All Speakers

Image Copyright: © Steve Smith

Steve Smith

Olympic medallist. British record holder for over 30 years and one of Britain’s most successful ever athletes. Steve Smith has also spent the last two decades building one of the UK’s most successful training and development businesses, working with 1,000+ globally recognised experts. That combination is what makes him different from other sports speakers. The sporting career gives the story its edge. The business career is what makes it land.

In Person

£4000 - £10000

Price based on UK delivery

Virtual Event

£2000 - £10000

Categories

Business Future AI Innovation & Tech High Performance Leadership Mental Health & Wellbeing Motivation & Inspiration Olympic Personal Development Sales Sport

Topics

Change Coaching Entrepreneurship Goal Setting Innovation Management Marginal Gains Olympic Performance Personal Development Psychology and Mindset Resilience Teamwork Wellbeing

Steve won Britain’s first Olympic high jump medal in 88 years at Atlanta. His British records of 2.38m indoors and 2.37m outdoors still stand more than three decades later. He has been inducted into the England Athletics Hall of Fame and is a former Academy of Chief Executives Speaker of the Year.

Most sports speakers talk about performance from the outside. Steve has spent the last twenty years inside a business, dealing with the same pressures as the people in the room: winning work, holding standards when things slip, driving innovation, keeping teams moving through change, and making decisions without perfect information.

Since founding Raise the Bar, he has worked alongside some of the most respected thinkers and practitioners in leadership, performance and behaviour. He brings what he has learned from them into the room, so audiences get more than one person’s story.

What he covers

Every session is built around the client’s agenda after a briefing call. The themes he draws on most often:

  • Controlling the controllables
  • Winning mentality and winning behaviours
  • Raising the bar and benchmarking
  • Change and innovation
  • Coaching and high performance. How feedback, standards and the right kind of pressure produce sustained results rather than short bursts
  • Resilience and bouncing back

Ideal for

Sales conferences and kick-offs, leadership and management events, annual company conferences, change and restructure communications. Steve works across mixed audiences, shop floor to board, and adapts the content to the level in the room.

Practical, direct and commercially relevant. He will sit in your earlier sessions, listen to the messages you are trying to drive home, and build his content to reinforce them rather than talk across them.

Formats

Keynote, 45 to 60 minutes. Extended session with facilitated Q&A. Conference close. Virtual delivery available.

“Bottom line, Steve is a tremendous speaker and is able to tell a compelling and motivational story with learning elements that are directly applicable to business. He inspired a large and diverse group of pharmaceutical sales and marketing personnel to focus on what they can control in their environments and what gives them the edge in the marketplace in the face of intense competition and little differentiation.”
“Steve Smith was on stage for about an hour and it completely flew by, he captured the audience attention completely and held it all the way through. The mixture of humour, Steve’s personal story and the video clips made the presentation spot on for the audience. A lot of colleagues have said that this was the highlight of their day, and the best motivational speaker that they had heard. Steve’s presentation came across as very fresh, passionate, full of energy and enthusiasm and ultimately inspirational. Exactly what we were looking for on the day. I have already recommended Steve to colleagues in Barclaycard.”
“The feedback from the team at Boots after Steve spoke at our communications event was overwhelmingly positive. Steve is a very engaging speaker and has a fantastic ability to draw parallels between his experiences as a top class athlete and the challenges of the commercial world. He was able to inspire a diverse (and sometimes cynical!) cross-section of people with everybody coming away from the event feeling energised and motivated. I’m now looking at opportunities build on the fantastic success of this initial event.”
“Steve is an outstanding motivational speaker. He helped us achieve one of the most successful conferences we have held. He took the time to understand our business and managed to link his findings to his personal experiences of being an athlete.  The feedback after our event was amazing. Everyone was in agreement that he made the day.”
“Steve is a really engaging speaker and managed to capture the attention of every single person in the audience – who ranged from senior managers to shop floor staff. Everyone left the event feeling motivated and inspired by him. We sincerely look forward to working with him again in the future and would highly recommend him.”
“The feedback from Steve’s presentation has been unprecedented in strength. He raised all previous bars set by our guest speakers.”
“Exceptional, inspirational, motivational – never were such adjectives more true than in Steve’s case. His story did more to set a positive mood and create a real sense of excitement than any of our own internal presentations ever could.”
“Steve Smith gave a fantastic input to my staff training day. He was inspirational and even engaged with the most cynical of my staff! They were able to relate to the sporting context and compare their own work and personal motivation in a really interactive and positive way. We would have all been happy to ask questions all day! Steve’s input has had a lasting effect on the morale and feeling of positivity amongst the staff and that was the main objective of the day – they were buzzing the following day and were full of praise for his presentation.”
“We asked the delegates to rate different aspects of the presentation, as well as the event overall, out of a total satisfaction rating of 5:0. They rated the event 4.47 from a highly critical audience. The comments we have been receiving are ” best one yet”. So, as you can imagine, I’m delighted! The message, delivery and the energy he maintained throughout was exactly what I had hoped. So, all in all, we are very, very happy as were our delegates.”
“Steve took around 500 colleagues on an exciting rollercoaster ride into his world as an Olympian. He told his story with passion, humour, and honesty and had the audience back with him at the games, completely captivated. He seamlessly linked how ‘raising the bar’ for an athlete is no different to anyone in business wanting to stay ahead. The parallels he drew between the key elements of his approach and how dot-commers could think about their success rang true with all levels in the audience – from administrator to IT programmer to CEO.”
“Steve’s directness and passion overcame any cynicism. To prepare he had quietly joined us ahead of his session, listened to the messages we were seeking to drive home and adjusted what he said accordingly. This professionalism and tailoring made him stand out. An enormously engaging, thought provoking and professional speaker.”

Quick Quote

Steve Smith

Discover our development solutions inspired by global experts

Leaders & Managers

Diversity, Equality & Inclusivity

Talent Development