Testimonials

I'm so please we invited Damian to be the Keynote Speaker at our recent Conference on Navigating Transformation. We were delighted with the excellent feedback from delegates. His presentation on Change really resonated with the audience, who told us they found it educational, practical and entertaining. Delegates noted how relevant his framework for change was to them, as they implement change in their organisations. Damian was fantastic at bringing energy to the room towards the end of a very busy conference and rounding up the day nicely. Personally, I found Damian and his team wonderful to deal with in the lead-up to the event.

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!

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.

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.

The motivational speaker at the the Hudl Sales Summit is always a highly anticipated session. Finding the right speaker who is in tune with our industry (Sports + Technology), but can also bring a new perspective, new thoughts and ideas, and inspire the team is a challenge we always relish. Damian was able to fit the bill perfectly. He spent time initially learning about our company, our objectives, our culture and the challenges and opportunities ahead, which enabled him to tailor his content and delivery to the needs of our business. The whole team thoroughly enjoyed the thought provoking and inspiring session about building a commitment culture and high performing team. Since the event it’s been great to hear the team referencing Damian’s actionable insight in their daily roles. I look forward to working with Damian again in the future.

Damian joined us at our away day for senior managers and leaders with a brief of building on the high performing team principle and the power of acting as one. His key note presentation smashed the brief and created a huge amount of positive feedback, but most importantly left everyone feeling as though they had a clear part to play. His ability to land his point through story telling and maintain engagement of over 150 people for 90 minutes straight after lunch was testament to his approach, professionalism and skill. Alongside this he was a genuinely nice guy, whose humble approach was both refreshing and reassuring. If you are looking for inspiration then look no further.

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.

I wanted to reach out and ask if you could pass on a huge THANK YOU to Damian for his fantastic session yesterday. It truly resonated with everyone, and I heard so many positive comments during dinner last night and throughout our discussions this morning. People were genuinely excited about the concepts he shared and how they can be applied to our specific business challenges. We will make sure to highly recommend him to other stakeholders within our business and hopefully be able to run more sessions like this with this team and others in the future.

On 7th November 2023, Damian delivered an inspirational talk on “Lessons in Transformation from the World of High Performance” at Manchester Metropolitan University. This was a key note talk, as part of the Faculty of Business and Law’s ‘Week 6: Get Career Ready’ event. This was a three day programme of sessions designed to kickstart student’s career preparation, with Damian participating in the ‘Create’ themed day of our event. This was focused on facilitating creation of career opportunities, through developing networking skills and employability strategies. Damian’s key note talk was a hugely popular session, in which 192 students attended. It was clear to see how inspirational this was for the student attendees, culminating in an engaging Q&A section following the talk. Students were inspired by this talk and are now able to utilise Damian’s guidance within their own career planning next steps. For example, Damian’s reference to anecdotal case studies to explain ways of approaching problems provided excellent insight. They also provided practical tips to empower students to tackle their own individual obstacles. The faculty careers team and event planning team were honoured to have such an engaging and inspiring talk as a stand out feature of this event.

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!

Damian’s engaging and down-to-earth style have landed exceptionally well with our leadership conferences over the last couple of years. He continues to innovate and further refine his approach; tailoring his content to match our specific event outcomes. Most recently, his five-step change cycle really landed brilliantly with our senior delegates as we embark on the next chapter in our growth journey. Thanks again Damian, look forward to further projects together! – Paul Bates I recently had the pleasure of organising an event where Damian was a speaker, and I cannot express how impactful his session was. Damian captivated the audience from the very beginning with his dynamic style. His ability to connect with the audience on a professional and personal level was remarkable. Throughout his presentation Damian shared brilliant insights and actionable strategies that were not only thought provoking but also highly relevant to our leadership team. I thoroughly recommend Damian to any organisation looking to elevate their leadership development, his expertise coupled with an engaging and brilliant delivery made for an inspiring experience.

The event went really well.. very happy with everything, thank you for asking. Damian delivered (as I knew he would) and integrated our toolkit model within his talk as we asked him to so the messages blended nicely together. I will be watching it again as there was a lot of content to digest.. but all brilliant stuff!

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.

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.

The experience of working with Damian has been truly exceptional. He speaks to, and engages with, his audience with authority, passion and humility – this is a mighty blend. Damian’s grasp of his subject matter means that the messages are consistently and constructively thought-provoking. He combines this with visuals and audio that are of the highest order all of which result in a memorable and impactful experience for attendees. Even more importantly, Damian is just one of life’s nice people. His level of affability means that the experience of doing business with him is always a pleasant and enjoyable one – he couldn’t be more generous with his time and attention in terms of delivering for us and engaging with our guests. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with Damian and Louise – I couldn’t recommend them highly enough.

Having worked with Damian for around eight years both as a guest on podcasts and a keynote speaker at conferences it is fair to say you are in no safer, nor reliable pair of hands. He is always well prepared, well organised and an absolute highlight of any event. Our last event with Damian had the audience engaged and inspired with one saying it is the best talk he had heard. We already can’t wait to work with him again!

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.

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.

I just wanted to pass on my thanks again for taking the time to participate at our event on Tuesday. Over the past three days I’ve heard so many positive comments and antidotes from colleagues, and received a number of emails from wider guests, thanking us for having you and telling me and others how much they took away from your session, and wider contribution to the other discussions you were involved in. You’ve inspired a lot of people and I am very grateful for that.

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.

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.

We invited Damian to speak at an intimate dinner we hosted for a number of our most treasured clients and he simply blew us away. His unique ability to weave storytelling and research together to share poignant insights about the characteristics and impact of high performance cultures was nothing short of inspiring. Damian is immensely knowledgeable, warm, and generous with his time and the feedback from our clients was enormously positive, with many of our guests expressing their gratitude for the actionable insights that they could apply to their own organisations. I’ve no doubt we will be inviting him back for future events.

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.

Damian was a brilliant speaker for our Ocado Townhall event. He helped our people think about how they can embed our vision and mission into their everyday roles – through a combination of inspirational stories and practical tips and advice. He was highly memorable and a pleasure to work with.

The day was incredible and honestly, the feedback that we have had on Damian’s session has blown us away. So much so that a group ended up attending his live podcast at the Lowry Theatre a few days later. His words could not have been more relevant and truer to our team and the theme of the day!

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.

As a fan of the High Performance Podcast I felt that Damian was a strong fit for our ‘Sales Kick Off’ event, but I could never have predicted just how good a decision it would be to work with him. We aligned to a very tight brief based on our very specific business needs at the time and Damian was so understanding of our challenges. We only spent a short amount of time talking in advance of the event to ensure Damian was going to be ‘on message’ – he asked really pertinent questions and showed a tremendous understanding of our sector and phase of growth of our business. He challenged us, made us think deeply about our intended outcomes and did it all whilst showing a real passion to want to do a great job. The execution was nothing short of phenomenal. anyone in the audience would have thought his deep knowledge of the culture in the teams, the data we were sharing and the future ambitions were based on at least 6-months consulting into the firm, not a page of A4 and hour long call! Damian was ultra professional, engaging, passionate, thoughtful and thought provoking. I would recommend him wholeheartedly for your business challenges and above all else, he’s a thoroughly nice person to work with.

“I have listened to him for years on his podcast and it was great hearing insights & how much of it we can make good use of going forward. Great collectively for everyone to hear, especially on culture & team building insights”. “Yesterday was fab, it was intriguing & good to discuss something different in the bigger team”. “A really good choice of speaker, he was really interesting & just the right balance of academic and celeb stories”.

Damian was fantastic yesterday. He was relaxed with everyone being around in the production area and connected with all our internal speakers and leadership team. His session was brilliant. He engaged the audience (who don’t normally engage back!) and he had their attention from the offset. He was definitely the best choice for us and he’s going to be a really hard act to follow if we do it again! Please pass on my extreme gratitude.

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.

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.