Jim Lawless

Jim Lawless works behind the scenes with CEOs and executive teams when the strategy must translate into action at scale: when people across the organisation must be inspired to take bold new decisions with low certainty, but high consequence. 

Over a million people across five continents have experienced Jim’s keynote addresses on ambition, execution, courage, and leading others through change. He is consistently voted a Global Top 10 keynote speaker — and #1 motivational speaker outside the US — in the Global Gurus public poll.

A deeply trusted architect of transformation and culture, Jim advises senior leaders across global organisations and elite performance environments including Apple, P&G, Qualtrics, Novartis, BAE Systems, Diageo, the Swiss Olympic Team, the Swiss Ski Team, multiple private-equity-backed growth businesses, and elite professional athletes.

Jim carries that gravitas onto the stage, but what really lights up the room is that he doesn’t just walk the walk. He lives it.  

To understand high performance and decision-making under pressure at a visceral level, he became the deepest freediver in British history, the first Briton to dive beyond 100 metres on one breath and transformed from non-rider to televised jockey within twelve months of first sitting on a horse.

Jim is the author of the global bestseller Taming Tigers, with forthcoming titles The DARE Loop and DARE: to Lead. His ground-breaking work with Benedetto Conversano, CIO of Diageo plc — transforming a legacy global IT function into a high-performing, data-led, AI-enabled organisation — features in Conversano’s forthcoming book The Braveheart CIO. 

A keynote must be the beginning of sustained change to have real value and Jim takes pride in delivering immediately accessible and convincingly powerful mental tools to deliver change. 

Jim is widely respected not just for his achievements, but for his ability to connect with people at all levels. His captivating presence onstage is magnified by energy, humour, and compelling storytelling, combined with a deep, lived understanding of the emotions, vulnerability, and personal encounters with risk, failure, uncertainty and self-doubt that come with change. 

A City of London commercial solicitor by training, Jim worked as a lawyer before specialising in high-performance and change in 2000. He was elected a Fellow of the UK’s Royal Society for the Arts in 2008 in recognition of his business writing.