Bill Benjamin Keynote Speaker

Emotional Intelligence
Performance and Leadership Expert
Contributor to CEO Magazine; Training Magazine

Enquire Add to shortlist

Bill Benjamin's Biography

Bill Benjamin discovered the power of managing emotions while working in the technology industry, an unexpected turn for someone with advanced degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science. His authentic approach to leadership development stems from his own early struggles as a leader, making him especially effective with analytical audiences who might typically resist the connection between emotional intelligence and exceptional leadership.

Bill’s unique background combines 25 years of real-world business experience as a senior leader with a deep understanding of brain science. He was so impressed by the Institute for Health and Human Potential (IHHP)’s science-based approach to Emotional Intelligence that he became a partner in the company, which was later named one of the “Fastest Growing Companies” in PROFIT Magazine’s “Fast 100” ranking.

As a natural storyteller, Bill balances anecdotes with science and research to engage diverse audiences. His high energy and enthusiasm have proven particularly effective with demanding groups including surgeons, U.S. Marines, and NASA engineers. When not speaking, he works with senior leaders and their teams at Fortune 500 companies, helping them overcome barriers to reaching their full potential.

Bill contributed to the New York Times and Amazon bestselling book “Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When it Matters Most,” co-authored by IHHP’s JP Pawliw-Fry and psychologist Hendrie Weisinger. The book has been published in 65 countries with multiple translations. He is also a regular contributor to CEO Magazine, Training Magazine, and other leadership publications.

Originally from Canada, Bill moved to New York City in the nineties and now calls Chicago home, where he balances his professional passions with family life, scotch, and cycling.

Build a High-Performance, Last 8% Culture

You need to move fast, adapt to a changing environment, and deliver performance, yet your team is moving too slow when it comes to making tough decisions and are avoiding the more challenging conversations that drive results.

What is at the heart of high performance is culture. Unfortunately, most leaders misunderstand culture; they believe culture exists across the organization; it doesn’t. It exists primarily on teams. Second, they see culture as something that should be owned by the CEO and CHRO, believing it is their job to build the culture across the organization; it isn’t. Most CEO’s and CHRO’s get so overwhelmed when they think of tackling culture, that they avoid it and allow culture to be built haphazardly, which means that good people leave, and goals are not met.

In this powerful virtual or live keynote, your team will learn the results from our study of 7,500 leaders that puts your managers and people leaders at the center of building your culture. Your people will learn specific tools to own the culture on their team in the critical moments, the Last 8%, that creates culture. The Last 8% are those tougher conversations and decisions that many people struggle with and avoid. When leaders feel agency and have skills to lean into the difficult, they build a high-performance culture that becomes a powerful force in your organization.

In this powerful program, your team will learn:

What the two pillars of a high performing culture are: High Connection (psychological safety) and High Courage (ability to do hard things skillfully)

How to build the culture on their team with our proprietary approach of Model & Own

Specific tools to connect and coach their people to be their best in Last 8% Situations

How to influence & engage others who are at a distance and create the conditions to keep the best and brightest

Performing Under Pressure

Your people are facing the biggest challenge of their careers, yet most continue to rely on their IQ and technical skills to manage through it all. It’s not enough.

To survive, your organization needs to be agile in the midst of change and challenge, and see opportunities where others do not. Your team needs to learn how to work effectively with others who are, themselves, under pressure.

In this powerful program, your team members will learn:

Specific tools learned from working with high performers under pressure in the NFL, NBA, Olympic teams, Navy SEALs, Goldman Sachs, Intel, among others, to be more adaptable, resilient, collaborative and opportunistic

How to manage their brain so they can think, perform and lead effectively under pressure

The single most important daily habit that increases focus and decreases burnout

Strategies to help their teams perform in the face of the pressure they face

This program is based on a 12,000-person study conducted for our New York Times best-selling book, Performing Under Pressure, which is available in 65 countries.

This session can be delivered for sales people and sales teams, focusing on helping them harness emotional intelligence to deal with pressure, build stronger relationships with their clients, collaborate internally and deal with the setbacks and uncertainty that sales people must overcome to be successful.

Having High Impact Last 8% Conversations

Our research has found that most people are relatively effective at getting to 92% of what they want to say in a feedback conversation. But when they get to the Last 8% of what they really want to say–the hardest part of the feedback they want to give–the part of the conversation that has consequences for the other person, they sense the potential emotional impact this feedback might have, and they back off, avoiding giving the feedback that’s needed.

This creates significant challenges for the other person: not only do they not know how or where they stand, which increases their anxiety, but they are also not given a chance to improve. Worse, they feel less psychologically safe and emotionally connected, which diminishes their performance.

The goal of this program is to give your people the insight and tools to manage their emotions to get to the Last 8% of what they want to say in any feedback conversation. The good news is that there is a burgeoning science of how to give and receive feedback that anyone can learn. It starts by becoming a ‘student of human behavior’, understanding the brain under pressure, and learning the concrete skills needed to give feedback in a way where the other person can hear it.

In this powerful program, your people will learn:

What The Last 8% is and why it provides the biggest opportunity to learn, grow and boost their performance.

How the brain reacts under pressure and why that is at the heart of why people avoid giving Last 8% feedback.

Self-awareness: what their habitual way of reacting to receiving feedback is and why that matters as a signal to the other person that they are open to receiving this important feedback.

How to start a Last 8% feedback conversation: most people do not know where to start, which causes anxiety. Along with trying to be perfect, this stops them from beginning this important conversation.

What the key components are to building an environment of high psychological safety, and why it matters to innovation.

The Art of Empathy: Building Emotional Intelligence In Your Leaders

The cost of replacing an individual employee ranges from one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary. That means, a 100-person organization that provides an average salary of $50,000 will have turnover and replacement costs of approximately $800,000 to $2.6 million per year.

The worst part? 52% of people who leave say their manager or organization could have done something to prevent them from leaving their job. In fact, they said that in the three months before leaving, nobody asked them how they felt about their job, or about their future. What is evident is a lack of empathy in their leaders. It doesn’t have to be this way.

In this powerful virtual or live program, your managers and leaders will learn:

What the single greatest cause of a lack of empathy is (something they have control over)

How to grow their skills of Emotional Intelligence so they can tune into the challenges their people are facing before it causes them to leave

What empathy is and how to build it to empower your innovative and effective people who keep your teams connected and performing at a high level

How to use brain-science-based strategies to manage their emotions so they can be resilient and a source of calm in your organization

How to manage through disruptive change