Ian offers both lucid and inspiring keynote-style addresses as well as more lengthy (two hours or more) workshop-style sessions: he can engage and enthuse an audience of 600 or more using a combination of micro-presentations interspersed with structured exercises that leave participants with tangible take-home strategies.

Ian is a master problem-solver who specialises in tailoring his presentation to the concerns and challenges of specific audiences and using structured interactive exercises to help solve real problems in real time during the session.

The Winning Mindset: Combining Achievement with Happiness

Imagine someone could find life-extending treatment equivalent to curing all cancers for all time. We would all live on average for four years longer if that was the case. But there is something that can extend life by an average of four years — success — albeit the rare and ultimate success of winning an Academy Award. Compared to Oscar nominees, Oscar winners live on average four years longer. Nobel Prize winners live on average up to two years longer than Nobel nominees.

Success is a key ingredient in not only health, but in every aspect of our lives — relationships, mental wellbeing, wealth and wisdom. The higher our status, the longer we live, the happier and wealthier we are. Success also makes us bolder and smarter. In his presentation, neuropsychologist Ian explains how success and failure in life shape us more completely than any drug or gene.

He explains how we can increase the success we experience in life and business and minimize the impact of failure on our minds and bodies.

See Ian Robertson’s 3 two minute videos on the winning mindset:

Power and Gender

Can women handle power better than men? Would the 2008 financial crash have happened had there been more women in the board rooms and trading floors of the financial centers? What is power and why does it change people so profoundly? Ian explains that power is one of the greatest brain-changing drugs in the world and that it can change for better and for worse. He explains that there are two types of power motivation — p power and s power and that s power motivation – where you want to hold power, but not for purely egotistical reasons, can act as an antidote to the drug-like effects of power. In this presentation, participants will learn to analyze their own power motivations and those of their colleagues and staff, leaving with a new set of analytic tools for understanding the most under-recognized source of risk, lost productivity and conflict in any organization.

The Winner Effect: The Science of Success and How to Use It

What makes a winner? Why do some succeed both in life and in business, and others fail? The ‘winner effect’ is a term used in biology to describe how an animal that has won a few fights against weak opponents is much more likely to win later bouts against stronger contenders and Ian shows that this applies to human beings too. Success changes the chemistry of the brain, making you more focused, smarter, more confident and more aggressive. The effect is as strong as any drug. And the more you win, the more you will go on to win. But the downside is that winning can become physically addictive.

By understanding what the mental and physical changes that take place in the brain of a ‘winner’, how they happen, and why they affect some people more than others, Ian answers the question of why some people attain and then handle success better than others. He explains what makes a winner — or a loser — and how we can use the answers to these questions to understand better the behaviour of our business colleagues, employees, family and friends. And, more importantly, he shows how you can use these principles to boost their success.

Motivation — Insights into how to build highly motivated employees and a success-oriented organisation

What motivates you? What motivates your colleagues and staff? Understanding motivation is the key to understanding human behaviour. The secret to a happy, productive organization is that to find the right match between the role and the motivational profile of the individual doing that job. Our basic motivations — for achievement, acceptance and power — are matched by corresponding fears — of failure, rejection and loss of control. People will devote enormous amounts of mental and physical energy trying to satisfy their own type of motivation and — more importantly often — stave off their own particular fears. In this presentation, Ian will help you learn how to analyze motivational patterns and understand the sort of problematic situations that afflict every organisation and how to solve them. He can do this in a short keynote, or an extended workshop. There is no limit to audience size for the workshop.

The Psychology of Social Capital and how to build it in your organisation

Employers spend considerable time and money selecting the right person for a particular job, and the more senior the job, the more they spend which, of course is right, because an organisation is only as good as its people — particularly its leaders. But talent can be squandered if the social capital of the organisation is absent or diminished. The nature of power relationships — formal and informal — is crucial for determining social capital. This presentation will help attendees in:

Assessing the nature of the power relationships within workplace networks.

Assessing whether individual power-holders are having a negative effect on the network.

Assessing positive and negative relationships in the network.

Assessing degree of individual and group competitiveness in network.

Assessing whether individuals are identifying with the organisation/network

Pinpointing conflicting identities which weaken social capital

How well groups function, and how committed individuals are to group versus selfish goals, depends on a number of psychological factors.

Take this finding, for instance: when a chicken colony has too many high egg producers, the overall egg production of the colony plummets and profits fall. This is because the most productive chickens are the most dominant and too many dominant chickens end up fighting about who is top of the pecking order. Energies are squandered and so the profitability of the group is decimated.

Similar things happen in human groups — including sports teams — and the most productive groups tend to have a balance of people with high, medium and low dominance levels.

Many organisations suffer this loss of productivity because of high status managers fighting with each other as to who is top of the pecking order. This costs corporations billions of dollars every year.

This presentation will allow managers to better understand these crucial obstacles to productivity and give them tools for improving them.

Finding the Sweet Spot of Stress — How to turn stress into energy-giving challenge

While some people respond well to pressure and function better in difficult situations, others have the opposite reaction and fall apart. The difference between too much pressure and too little can result in either debilitating stress or demotivation. The right level of challenge and stress, however, can help people flourish and achieve more than they thought possible. This level varies hugely between individuals and situations, but when it is reached it is what Ian refers to as the ‘sweet spot’. This spot can be changed, and in this book, based on his own research and clinical observations, Robertson reveals how we can use the sweet spot to control stress and boost performance.

Solving Business Problems

Problems are a part of life. Ian is a master problem-solver and has developed a unique presentation that shows you how to apply a systematic problem-solving strategy to your own unique business and organisational problems. Ian can do this with audiences of a thousand in a 45 minute presentation or in small group workshops over the course of a few hours. Unlike any other conference presentation you have attended, Ian’s presentation starts with your current preoccupations and offers you a systematic strategy for analysing your problems, using specific techniques for identifying possible solutions and other techniques for homing in on the most promising solution. Ian also shows how you can use the relationships between people in your organisation as the best potential source of innovation, entrepreneurial ideas and solutions to business problems.

Understanding The Science Of Successful Learners

The compelling research underpinning Ian’s book, The Winner Effect, should inform the craft of all teachers. Ian will explore the power of success and failure experiences in shaping children’s brains and entire lives. He will show primary school educators are like brain surgeons, physically crafting the brains of their pupils at a time in their lives when their brains show exquisite malleability.