As one of the youngest female producers of the BBC’s flagship Today programme, Blaire Palmer spent a decade breaking stories and shaping the UK news agenda, before her fascination with leadership and change led her to train as one of the UK’s first corporate coaches.
Blaire is no stranger to change herself. From leaving her job at the BBC and starting her own company at 29, to becoming a digital nomad and taking her family on the road for a year, she is well-versed in the personal rollercoaster of change. She believes business can be a force for good in the world, and that work can provide us with a sense of community, meaning, and purpose.
To date, Blaire has published four books on leadership and change, including:
The Hyper-Creative Personality: How to Focus Your Ideas and Become the Most Successful Person You Know (2007): You’re highly intelligent, talented, super enthusiastic, and have brilliant ideas, but why do so many of your plans falter, why do you never seem to finish anything, and why are you not as successful as you should be?
The Recipe For Success: What Really Successful People Do and How You Can Do It Too (2009): If you’ve ever wondered what makes some people excel effortlessly at everything they do, and why others languish forever in middle-management, Blaire explains all in this book.
What’s Wrong With Work? The Five Frustrations of Work and How to Fix Them For Good (2010): We all love to hate our jobs; everyone moans about the same things: we’re not listened to, we’re not trusted, we’re weighed down by bureaucracy. Blaire confronts all the big problems he ad on and shows you what you can do about each one.
Punks in Suits: How to Lead the Workplace Reformation(2024): This book argues for the innovative “punk” leadership that liberates the rampant talent of your most important asset – your people.
SPEAKER
Unlike many speakers on the subject, her interest isn’t academic. She doesn’t speak as a business school professor or as a former CEO, instead she draws on her insights as a coach, confidante, and agent provocateur for leaders, spending most of her days supporting and guiding leaders through change as they shape their company.
Known for combining warmth and charm with a no-nonsense, straight-talking style, she shakes up our thinking and inspires audiences and leadership teams alike with her fresh ideas. Focusing on the need to re-think business and how we work for the 21st century Blaire Palmer encourages audiences to challenge everything they thought they knew.
She is able to use her expertise working in such a diverse range of businesses to make sense of the way hybrid working, generative AI, the long tail of the pandemic, growing understanding of mental health, the rising cost of living, cost of supply, and global unrest have all come together to make a uniquely contemporary crisis in the workforce.
Blaire speaks at leadership conferences around Europe and is at the forefront of new thinking about leadership and change. In her keynote speeches, she busts outdated myths of business and presents a model of the king od leaders we need now.
KEYNOTE TOPICS
Punks in Suits: How to Lead the Workplace Reformation by Harnessing Personal Leadership
The business environment has never been more challenging than it is right now, and senior leaders are the ones bearing the responsibility. Levels of trust in authority figures are as low as they’ve ever been. But what if we could turn every individual employee in the organisation into a leader? Disrupting the Victorian model of work – the hierarchy, the risk aversion, being busy over productive – may be the shot in the arm that a team needs to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. Blaire can show you how to empower individuals to go beyond merely being a team player to create a culture of personal leadership.
Main Topics:
– Leadership
– Motivation Empowerment
– Engagement
– Hierarchy Change
– Management
– Organisational Culture
Key Takeaways:
– Enabling individuals to understand their own personal contribution within an infrastructure
– Why it is no longer enough to have leadership at the top
– How every contributor to an organisation can be their own best leader
– How to meaningfully create a collaborative approach to deal with disruption and challenges
– The link between empowered employees and loyal employees
– How to do away with egos in senior management to allow all employees to do their best work
A Brilliant Gamble: Busting the Myths of Change
If there’s one thing we know by now, it’s that change is a constant. New challenges from generative Ai to the cost of living are being thrown at us every day. If teams are not ready to meet this new future head-on, it is hard to see how they will survive in a challenging work landscape. Blaire uses this speech to challenge audiences to rethink their assumptions about technology and people, as well as the role of the leader in creating organisations fit for the future.
Main Topics:
– Leadership
– Future of Work
– Disruption
– Technology
– Future-Proofing Work Culture
– Change Management
Key Takeaways:
– What teams need in order to thrive in uncertainty
– The challenges and opportunities presented by disruptive technology
– How to create a leadership culture that can weather the ever-changing workplace landscape
Seeking Expansiveness: Embracing Individuality
Of course, ‘inclusion’ is a huge buzzword right now. But what does it mean to your organisation? If it ends at the hiring stage, you won’t be creating loyal, thriving, and motivated teams, you’ll simply be meeting a quota with no benefit to your business. Inclusion has to be about every individual bringing the unique parts of themselves to work, and using them to enrich the work they’re doing. Whether that’s by leveraging the different perspectives of people at different stages of their life, from Gen Z to women in midlife, or the unique knowledge bought by employees from different cultures. Blaire brings her own personal experiences of navigating the world of work in different seasons of life and in different challenging environments to challenge ideas about what diversity really means.
Main Topics:
– Diversity
– Inclusion
– Equality
– Hybrid Working
– Wellness Culture
– Employee Retention
Key Takeaways:
– How to approach diversity and inclusion as a gift to a workplace
– Meeting people in the team in their uniqueness
– Creating a culture that prioritises wellness in exchange for individuals doing their best work
WORKSHOPS
As well as keynote talks, Blaire provides a range of workshops, combining keynotes, interaction, group discussions and roundtable formats. Her previous workshops include:
Google – Influencing Skills: Blaire lead a workshop during Google’s annual conference for key decision-makers in advertising. She focussed on influencing skills to empower leaders in marketing and advertising to build stronger, trust-based relationships in their organisations. Key Takeaways:
– Relationships need consistent effort, just like building a brick wall
– Many opportunities to build trust are within one’s control but often overlooked
Heineken – Leadership and Change: At Heineken’s annual flagship event, Blaire spoke about how leaders can drive meaningful change. This session aimed to inspire corporate affairs leaders globally to embrace leadership styles that foster collaboration and purpose. Key Takeaways:
– Leadership is about generating and giving trust, not just holding a title
– Seeing things from others’ perspectives reveals new solutions
– Purpose drives long-term impact more than short-term wins
Intellectual Property of Ice – Leading Through Change: The IPO leadership teams engaged Blaire for a half-day session on navigating transformation. Key Takeaways:
– Change is a journey with stages – leaders need to know where they and their teams are
– Supporting teams through change means providing reliable information and flattening hierarchical structures
– Leaders don’t have all the answers; their role is to facilitate problem-solving across the organisation
KPMG – Leading High-Performing Global Teams: Blaire was asked to help KPMG’s Tax Partners lead high-performing, globally dispersed teams without formal authority. She focussed on collaboration, trust, and influence, rather than traditional top-down leadership. Key Takeaways:
– Trust comes before expecting trust from others – relationships are a two-way street
– Genuine collaboration leads to shared work products, not just functional working groups
– Leadership is about doing and learning in real-time, rather than waiting for the perfect solution
ServiceNow – Employee Experience: Blaire facilitated a VIP roundtable discussion on employee experience trends and challenges in a changing work environment. Key Takeaways:
– Old methods of employee engagement are losing their impact; organisations must align actions with values
– HR teams should create humane environments that value people beyond productivity
– Generational shifts provide opportunities for mutual learning and growth within organisations
Blaire’s clients include Airbus, BBC, DX, the FA, GSK, Havas Lynx, Mattel, Rexel, Roche Pharmaceuticals, and Travis Perkins.
