workshop to be energising, inspirational, engaging and meaningful for a new team who were starting to work together on improving the culture in their department. Damian worked closely with us building the agenda and helping us plan for maximum impact, and he really delivered on all of what we needed. The day and a half he spent with the team was fun, full of useful and exciting content, and the team came away feeling ready to take on the world! We were able to build very effectively on the time we had spent together – the team members took so much of Damian’s inspiration to heart and left full of ideas and energy to make a success of their work. His approach, style, communication methods, exercises and content are all quite unique – I’ve never seen or worked with anyone else who can bring so much energy and humour while always ensuring the serious and necessary messages get across. The difference that he made to our whole programme was phenomenal and I would highly recommend his approach and services.

Emma Finlay, HR Manager, Unilever

“Damian spoke at a recent leadership event. He was the end of day speaker and his insightful, down to earth, plain speaking style kept the whole audience engaged for the entire time he spoke. Damian’s mix of theory and real life examples gave everyone something to think about and provided some easy to try tips for use in everyday life and as the leader of teams. The team who participated in the session were unanimous in their positive view of the content, delivery and practical application of the messages, which fitted perfectly with the key messages from the rest of the event. I would recommend Damian as a speaker who will bring theory to life in an engaging way and who will leave your team talking about it long after the event.”

Louise Alford, Director of Business HR, BskyB

Damian came to speak to a variety of our colleagues. All of the 100 delegates who came along to Damian’s session chose to come along, because they felt they could develop more in the area of being a real Change Catalyst.

Every single person who attended absolutely loved the session and really got something from it that will help them in their development journey.

We got comments like;

“Brilliant, inspirational, fun” (Sarah Bowness – Boots UK) and “I was looking for challenge and a reminder that life’s all about choices and taking responsibility for them. That’s exactly what Damian gave me.” (Rosa DeBalsi – Boots UK).

I am so delighted with not only what Damian said, but how he provoked thinking to a wide range of people from senior leaders to colleagues – Damian’s message is relevant to all and I would urge everyone of you to either read his books, watch his videos but even better get to see him in the flesh. A true inspiration and a real thought provoker!

Sarah White, Head of Capability, Boots UK

We used Damian as our main speaker at our conference in 2009, he made such a lasting impact on the attitude and behaviours of managers that we invited him back in 2010. The nervousness in using a speaker two years in a row is that they say the same things just differently. Certainly not the case with Damian, he listened to what we needed the outcomes to be, took time to understand the business situation and put together a session that hit the spot. I found Damian refreshing, innovative and massively motivational, the content of his presentation was relevant and business focussed and engaged all of our managers. I would definitely look to use Damian again for our management conference.

Claire Buckingham, Personnel Manager, John Lewis

Great content, insights and delivery!

Many thanks to Damian for his contribution in making our event a huge hit. Damian came on the journey of planning with us, carefully understanding our requirements and tailoring his approach accordingly.

Damian’s passion, knowledge and delivery style took the event to another level. On the day, Damian was flexible in his pace and appropriateness of material to suit the changing dynamics of the audience.

Damian, once again, many thanks.

Nadeem Patel, Campaign & Strategy Manager, BAE Systems

Damian joined us at a recent team day and the response from colleagues was fantastic. Our company strategy is based on ensuring ‘Everyone is Better Off’ and on this day we are happy to say that all colleagues who attended were ‘Better Off’ by the end of the event. Damian drew people in with such ease and his down to earth approach allowed colleagues to absorb the messages so easily. It was refreshing not to drown in Change theory and models, but to be able to recognise and learn new and practical ways to tackle work and personal challenges. His approach is very refreshing, innovative and thought provoking, using sports analogies and a range of stories from his experiences was massively motivational. We look forward to working with Damian again in the future.

Julie Andrew, Learning & Development Manager, Virgin Money

Damian was asked to help our team think about engaging an organisation after a period of significant change. He inspired the room with his down to earth approach, fabulous stories and really challenged our thinking on what effective communication really is. I would recommend Damian as a speaker for any group looking for new thinking and inspirational leadership ideas; delivered in a way that really makes you challenge yourself and consider why you didn’t think of that because it’s explained in such a simple common sense way.

Clare Hall, Senior Vice President, People, McDonald’s

Damian has a really rich experience across many sectors. His involvement with leading sporting organisations provides an insight, outside of the normal business environment, that challenges the way that individuals approach change and deliver winning results through the team. Damian always scores highly in feedback. People will leave these sessions really challenging themselves on what they need to do differently to deliver success. His communication of the key points is enhanced by the use of many different media.

David Goadby, Sales Director, British Gas

“Seven years ago Damian inspired, provoked and challenged me when I attended one of his Liquid Thinking sessions and I have incorporated my learnings from this session into every part of my life personal and professional. Seven years on and Damian has done it again. Using thought provoking and inspiring stories he has challenged and inspired us and more importantly given us a common language with which we all can use.
Thank you Damian!”

Emma Mirrington, Head of Talent, Mars Chocolate UK

Having read this book, I am flattered that I have been presented as a role model and am delighted to be asked by Damian to offer a foreword for ‘Liquid Thinking’.

As someone that has achieved many of my own personal goals and experienced the satisfaction from doing so, I would recommend that you adopt the lessons and techniques, which are captured in this excellent book, to greatly assist you in achieving your own ambitions.

Go ahead. Take the plunge and become a fellow liquid thinker.

Sir Richard Branson

Working with Damian on our corporate talent programmes, shows my belief in what I think he delivers for us. His highly adaptive, engaging style means that he uses stories and anecdotes, to bring psychological concepts and ideas to life, to appeal to the widest audience. He draws on a incredibly wide breadth of experience, to bring things to life, and is very responsive to using his expertise to provide ideas/solutions to every day issues that our senior managers are grappling with. His workshops have made our participants much more aware of consciously managing their responses and their impact with others, to encourage a more coaching/people focused approach in our senior managers.

Jo Freeman, Leadership & Talent Development Manager, Nationwide

Very rarely in my experience do you speak to people who have attended a one-day Corporate event and phrases such as “extremely thought provoking’, “I am determined to do something with those ideas”, “enjoyed every minute” and “great practical advice” trip off the tongue so readily. This is exactly what happened though, following a session that Damian ran for us about behaviors and developing high performing teams.

All who attended seem to have taken something from the session and we’ve already seen tripwires being put in place!

Booking Damian for our latest management off-site has been proven to be a very sound decision. Aside from his obvious expertise and enthusiasm for the subject of self development and team dynamics, Damian was able to relate to an office environment and transform what people may think only applies to elite sporting teams, into actions anyone can use and implement.


Richard Bowden, Head of Process & Change Management, Santander