Ronan Harrington

Resilience Expert

with an inspiring story of how to lead under pressure and overcome adversity  

Biography

Ronan Harrington teaches on the KPMG C-Suite Leadership Programme and advises world leading companies on how to create healthy, high performance cultures. 

He is delighting audiences worldwide with a fresh take on resilience, revealing the hidden burnout trajectory that many of us are unwittingly on. 

Ronan is an expert on the neuroscience of resilience, delivering world class resilience programmes to major institutions and organisations including the British Government, Sky, and Oxford University. His talks draw on a fascinating array of expertise, including working as a Lead Futurist to the British Foreign Office (at the age of 24), writing a report on the world of 2030 and how the UK should respond.

In his keynotes, audiences are introduced to a new way of working grounded in the science of resilience, with practical tools to operate at peak performance without compromising our health. His delivery is a delightful blend of humorous reflection that encourages us to laugh at ourselves and catchy takeaways that are perfect to share later with families and teams. 

Ronan’s ultimate power as a keynote speaker is to serve as a cautionary tale that inspires change. With rare vulnerability, Ronan shares how he went from leading a global movement to being diagnosed with a debilitating chronic illness. Clients often describe being deeply moved by Ronan’s story of burnout and credit him with inspiring a deeper commitment to change how they work. 

Now more than ever, we need guidance on how to keep going in the face of adversity. Ronan’s story is a moving reminder that even most difficult circumstances are an invitation to transform.

Topics

From Burnout to Resilience 

Ronan reveals the hidden drivers of burnout, and how outdated ways of working put us on a trajectory that harms both health and revenue. 

Audiences are introduced to a new way of working, grounded in the science of resilience, with practical tools to operate at peak performance without compromising our health. 

The keynote’s primary power is as a cautionary tale that inspires change. With rare vulnerability, Ronan shares how he went from leading a global movement to being diagnosed with a debilitating chronic illness, as a direct consequence of burnout. 

His journey to overcome adversity is an inspiring reminder that most difficult circumstances are an invitation to transform. Audiences leave with a renewed commitment to take their resilience seriously.  

A Step by Step Guide to Becoming Resilient

Ronan provides the essential skills and tools you need to become truly resilient. It includes the latest insights from the neuroscience of resilience on how to master habit formation, set boundaries, reset your relationship with addictive technology, reduce your exposure to disruptions, process difficult emotions, develop a resilient mindset, bounce back from difficulty, and cultivate reset and renewal.

How to Create a Healthy, High Performance Culture

Ronan teaches the secret formula that winning teams use to perform at peak levels without burning out and losing morale. You will learn how to activate a resilience mindset, deepen self awareness and emotional intelligence, create psychological safety, overcome blame culture, embody deeper levels of vulnerability, practise interpersonal candour, and master the art of appreciation. Learn how to create healthy, high performance environments where your teams are excited to do their best work.

Masterclasses

You may want to go deeper with your audience. Masterclasses can be tailored and developed to suit your audience needs, be it a 90-minute Masterclass, a half-day or full-day workshop or a full online or face-to-face programme. Please contact one of our expert team to discuss.

Becoming Resilient: an 8 Step Plan
Ronan will teach a blend of skills to tolerate difficulty, soothe stress, manage difficult thoughts and emotion, and recover the body from intense periods of exertion. He also addresses other causes of overwhelm: how to protect your work agenda, overcoming screen addiction, setting boundaries, designing your life to maintain high well being, reducing your exposure to curve balls, detached problem solving, and cultivating a resilient mindset.

He will also give a primer on the neuroscience of habit formation, which is essential for people to integrate these practices. Each content block has a series of practices which can be done live, depending on the time allocated.

The presentation is accompanied by a 20 page handout so everyone can have a reminder and step by step practice instructions on their desks back home.

Creating a Healthy, High Performance Culture
Ronan will introduce leaders to the 10 leadership mindsets, behaviours and skills that are central to modelling a healthy, high performance culture. He will give practical inquiry tools to deepen self awareness and clarity around leadership dilemmas. He will then cover how to create a culture of psychological safety, candour and vulnerability to deepen honesty and trust amongst senior leadership teams.

This masterclass can be followed by a six session learning journey where leaders meet for one hour every two weeks to integrate the frameworks and tools and practice new leadership behaviours.

The presentation is accompanied by a 20 page handout so everyone can have a reminder and step by step practice instructions on their desks back home.

Testimonials

“Ronan is a world class resilience teacher. His ability to connect leaders to themselves and each other is rare” John Waterfield, Head of Strategic Relationships, KPMG

“I left Ronan’s talk truly speechless and determined to take better care of myself. He tells his resilience story through sharing deeply moving lived experiences, anchoring it with compelling science, breathing it to life with humour and relatability – a rare, powerful alchemy that goes so far beyond a typical “keynote speaker” it seems a miss to even refer to it as that. Essential. Inspirational. Human.” Julia Jahn, Director, Employee Experience AKQA

“Ronan’s keynote was one of the stand out moments at our conference. A 500 person standing ovation and by all accounts, not a dry eye in the house. The right blend of intellect and emotional storytelling, he’s the ideal speaker to create a buzz on social media and intrigue about your event” Oliver Damgaard, Managing Director, HR TechX

As with all of our events we take feedback from our attendees, Ronan received a 100% feedback score which is a first across our networks since I joined the companyJoe Mullis, Programme Design Manager, KPMG Executive Leadership Programme

“Insightful, authentic and engaging. Ronan is a great presenter, taking a topic most are familiar with, but don’t really understand, unpacking the myths, laying out the systemic triggers and teaching some great scientifically backed techniques. His personal story is highly compelling and I would recommend anyone working in a high performance culture or role to spend time with Ronan.” Chris McBrayne, VP Technology, IBM

 

“I’ve told so many people about Ronan’s talk as it was one of the most thought provoking and poignant presentations I’ve ever had”
Dave Exall, Chief Information and Digital Transformation Officer, Simply Health

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