Keynote Speaker

Keynote Speaker

High Performance • Team Culture • Resiliency • Leadership

When Bo Hanson walks into the room or on to the stage, it’s his physical presence that first captures your attention. But, it doesn’t take long for the substance of what he’s saying to hold it, and the impact of his words to last long after the session has concluded.

With more than 20 years’ experience as an Elite Athlete and Olympic Medalist, Company Director, and International Coaching Consultant, Bo Hanson has the unique ability to connect, relate and resonate with his audience through his use of real-life experiences and learnings to build on the theory that his work is built upon.

We understand that when you’re searching for a speaker for your next conference or team event, you want someone who can create a lasting impact and inspire change. Not a ‘sugar high’ that wears off leaving you and your team feeling depleted.

You want substance, someone who can take you on the journey for the long haul and help you through the slow burn. You want someone who delivers learnings that make a lasting difference and aids in moving beyond the initial excitement.

Bo Hanson empowers, motivates, inspires and excites, but more than that, he teaches! Bo Hanson teaches you how to achieve success and reach peak performance by using a set of proven strategies that he himself has put into practice throughout his sporting and business career. He has researched these strategies and seen them work time and time again, with hundreds of clients and teams across the globe.

Popular Conference Speaking Topics

Here are some of the most popular topics in sport and business that Bo is asked to present on

Sport

Developing Your Team to Be Athlete Tough

Physical traits aside, what do the best athletes have in common? The answer is mental toughness. But, mental toughness is not a mythical quality possessed by only a few. It is a teachable skill and there are proven strategies to develop your athletes to be ‘Athlete Tough’.

Being ‘Athlete Tough’ is defined by the actions you take when your performance matters the most. In the heat of battle or when all seems lost, those who stay in the game are those who never lose sight of why they are in the game in the first place.

This presentation covers the most effective strategies to develop mental toughness within your team, athlete by athlete. They are proven ways that the best performers rely on and use daily. You can easily incorporate these within your sports program to develop your team to be ‘Athlete Tough’.

Key Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the meaning of resilience and learn how resilient people behave.
  • Identify the stages of coping and recovery from setbacks.
  • Explore the key strategies for teaching resilience and how to incorporate this easily into your program.

When Talent isn’t Enough

Ask any Coach what keeps them up at night, and rarely is it technical or physical issues. Most often it’s on the ‘people side’.

Few Coaches, if any, are immune to dealing with athletes that ‘just don’t get it’, communication problems, conflict or ‘personality’ challenges, especially with the current generation of athletes.

Can these ‘issues’ be dealt with in such a way as to deliver improved performance when it matters the most? Yes they can!

If you are the type of Coach who knows there is more to your program’s success than simply having ‘talented’ athletes, then this presentation is for you.

You will learn to understand what makes your athletes ‘tick’ and what you need to create to achieve their full potential. When you attend this presentation, you will leave with a proven framework and key strategies to ensure the factors contributing to your program’s success are ticked off, before ‘issues’ have the chance to undermine your season. This presentation includes key models and real-life case studies of these models in practice.

Key Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the framework to quickly get to know your athletes and help bring out their individual best.
  • Know how to build team chemistry within your squad of athletes.
  • Explore the key strategies for starting your season in the best way possible to ensure a successful competitive season.

Recruiting for What Your Team Really Needs

Ever recruited an athlete and felt like someone else turned up to your program? Avoid the disappointment of your expectations not being met when a new recruit joins the team. This presentation focuses on proven strategies to gain a full understanding of the “real recruit”.

During this presentation, we use real life illustrations to gain an appreciation of the ‘non-physical’ and ‘non-technical’ qualities of athletes and the impact this has on the biggest performance factor of all, your team culture. Ensuring cultural fit is one of the most fundamental aspects you need to get right to recruit for success. It is far easier to teach skill than it is to teach attitude, behavior and values.

Key Learning Objectives:

  • Discover the importance of defining your cultural identity and get a GRIP on your “team chemistry”.
  • Identify the potential gaps in your current recruiting practices and what you may be missing.
  • Leave with practical strategies you can implement to immediately improve and achieve consistency in your recruiting process.

Play to your Strengths, Build a Team around You & Master Adaptation

It is well recognized that the highest performing teams have Coaches who understand themselves and their athletes. This presentation creates the necessary self-awareness for Coaches to know how they coach and provides tangible ways to develop strong and effective relationships with their athletes. It is dedicated to the Coaches understanding more about their own coaching style and preferences.

Ideally, prior to the presentation, each Coach completes their own CoachDISC profile. They will also be encouraged to invite others such as Coaches they work with and senior athletes in their team/squad (if appropriate), to provide them with feedback on their coaching behaviors. This is included within the capability of the CoachDISC profile.

Many of the key learnings from this workshop are accomplished using experiential learning activities where the coaches have the chance to display their preferred and non-preferred coaching style. These learning activities help to apply the CoachDISC information to their real lives as coaches.

Key Learning Objectives:

  • Understand their preferred coaching style, when it is most appropriate to use this style and when it is important to make an adaptation to create better outcomes.
  • Discover strategies to better relate to the behavioral needs of others and how to build more productive relationships with them.
  • Know how to manage potential conflict to ensure it does not derail athletes at crucial times during the season.
  • Identify the communication style of fellow coaches and athletes so coaches can pitch their coaching to suit their preferred way of being interacted with. This ensures the message is better received and has greater impact.

Get a GRIP, Your Best Pre-Season Yet

Anything of strength and resilience has a solid foundation. To end a successful season as a strong cohesive team requires starting the season in a deliberate way. We use the “GRIP Model” in the preseason to bring the team together. This framework is referred to throughout the season to ensure performance standards are upheld.

The “GRIP Model” contains the critical elements that contribute to effective, high performance teams. Each element is necessary and studies into effective teamwork have concluded that when teams underperform, at least one of these elements is missing.

When problems occur during the season, whether it be with player behavior, team chemistry or under-performance, it is because vital time wasn’t invested upfront.

Prevention is always better than a cure.

Key Learning Objectives:

  • Get a proven framework and key strategies to ensure you have the most effective pre-season possible.
  • Find out how to build strong team chemistry and unite your team – a practical guide to deliver improved performance.
  • Deal with potential conflict before it happens and reduce the distracting ‘drama’.

How to get the Best from this Generation of Athletes

Is Generation Y a myth? Does this generation really exist or are we simply talking about ‘young people’?

In this presentation, we present both sides of this debate and most importantly look at how to create a program that will meet a younger person’s expectations and needs.

The fact is, young people today have grown up in a different time. As behavioral theories suggest, it is our environment that shapes our behavior. This presentation explores the environmental impact on today’s athletes and how this has impacted their thinking and expectations. We then link this to how we can create a program to best suit their needs and address deficiencies in their skill set which is a result of today’s environment.

After this presentation, you will look at your program in a new light with concrete strategies to improve the culture and engagement of your athletes.

Key Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the concept of “Generational Theory” and how this applies to our athletes of today.
  • Reconnect with the behaviors of ‘young people’.
  • Identify ways the environment has influenced the behaviors of this generation of athletes.
  • Apply strategies to appeal to the different needs of this generation to help them achieve better results.

What Winning Teams Get Right Playbook

The Game Plan for Winning with People. Take an Olympic final or the final 16 teams heading towards the National Championships, you’ll find their physical and technical preparation is largely comparable. So, what sets the ultimate winner apart?

Getting Athletes to Change: Is your team Culture Fit for Change?

Ever wonder why it can take one athlete a mere moment to make a change, yet for another, you strive all season to help them take it on? If so, this is the presentation is for you!

Mastering Skill Acquisition: What the Best have as their Fundamental Skill (in any sport)

Every elite athlete at the top of their sport, who can consistently improve their performance results, has mastered skill acquisition. It is fundamental to consistent, high performance.

The Four Keys to Motivating ANY Athlete: Coaching strategies to get the most from your individual athletes

Understanding what brings an athlete to practice (and competition) and what they are trying to accomplish once they get there, is critical to coaching them to be the best they can be. It also makes your job easier and more enjoyable in bringing together a winning program!

Understand and Manage Conflict in Sport

Why it is a Sign of Successful Teams? Conflict is a part of any team, and life in general. Conflict within your team can either make or break your season. When dealt with effectively and productively, conflict can create stronger bonds between team members, reinforcing acceptable behaviors linked to values which see your team competing at their best. However, the opposite is also true.

Learn the Coaches Role in Sport: How to Maximize Your Positive Impact

Anyone involved in sport has a vital role to play in the community. Involvement in sport makes a positive and important contribution to our society and sport teaches critical life lessons to our future generations of adults. These lessons have an enormous impact on the results achieved, whether it be at the elite or social level of sport, or life beyond sport.

Leading in a Diverse Environment: Understanding Individual Needs

For the first time in history, there are four generations of age demographics all trying to work together in today’s workplaces and sporting environments. This unique situation creates massive potential for uncertainty and conflict.

Your Personal Effectiveness: What is Helping or Hindering You?

It is a fact that only 3% of the population strive for what is known as “Self-Actualization”. This is the need to be the best you can be. Find out what being your best means and how to break out of current patterns of behavior that may be holding you back from realizing how effective you can be.

Captain and Athlete Leadership Strategies: What is the Model for Leadership Today?

Today more than ever, the spotlight is on leadership and the link between effective leadership and winning teams. The other interesting fact is that most Coaches believe having an effective team captain is critical to success and yet very few opportunities are presented for captains and leaders to develop their skills in this important area.

Business

Every Team can be Successful and has Potential to be Great

Teamwork is at the core of today’s successful organizations, and what we know about teamwork is that it is a skill, which means it can be learnt and developed. In today’s diverse workplaces we see team members with their own unique personalities and work styles. As individuals, we must be more flexible with our behaviors if we are to successfully collaborate. When high levels of collaborative behaviors exist within a team, that team can achieve amazing results. When a team works, there are few things more rewarding or enjoyable.

This presentation explores how to make teams work and what great teamwork looks, feels and sounds like.

“This was a great presentation for our team. We related to Bo’s stories about the Olympics and he in turn related his experiences back to our workplace. Seeing his Olympic medals made it real that great team work is worth working for, ” (Manager, CBA)

Key Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the role of beliefs & values within a team and how this impacts team culture.
  • Understand the “makeup” of a successful team.
  • Understand diversity as being a key ingredient to success.
  • Recognize and make the most of individual strengths.
  • Recognize the signs of disengagement.
  • Recognize value-affirming behaviors from team members.
  • Be prepared to “do what it takes” for yourself and your team.
  • Be clear on how you are going to contribute to make your team a success.

Create Best Performance when it Matters the most

Today more than ever your success will be determined by the income producing actions you take and the attitude you choose to create for yourself. In this presentation, you will learn proven principles that create personal best performances. Principles that most people are never told about or taught. Bo Hanson, in his quest for Olympic medals, learnt these principles, created his own unique distinctions and he will now show you how to apply this knowledge to lever your performance above your competition.

You are either going forward or you are being overtaken. There is no standing still.
This session is filled with experiential exercises that prove these principles. Stories of Olympic experiences and commitments made in graveyards provide an entertaining program that will keep everyone interested. With Olympics Medals to touch and feel, you will leave having been inspired to do what it takes to be your best.

Key Learning Objectives:

  • Know how to create your best performances when it matters most.
  • Uncover elements which are helping and hindering you from being your best.
  • Take control of yourself and gain this competitive advantage over your competition.
  • Discover how your feelings, your thoughts and your physiology are intrinsically linked together, and how changing one changes all.

Building Resilience in Employees and Teams

Resilience is the unique ability to bounce back when confronted with an unwanted result or situation. It is also a mark of how a person deals with adversity which is obviously part of any person’s life. Resilient people display certain qualities. In this presentation, we look at what these qualities are and how to help our employees learn them.

What is interesting about being resilient is that it is something that anyone can learn and continue to develop. 

Key Learning Objectives:

  • Define resiliency and how to recognize it in your colleagues and employees.
  • Learn how resilient people respond to obstacles and adversity.
  • Learn to develop resiliency using effective questioning.
  • Discover how to change negative or non-useful perspectives.
  • Discover how reframing can be used as a leadership tool to develop resiliency.

Olympics and the 0.29%

Have you ever wondered how different your outcomes may have been if your performance was just a little bit better? Ever noticed how most people, teams and organizations do the big things well, but the mark of the truly successful is their commitment to the smallest details? By the end of the presentation, you will realize that Olympians are not super human, they are normal everyday people who have a passion for being their best.

Team Development: Why Teams Fail, Avoid the Traps

Most people expect that when put in a team, great performance is simply a matter of getting to know each other and suddenly the results will flow naturally. The fact is, great team work is rarely achieved.

Diversity Leadership: Leading in a Diverse Environment

For the first time in history there are four generations all trying to work within today’s workplaces. This unique situation creates massive potential for uncertainty and conflict. This presentation explores the most up-to-date perspectives on being a leader in this unique time and what defines these different generations.

Understand and Manage Conflict

Conflict is a part of any team, and life in general. Conflict within your team can either make or break your business success. When dealt with effectively and productively, conflict can create stronger bonds between team members, reinforcing acceptable behaviors linked to values that will see your team working at their best. However, the opposite is also true.

Modelling Your Successful Self: You Aren’t Reinventing the Wheel

Most people have had the experience of being successful and achieving the results they aimed for either in business, or in life. These same people have probably also had days where they felt nothing or little worked out as they planned it to. What is the difference between these days? Where does a successful performance come from and how can it be delivered consistently when it is most required?

Some of Bo Hanson’s past and present corporate clients:

Some of Bo Hanson’s past and present sporting clients:

Book Bo Hanson To Speak at Your Next Conference or Event!

Bo Hanson is available for Keynote Speaking, Corporate Events, Exhibitions and Workshops. Contact us today for a unique package that will take your event or conference to the next level.