Inspire. Your Team. Switched. and. How to Engage. Interview with Chris Atkinson

Transcription

1 R Thik Critically i Ifluece Profoudly i Iovate like a Etrepreeur ISSUE 33 Iterview with Chris Atkiso How to Egage Ispire Your Team ad

2 How to Egage Ispire Your Team ad Photo credit: Dmitriy Shiroosov/123RF.com Iterview with Chris Atkiso

3 Audio Podcast: Iteret Coectio Required CC: Hello ad welcome to O Leadership, I m Christele Caard ad I have great pleasure i itroducig my guest today Chris Atkiso. Chris is a iteratioal busiess speaker ad author who combies a strog commercial approach with a deep uderstadig of huma psychology. He has qualificatios i the fields of psychology ad cousellig from the Uiversity of Bristol, i the UK. Startig his speakig career i 2001, Chris has ow worked i over 22 coutries worldwide with more tha 43 differet atioalities. He has spoke i frot of a estimated 30,000 people worldwide. He is reowed as a speaker, master traier ad facilitator who specializes i audiece egagemet, orgaizatioal culture ad ispirig leadership. His ew book, Corporate Eergy: How to Egage ad Ispire Audieces is due for release o the 26 th of August. Chris, welcome to O Leadership. CA: Great to speak with you, hello.

4 CC: Chris, I am iterested i what drives you. What s the impact you are hopig to make i the world? CA: As you metioed i your itroductio, I ve worked with a lot of people over may years. Whe I reflect o all those people that I have worked with (all of which was i the commercial world) I woder how may felt passio for their work or eve ejoyed it at a miimum stadard. Eve if we estimate that fifty percet of the people that I ve worked with ejoyed their job which I believe is probably sigificatly too high it is still a horrifyig thought. Imagie, all these people spedig all day log i their office, doig somethig that is t somehow satisfyig them, or erichig their life i some way. To me that is fudametally depressig. It is worryig ad it feels dysfuctioal i some way. So the impact I hope to make i the world is: I wat to help people coect with some passio ad ejoymet for workig life. CC: Yes, I agree. We sped so much time at work, that it ca be souldestroyig if you caot coect to

5 a deeper meaig or purpose. I thik it s a great cause. What is your key message Chris? What would you like to see happe for listeers as a result of this iterview? CA: My fudametal belief is that the job is t the problem here. This is t about the ature of work itself. It would be easy for people to say, I work i this idustry or I do this type of work, so how am I goig to fid pleasure? Maybe that s a misiterpretatio that everyoe should be boucig ito work every day. I m ot goig that far. What I m sayig rather, is that it s a issue of corporate culture ad attitude. I ve see teams ad people fid pleasure ad satisfactio eve excitemet from the most challegig or seemigly mootoous roles. I ve worked with water compaies with teams of people who deal with our waste water ad they are literally doig the grimiest, toughest job you could imagie. I ve worked with these teams of people who absolutely love what it is that they do. They feel like they are heroes goig out doig the work that o oe else wats to do. They take huge pride i their work. I do a lot of work i the automotive idustry. People who work i the maufacturig side of the automotive idustry ofte have jobs where they have secods to do their job before the maufacturig lie moves o. Your job is to repeat the same process, every 20, 30 or 40 secods. You ca imagie that beig mootoous, but somehow whe compaies get it right the culture, the attitude of the people, the camaraderie of the staff it makes it work. So it s ot about the job. It s about the culture ad the attitude of people. That s the message I wat to get across. CC: The focus of your book is o egagig ad ispirig audieces. Some people however thik that work is work. Why do you thik ispiratio ad egagemet are so importat? Why should busiess leaders give it serious cosideratio? CA: I m goig to be careful ot to get o a soapbox here. This is a issue that I have a fudametal challege with. I mostly work with seior teams ad executive level withi orgaizatios. These people are makig hard-edged,

6 It s ot about the job. It s about the culture ad the attitude of people. commercial decisios about the future for their orgaizatios. These decisios ofte ivolve a ivestmet of millios of dollars or sigificat sums of moey. Imagie if I sat aroud that boardroom ad I said, We ve got this ew techology ad we believe it ca icrease your profitability by 12% or We have evidece to show that it icreases productivity of your workforce by 18% or We have a ew customer relatioship software, ad it ca icrease your customer satisfactio by 12%. Would the board of a compay be iterested i some techology that could achieve those results? I d be dam sure they would. I thik they would jump o it. These are the exact statistics Gallup foud whe they looked at 263 differet studies of egagemet, coverig 1.4 millio employees. A massive piece of research, lookig at thousads of differet orgaizatios ad people across loads of differet coutries. What they foud is a 12% icrease i customer satisfactio; 18% icrease i productivity; 12% icrease i profitability. They foud 147% higher earigs per share for orgaizatios that have high egagemet. What I do t uderstad is, whe I sit i frot of boards ad talk to them about the importace of ivestig i icreasig employee egagemet, why it feels like a uphill battle? My feelig is that if I was offerig them a piece of software, or a techology solutio, or some ew process, they would jump o it. They would probably make millios of dollars available. The ivestmet i IT ifrastructure is huge. Ad those are oly the positive beefits thigs it improves. You ca eve look at it from the other side thigs it reduces. Safety issues: reduced by 62%. Reductios i staff turover. I the UK we have a publicly fuded body called ACAF. They looked at the cost of replacig a sigle employee. They estimated that the cost of replacig a sigle employee was thirty thousad UK pouds. That was based o 28 weeks of lost productivity, estimated as oe of the costs icurred whilst the ew perso comes o board. That s 30,000 per employee. I the Gallup survey, they foud that for high or low turover orgaizatios, it ca be aywhere betwee a thirty to fifty percet reductio of staff turover. You ca put real umbers o these figures. You could literally calculate what they would mea for ay give orgaizatio. I thik these issues should be cosidered with a high level of importace at a corporate ad

7 strategic level. Yet somehow they ted to get overlooked. Maagers are beig drive very hard by their bosses, ad they wat to get the best from their teams. All of the research ad data is sayig that highly egaged people people who are ispired ad motivated i their work deliver measurable, quatitatively differet returs for their orgaizatio. So to me, it s a commercial topic as well as a emotioal oe. CC: We ca t igore those figures. Regardig the employees, you metioed earlier, that were ispired by their work. How much of that was due to the corporate culture ad how much to the idividual? CA: The aswer is probably ot goig to be either or. There are certaily differet levels at which this ca happe. The easiest level is at the level of corporate culture. If you ca defie a culture where people are ecouraged ad supported; where you are actively seekig the best positios for each perso i order to get the most out of them. Agai, Gallop has a lot of ivestmet i the stregths based approach. We kow that a stregths based approach also drives egagemet. This is where people are playig towards the thigs they are good at, rather tha havig a performace maagemet system where you go, What are you ot good at? Well, you eed to improve that. This geerally puts people o a egative cycle. Photo credit: rido/123rf.com

8 Photo credit: gajus/123rf.com O oe level, if you ca get the culture right the as people are comig ito the orgaizatio they are almost idoctriated ito this positive eviromet. Ad it becomes self-sustaiig. However, lots of cliets I work with are simply too large to be able to make that kid of shift culturally. So what you ed up with are pockets of high egagemet, ad divisios that outperform other divisios. Whe you look at those divisios (ad i aswer to your questio, how did that happe?) what you will ormally fid is a leader. Normally somebody, with some ifluece i the orgaizatio, has take that team or that divisio ad goe right, this is how I wat it to be i this area. They kid of made it happe, almost like i a protective bubble from the rest of the orgaizatio. I ve see this over ad over agai i my career. Oe or two leaders withi a larger orgaizatio who have maaged to shelter their people ad create the culture that they wated. Ad those people deliver. They really deliver great results. CC: That s ecouragig. Eve if you are ot the head of the orgaizatio you ca still have a tremedous impact o raisig the egagemet of your team ad your colleagues. CA: Yes. If I could add to that. You ve got to remember, orgaizatios are basically built aroud metrics ad measures. Oe way or aother, you are beig almost purely evaluated o your deliverables. It would be ice to thik that there s also the softer side ad the

9 more positive orgaizatios do have that. But for the most part, you are beig measured o a output. Therefore, if you are a maager or leader as log as you are reportig the figures ad the umbers that the wider orgaizatio requires from your team or departmet what you do withi your departmet ca be a little bit more creative ad disruptive. To some extet, I would eve ecourage you to challege the boudaries of your orgaizatioal processes. There will be certai thigs that will be uderstood that you ca t do, but geerally if you are deliverig results there is a lot more tolerace. I would say, report out of your departmet what is required, but how you structure ad maage your team iterally should t be defied by the wider orgaizatio. You ca take some risk there. CC: What makes a perso ispiratioal? Is it somethig that ca be taught? True ispiratio is a fuctio of your autheticity. For me, ispiratio came most strogly from research by two researchers called Zeger ad Folkma. They are very big i the area of positive psychology ad stregth-based approach. They looked at 30,000 maagers ad took feedback from 300,000 of the peer group. What they were iterested i, which I thik was woderfully cotroversial, was the bottom 1%. They looked at the worst performig people. They wated to see whether there were characteristics that were see oly i the bottom 1%. Characteristics that we do t see i other magers. They wated to fid what they call the fatal flaws. The absolute fatal flaws of maagers. They came up with a top te list. You ca fid this olie. It s a great study. Number oe o their list the umber oe thig out of everythig that people could say about the failigs of the bottom oe percet was a failure to ispire people, because of a lack of eergy ad ethusiasm. CA: Ispiratio is the other half of the egagemet bit. Egagemet is my feelig towards my work. Ad the the complemetary part is, I have a maager, or a boss, or a leader who ispires me. Whe the leader is ispiratioal egagemet teds to sort of match. The two are complemetary to each other. Ad so for me this is a really key topic. Sometimes I thik we pick the wrog role models whe we thik about whether someoe is ispiratioal. We have quite a US cetric view of what ispiratioal or motivatioal speakers are like. It is very heavily iflueced by the media exposure that speakers i the US ted to get.

10 The big o-stage, extroverted character is oly oe small subset of how people are ispired. Whe you actually look at what ispires people, you fid that true ispiratio is a fuctio of your autheticity. I my book, I sped a lot of time talkig about this. It s ot a fuctio of how extroverted you are, or how over-thetop, or eve how impressive you are. It s about how authetic you are. To what extet you are able to speak from the heart. That s somethig people overlook whe they thik about whether they ca be ispiratioal. Ad if they are both you, why are you differet? You are you. So it s as if you are hidig oe part of yourself from oe or either of those circumstaces. We take that almost etirely for grated. The other thig is, I m ot sure to what extet i orgaizatios we have a culture where people are ope ad emotioal i frot of their colleagues. You ca t ispire someoe uless you are yourself beig emotioal. You ca t ispire people through itellect. It is a So ca it be taught? Yes of course. If aythig, it s about droppig the mask a little bit. Which is beig more yourself. CC: I do t kow how easy that is for people to do sometimes. What suggestios would you have to get people to be more authetic? CA: Yes, I thik the issue is that it s easier said tha doe. You are right to observe that. We have created, I suppose, professioal lives that do t look like our home life. It s ot ucommo for someoe to say, I m a differet perso at work tha I am at home. We do t eve thik that that is a surprisig or a shockig thig to say. Whe you stop to thik about it, that s ot okay actually. What do you mea you are a differet perso? Which oe is you ad which oe is ot you? Or are they both you? Photo credit: Luca Bertolli/123RF.com

11 You ca t ispire people through itellect. It is a emotioal experiece. emotioal experiece. I do t kow to what extet we have orgaizatios that are ope to people speakig emotios. Maybe you get ager or frustratio, whe people thump a table or shout at a team member. I do t kow that we have that level of opeess. So i terms of practical advice, I would say it s a little bit about less of some thigs ad more of the others. Firstly, let s discuss the less. We eed to have less differece betwee who we are at home ad at work. That distictio is from a busiess culture of days goe by. That time has goe ow. Ad ow for the more. The more authetic you are, the more you show people you work with who you are, the more likely they will trust ad respect you. Why ot talk about yourself as the perso you are the good, the bad ad the challeges you have? Be a whole perso. The fact that we segregate bits of our life that we do ot expose to our colleagues, i some ways dimiishes the level of trust they have i us, because they do t kow us. I m ot suggestig you expose your deepest, darkest secrets, or you brig iappropriate material ito the workplace. Breé Brow has the most amazig Ted Talk. If you go olie ad look for it, you ll see it has millios of hits. She talks about the power of vulerability. What she says is, whe people speak from the heart ad risk vulerability by showig emotios, other people the trust i them. They coect with you. I that space betwee people, is where ispiratio teds to live. That s the ispiratio part, but I do wat to also address the egagemet part. Withi the egagemet part is oe other more. Ad that is, you do eed a bit more eergy ad ethusiasm i the way that you speak to people. I thik the assumptio is that whe I am speakig or presetig to my team, it should be a very comfortable experiece. But actually that s ot the truth of it. Whe I fiish presetig or I fiish facilitatig a evet, I m exhausted. I m totally shattered. It s a full-o physical experiece. My whole body, my mid, my voice I m pushig myself as much as I ca. It s a form of athleticism to keep your eergy level high, whilst payig attetio to the audiece. I just woder whether leaders appreciate that this process that we are speakig about, should be effortful. It should take sigificat effort. You should sit dow feelig exhausted. If after havig spoke to your team, you are ot exhausted whe you sit dow, you have probably ot put eough ito it.

12 Photo credit: Wavebreak Media Ltd/123RF.com CC: Yes, it does take a lot of focus, a lot of effort. Ad I agree with you, the most powerful thig we ca do is show our vulerability. After all, we do t like perfect people. There is somethig strage about people that preted to be perfect. CA: Huma istict would suggest that if I show vulerability, I m showig you weakess. Therefore, you will thik I am weak, especially if I am a leader. Why would I expose what I cosider to be a egative trait my vulerability? I would veture that where we are headig i the moder world is towards the premise that whe you are vulerable, people trust you more. They are more willig to ope up to you about their vulerability. You build stroger, deeper relatioships. Ad the you get the performace beefits. CC: Whe you share your vulerability people coect with you o a deeper level. I thik speakers have tapped ito that but ot ecessarily leaders withi orgaizatios. CA: Yes, absolutely. Maybe what I should emphasize is the idea that if I m deliverig a presetatio the of course I would put more eergy ito it. Leaders are very little if ot speakers. You could argue that if you are ot speakig you are probably doig the work. Ad if

13 you are doig the work you probably have t delegated eough. As a leader, the best thig you ca do is to fully empower your team to do as much of the job. If you are doig the work, you are probably thikig, Why am I doig this? The priciple should be to work through the team as much as possible ad be a support for the team. Ad i that circumstace, what are you if ot a commuicator? That s all you are doig. You re right, it s perhaps easier for people to imagie that whe they are ostage they would tur it o. But this is t about that. This is about the daily briefigs; the weekly meetigs; whe you are just chattig to people ad talkig to them about their job. I these istaces, how are you commuicatig? If I had to put moey o it, my bet would be that you are commuicatig i the followig way. How are you doig agaist your target? Are you goig to get that report i o time? Ca you review this for me? Totally uemotioal; totally practical. Treatig people like a robot. Focused o whether they are workig right. Are you fuctioal right ow? Rather tha what we ve bee talkig about, which is quite a differet coversatio. CC: What skills do leaders eed to have i order to egage ad ispire? CA: That is a relatively large questio, but what I ca say i simple terms is it defiitely lies withi the commuicatios skills set. This whole topic ad everythig that I have writte i the book, is a lot harder to implemet if you are ot firstly comfortable stadig i frot of people. You do t have to be the extrovert but you have to be able to stad i frot of people ad be i cotrol of body laguage, erves, ad those types of thigs. That s a fudametal. You eed good questioig skills, which is strogly liked to coachig. It s also easier if you are a facilitator rather tha a tell perso. It takes a level of risktakig to do thigs like story-tellig ad creativity. You itegrate these skills ito a package, ad that package becomes your commuicatio style. CC: What s oe tip that we could implemet tomorrow, that would help us i this area? CA: I m goig to give you oe ad a half tips! The simplest tip, ad it s the most obvious really, is to tur off techology. PowerPoit is the eemy of this topic. Our default commuicatio style i orgaizatios has become slides. Ad what you commoly get whe you have a slideshow, is a leader who stads up ad arrates a series of slides. Whe you stop ad thik about it, how crazy is it that we have all these leaders who just stad ad arrate slideshows. The we had over to the ext perso who stads ad arrates their slideshow. I the book I say, if everythig you are goig to say is o the slide, just cacel the meetig. Save everyoe some time, just sed them the slides. There s o poit you stadig ad presetig the slides. People ca read it quicker ad more coveietly i their ow time.

14 There is a idea i the academic world called flipped classroom. What they try ad do i flipped classroom is sed out the readig i advace. The classroom the becomes this dyamic, coversatio eviromet. It puts a bit of resposibility o the people, because if you have t doe the readig, the of course you do t get the value. Ad maybe that s what we do t trust, ad why we use PowerPoit so much. Stop gettig people to stad up ad just preset their metrics ad measures. Start havig a coversatio with people. Start havig a dialogue. That is for me the umber oe tip. But I did have a half tip. Oce you have tured PowerPoit off, ad you are discussig ad talkig with people the talk more from the heart. Talk more about your feeligs ad how you are experiecig thigs, ad where your cocers are. Ask people where their cocers are. Get away from just talkig about the umbers ad the outputs. You ll fid there is a whole coversatio existig i your team that you just do t kow about. You ve got o access to it because you have ever had that coversatio before. But it s there. It s there right ow, today! People have all of these cocers, fears, worries, ad assumptios. We just do t access that kowledge. CC: Yes, that s true. That s powerful. I like that. Besides Whe you are vulerable, people trust you more. PowerPoit are there ay other big mistakes we make i this area? I m sure there are a few. What are the most commo? CA: Okay, if we are goig for the most commo mistakes, the we are movig i a slightly differet directio, cotet wise. I watch a lot of leaders ad the most commo mistakes are actually aroud body laguage issues ad voice toe. People ot appreciatig the impact that their total commuicatio is havig. It souds like a really small thig. Or maybe it souds like a basic thig, but the reality is, whe you go ad watch a lot of leaders, they seem to be fidgetig ad they do t look comfortable. They ted to move aroud istead of stadig still. Geerally, if you wat to commuicate, you do t wat to be shufflig aroud, or movig sideto-side, or pacig up ad dow like a caged lio. People ted to look at the scree. Agai this is partially liked to the PowerPoit issue. People ted to look at their slides. Ad the if they are lookig at their slides, they go oe step further ad read from their slides. Like the world s worse teleprompter. I m goig to have a teleprompter, but I m goig to let you see it. I m ot eve goig to try ad hide it. I m actually goig to tur ad

15 Photo credit: Natthapog Khromkrathok/123RF.com read it i frot of you. To me that is really shockig! I discuss body laguage, toe of voice, how you should stad, ad how you should use your voice i the book. I do recogize that for a lot of people that may feel like basic thigs. If you wat oe thig that coects more strogly to the idea of corporate eergy, it would be to stop talkig at people. Stop lecturig at people, ad start ivolvig them. Start discussig ad explorig ideas with them, rather tha tellig them thigs. That would be the big mistakes I see. CC: Would you do that by askig quality questios? CA: Yes if you are takig a facilitatio approach. That is probably the strogest etry poit ito this whole area. The other techiques, like showmaship ad ispirig people through your experieces, are quite advaced techiques. I do recogize they take practice. The easiest etry poit is to be a great facilitator. Those skills are completely cosistet with coachig skills ask rather tha tell. Lear to ask good questios. But who thiks they are bad at questioig? It souds like the most basic 101 Level Commuicatio s subject. It is t. If you liste to most questios that people ask, it goes like this: Do you? Ca you? Have you? Is that because? Are there? All of these closed questios are filled with your assumptio. You are essetially leadig the audiece ito givig

16 you the aswer that you thik. They are ot good questios. Whe you say, is that because you do t have eough time? you are suggestig they do t have eough time. Ca you do it differetly? Is there some way you ca improve the process? You are makig suggestios. You are ot really coachig or facilitatig. You are leadig. So yes, it is tied to facilitatio. It s a great way i. These skills are woderful to master. To be a great questioer will certaily help you i ay leadership career. But do t assume they are easy. It takes years of practice to make it really clea ad sharp. CC: It feels like this requires a lot of self-reflectio ad thikig about how others are respodig to our message. I m ot sure if i busiess, people are thikig eough i this way. CA: No ad I suppose you also have to cosider what level of feedback you are gettig, ad to what extet you ca be sure that you are gettig hoest feedback. At oe level, whe I am stadig ad presetig alogside a slideshow, probably 70% of my focus is goig to be o the slideshow ad ot o the audiece, which is a fudametal mistake. Ask yourself: am a readig my Photo credit: rawpixel/123rf.com

17 Photo credit: Oleg Dudko/123RF.com audiece? I meetigs may people have their laptops ope. Are they doig their ig? If so, why are we all here? Or are they checkig their phoe? Or are they lookig bored? A lot of times, maagers ad leaders do t seem to respod whe they see people lookig bored. Or maybe that s the reaso for my book. Maybe they just do t kow what to do to chage it. So they thik, Well I ll just carry o, because I do t kow what to do. Ad the of course you have to questio whether you are gettig hoest feedback. You could look at

18 360-degree assessmet or somethig like that. Some way by which you ca idepedetly ask people with o fear of reprisals how you are doig. Certaily, feedback is the lifeblood of leadership. Costatly checkig. How am I doig? What do you eed from me? What ca I do more of? What ca I do less of? If you trust your people to be hoest, just ask them. Do t sped the moey o surveys. I would do a quality check every few years. Some sort of 360-degree assessmet, just to make sure I m ot deluded i some way. CC: Yes, it s easy to delude ourselves. I m goig to give you a plug for your book, because just readig your book will make us thik about all the thigs we ca be doig differetly. Ad if we are ot doig the thigs you are suggestig, the we eed to cosider what impressio we are makig. Are we ispirig ad egagig others or disegagig them ad borig them to tears? CA: That s my hope for the book, that it makes a real differece to the people who read it, ad therefore their teams, ad with luck, their whole orgaizatio. That s the aspiratio for sure. CC: Chris, what s oe fial piece of advice you would like to leave listeers? CA: I would say that there is a tesio i orgaizatios betwee maagemet ad leadership. The desire to cotrol, measure, icetivize, ad puish, is aliged with maagemet. This topic, which we have bee discussig, aroud freedom, growth, happiess, ad gettig people egaged i their work, is much more aliged with leadership. The corporate world is chagig. I do t believe that people will be satisfied with stayig i a job whe they are ot ejoyig themselves. Ad for that reaso, the fial piece of advice is, if you do t fid a way to challege your behavior, you are goig to ed up lookig like a diosaur i the orgaizatio. We all have that fear, that as we progress i our careers, we are goig to look like the old bloke who was out of touch whe we were the youg recruit. My fial piece of advice: you have to cosider the level of iput that you are givig people, of yourself. We are way beyod seeig orgaizatios as machiery. That was a view from the last cetury, eve loger. We have to start to evolve our thikig. Tur off PowerPoit; get talkig to people; start talkig about differet topics; start revealig more of yourself; start ivolvig them i coversatio. These are ot difficult thigs to do. They just require a chage i behavior. CC: You are right. It is best to start ow rather tha wait util we are forced to chage. CA: It ca oly be great for your career. The sooer you get oto this stuff, the sooer you are goig to see people respodig differetly. Your team will start to get oticed. You ll

19 start to get oticed. Eve from a purely selfish poit of view, it s a better tactic. CC: Ad I thik it s a far more ejoyable, fulfillig way to work. It creates a much icer eviromet. CA: I hope so. CC: Where ca listeers go to fid out more about you ad your book? CA: The book has its ow website. We have some sample chapters so people ca get a feel for the toe of the book. We ve got some free dowloads, videos ad all sorts of thigs. The easiest way to fid all that is to go to my website which is You ca fid all the liks there. You ca go through to the book from there. You ca also fid other thigs I have writte ad some videos of me speakig. That s the place to go. You ca order the book from there as well as Amazo. CC: Brilliat. Thak you Chris for sharig your valuable isights. As leaders it s importat we take resposibility for ispirig ad egagig our team. Ad as you so eloquetly explaied there is a real commercial reaso for us to do so. Your book Corporate Eergy, is ot oly isightful but I foud it comprehesive. Ad the best thig is its filled with practical tips ad techiques ayoe ca apply straight away. Chris thak you for your time today. CA: Thak you so much. busiess sectors i over 22 coutries worldwide with more tha 43 differet atioalities. He has spoke i frot of a estimated 30,000 people worldwide. Chris Atkiso Chris Atkiso is a iteratioal busiess speaker ad author who combies a strog commercial approach with a deep uderstadig of huma psychology. He has qualificatios i the fields of psychology ad cousellig from the Uiversity of Bristol, UK. Startig his speakig career i 2001, Chris has ow worked with diverse He is reowed as a speaker, master traier ad facilitator who specializes i audiece egagemet, orgaizatioal culture ad ispirig leadership. Chris has bee featured o the frot covers of iteratioal publicatios ad has writte umerous magazie articles with a readership coverig the UK, Europe, North America ad Australia. His latest book, Corporate Eergy: How to Egage ad Ispire Audieces is due for release o the 26th of August.