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Work with Phil Dourado : Leadership Speaker & Speaking

Feedback on Phil’s latest speaker / speaking session at the IHG Asia Australasia 2010 Leaders Meeting, Singapore, June 2010:

Phil Dourado Speaker at Growing to Great ConferencePhil Dourado Speaking at the Growing to Great Conference Asia Pacific

“I wanted to thank you for joining our first AA Leaders’ Meeting and agreeing to be our guest speaker. I’ve heard some fantastic feedback on your lunch session. Part of the Growing to Great key message was about growth and development, and your session on Learning Agility will play a big part in helping our leaders going forward.” – Jan Smits, MD, Asia Australasia, IHG.

“You are fast moving from ‘The Coach’ to ‘The Legend’ if the chat around the business was anything to go by. I’ve just now managed to go through your deck and I must say it’s great – no wonder you were getting such good press.” – IHG senior manager


I do have the power of speech. I use it to talk with groups of people, in particular about what great leadership practice is and how to do it. I prefer dialogues to monologues.

I get the ‘audience’ to commit to taking away and implementing one learning point from the talk. That’s the deal I strike with them at the beginning. Anyone who doesn’t buy into that deal has to leave. My part of the deal is to promise to share with them a certain number (depending on the length of the talk – minimum half a dozen) of inspirational, actionable, proven leadership learning tips and practices for them to pick one as their favourite that they want to try back in the workplace.

Once they agree to that, the presentation starts. At the end we check they all have a ‘one action’ takeaway. I also follow up with ‘audiences’ to check that they have tried their ‘one thing’ actionable tip and to find out if it worked. If it didn’t, I give them another leadership improvement tip to try.

Here’s some feedback from a recent speaking engagement: Recent speaking engagement feedback

“Overall the whole event received very high marks, but you were the top scoring speaker.

Your style of delivery was exceptional. You were authoratitive, engaging and well-paced. You included humour and emotion, drawing people in through story-telling.

There were plenty of take-away insights and ideas, well packaged to make them easily digestible.

In terms of giving you feedback of one thing to improve on I’ll need to have a think and come back to you, because I was very impressed all round.”

Steve Parks, CEO, Red Group, organizers of the national Leadership in Construction conference, London, November 2007, where other speakers included Professor Richard Scase, the world’s leading authority on globalism and competitiveness.

Audio clip of Phil talking at the Leadership in Construction Conference

This is a 30 minute clip, so just try the first few minutes if you are pushed for time. The first few minutes illustrate the deal I make with audiences so that the talk is ‘actionable’ for them and they take away one leadership action to improve their leadership.


Take a look at the sample clips, below, if you are considering booking Phil as a Leadership Speaker

Drawing the face of God

Limiting the Damage

The Accidental Innovator

“Phil spoke on leadership to our Northern Leadership Forum in Manchester and our Southern Leadership Forum in Windsor. On both occasions, although it was in the afternoon of a full day the members chose to keep Phil longer than was arranged and after doing his one hour allotted time they asked him to continue for another half or so.

That’s never happened before; people are normally keen to get on their way once the day is over. It’s a great indication of how thoroughly Phil understands his subject and how interestingly and practically he can explain it. He ran the two Forum sessions as something he calls ‘The Leadership Conversation’, where he starts the conversation and chips in findings from his research, but lets the members of the group contribute and steer the conversation so it covers the questions and issues that arise in their everyday work as leaders.

The Forum members have asked me to invite Phil back to talk to them again in 2008.

I’ve known Phil since the mid 1990s when he was the editor of Customer Service magazine and he helped me craft many of my articles. He’s one of those people that takes great care to really understand any subject he chooses to study. For many years he’s been one of the UK’s most knowledgeable people on the subject of customer service and now, following his extensive research into the subject, he’s also one of the Uk’s most knowledgeable people on the subject of Leadership and how great leaders operate.

Having now worked with Phil at a number of conference events I can also confirm that he’s also a very good speaker who can explain his understanding of a subject in easy to understand and extremely practical ways.”

Chris Daffy, who operates and facilitates The Leadership Forum in the UK

Contact me if you would like to discuss a speaking engagement