Adrian Hayes

Book Adrian Hayes for your event

Adrian Hayes brings together worlds that few speakers can combine: extreme adventure, military leadership, corporate business, coaching, social commentary and a lifelong interest in human development. His keynotes and programmes draw on extraordinary experiences while remaining focused on the challenges leaders, teams and organisations face in everyday working life.

An Arabic and Nepalese-speaking former British Army Gurkha officer, Adrian also spent two years in a Special Forces regiment. His adventures have taken him to some of the most demanding environments on Earth. He has climbed the three highest mountains in the world, Everest, K2 and Kanchenjunga, trekked from the respective coasts to both Poles, skied the length of Greenland and crossed the Arabian Desert.

These achievements form part of an ongoing life of expeditions and adventure and have earned Adrian two Guinness World Records. More importantly for his work with organisations, they provide lived experience of leadership, teamwork, uncertainty, fear, resilience, decision-making and performance when the consequences are real.

Leadership forged through experience

Before focusing primarily on speaking, coaching and leadership development, Adrian was Airbus Middle East sales director. For the past 20 years, his professional work has centred on keynote speaking, leadership and team development, executive coaching, consulting and mentoring.

He works with senior management and executive leadership teams, divisional, geographical and functional teams, whole-company groups and C-suite executives around the world. His clients have included KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, Barclays, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Emirates, Dubai Airports, Allen & Overy, Canon, Marriott, Zurich, Cunard and Parsons.

Adrian's approach cuts through unnecessary complexity. Whether addressing leadership, teamwork or individual performance, he focuses on awareness, practical tools and behaviours that people can take back into their professional and personal lives.

Adrian Hayes' speaking topics

Adrian's core areas of expertise connect human performance with the realities of leadership, organisational life and a rapidly changing world.

• Winning Teams: The awareness, tools, skills and techniques required to build and lead high-performance teams.
• Growth Mindset: Developing excellence and growth as personal, team and organisational values, supported by tangible tools for mental fitness and an elevated mindset.
• Resilience, Grit and Mental Fitness: Practical approaches to mental toughness and resilience that help people manage and leverage challenge, change and uncertainty.
• Overcoming Challenges: The mindset, awareness and skills needed to confront challenges facing individuals, teams, organisations and the wider world.
• Leadership with Impact: Effective leadership built around clarity, communication and conviction.
• Risk, Uncertainty & Fear: Helping people reconsider their relationship with risk, minimise fear and become more comfortable with uncertainty and the unknown.
• Economic, Social & Environmental Sustainability: Exploring the truths and trade-offs within the interconnected sustainability system, including debt, population and environmental issues beyond Net Zero.

Adrian also speaks and consults on culture, society and international affairs; personal, team and company values; identity and beliefs; mission and purpose; goalsetting; strengths and weaknesses; organisational change; comfort zones; silos; agility; employee wellbeing; personal responsibility and ownership; and communication.

Adventure, books & documentaries

Adrian's expeditions have also taken his work into books and documentaries. He presented The Greenland Quest for the National Geographic Channel and has presented or featured in Footsteps of Thesiger and In Inner Mongolia for the Discovery Channel. Further documentary projects are in development.

His first book, Footsteps of Thesiger, was published in 2013. It was followed in 2019 by One Man's Climb: A Journey of Trauma, Tragedy and Triumph on K2.

His third book is scheduled for release in 2027 and details his solo descent and survival on Kanchenjunga in May 2025, together with the physical and psychological aftermath. A fourth book, exploring human development in the modern world, is planned to follow.

These experiences give Adrian an unusual platform from which to examine what happens when plans fail, uncertainty becomes unavoidable and people must continue to make decisions under pressure.

Beyond the keynote

Adrian Hayes works across keynote and public speaking, team coaching, leadership-development seminars and workshops, executive coaching, social commentary and consulting. This allows organisations to engage him for a standalone keynote or for more focused development work with leaders and teams.

Alongside his corporate work, Adrian is a regular panellist and interviewee on British and Australian television, discussing leadership, current and international affairs, society, culture, and human behaviour and performance.

He is also a patron of three international charities and is involved with several other causes and campaigns. For many years, he has spoken and written about economic, social and environmental sustainability, examining the interconnected nature of these challenges and the difficult trade-offs they can involve.