UK
Ben Lyttleton is a renowned football journalist, author, and advisor who specializes in leadership, teamwork, and talent improvement.
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About Ben
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Ben Lyttleton is a British football journalist, author, and advisor with a passion for using the beautiful game to inspire positive change. With over a decade of experience in the field, Ben has interviewed some of football’s top coaches and insiders, gaining insights into leadership, teamwork, and talent improvement. He has worked with Premier League and national teams, NBA teams, and literacy charities, and is a co-owner and board member of the Danish professional football club, Akademisk Boldklub.
Ben’s first book, Twelve Yards: The Art and Psychology of the Perfect Penalty, explored how individuals understand and manage anxiety to perform at their best under pressure. His second book, Edge: Leadership Secrets of Football’s Top Thinkers, delved into how football has adapted and innovated in the search to get the best from individuals and teams, and how those insights can be applied to business.
In addition to his writing, Ben is an engaging and insightful speaker who has delivered talks on topics such as leadership, teamwork, and talent improvement to audiences around the world. He is able to tailor his talks to meet the specific needs and interests of the audience, making his presentations relevant and impactful.
Ben is also the co-author of the best-selling children’s book series Football School, which uses football to open up the school curriculum and inspire a love of reading in children. He works with literacy charities, the Premier League, and some of its biggest clubs to use football as a powerful educational force for good.
Overall, Ben’s passion for football, his commitment to social impact, and his expertise in leadership, teamwork, and talent improvement make him a sought-after speaker, advisor, and author.
See keynotes with Ben LyttletonWhat makes a great leader? Why do we find leaders fascinating? What can we learn from those leaders and how can we apply those lessons? Ben has interviewed and studied some of the most successful coaches and managers in football, including World Cup and Champions’ League winners in order to understand their approaches, ideas and methods.
Key lessons: finding new ways to measure motivation and success; how leaders get the best from their people; drawing together lessons in communication, resilience and decision-making; building cohesion, motivation and diversity.
How do leaders get the maximum out of their teams? What role does communication play in building and maintaining a high-performing team? Ben has spent time with football’s most successful coaches discussing the secrets behind their winning management styles.
Key lessons: the language used around talent and the importance of listening; how successful coaches have redefined communication and management; the Champions’ League-winning coach who developed his own scales of motivation and measures of success.
How do we make decisions, execute tasks and manage risk under pressure? Ben explores possibly one of the highest-pressure situations an individual can experience in team sport – the penalty shoot-out. Using a combination of sport and behavioural science, he explains the psychology of performing under pressure – and how we can all improve our performance when the heat is on. This incorporates how we evaluate and manage risk, and the importance of resilience when the stakes are at their highest.
Key lessons: how we cope with anxiety; challenging our reliance on individual superstars; the influence of body language and how just one extra breath can make all the difference; the challenge of evaluating and managing risk.
What is resilience and how can we build it? How can we best prepare for the tough times ahead? Ben has gone behind the scenes of football’s most successful clubs and spoken to sports scientists and coaches to find out how players are trained to develop resilience.
Key lessons: understanding our reactions to adversity; Chelsea’s Me? Always? Everything? method (or Intent/Frequency/Impact – am I the focus? Does this always happen? Does it affect everything?); the difference between Confidence 1 (the likelihood of something happening) and Confidence 2 (your reaction to it happening); the resilience of success; the difference between authentic or hubristic pride.
How can we build teams that get the best results? What unifies a team? What sets the most consistently high-performing teams apart? Ben has investigated the people and ideas behind some of the most successful and innovative clubs in football.
Key lessons: the connection between cohesion and performance in a team; why talented performers in one team may not excel elsewhere; the secrets of Radar Couples and collective functioning; how a team of over-achievers turned a global disadvantage into their competitive edge; the power of culture, comfort zones and why one football team performed Swan Lake to fans.
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