Available to book
Sean Attwood
Leading through Uncertainty
Dealing With Pressure
Resilience
Sean Attwood helps leaders make better decisions under pressure, drawing on over 20 years' experience as a founder and executive coach. A leadership speaker and decision-making expert, Sean has worked with companies like Nike, Mastercard, and BCG, reaching 40,000 people in 40 countries.
Founder
Entrepreneur
Coach
Business Consulting
Professional Development
Personal Development
Mindset
Sean Attwood is a keynote speaker, founder, executive coach, and facilitator specialising in adaptive leadership and decision-making under pressure.
Sean brings a practical perspective shaped by his own experience of building a company from a single market stall to a public listing, before losing the business through the same cognitive trap he now examines in his work. He has delivered more than 300 large-audience keynotes and 2,500 workshops to 40,000 people across more than 40 countries. His clients include BCG, KPMG, Nike, Mastercard, Starbucks, American Express, Sony, Unilever, and GE Aerospace.
Sean's framework, Step Zero, is built around the idea of a brief window between stimulus and response that most leaders never learn to use. He shows leaders how to widen that window so they respond deliberately under pressure rather than react on instinct, turning failure into usable data.
Audiences gain practical tools for leading through complexity, making better decisions under pressure, approaching failure as useful data, and navigating the human side of AI adoption. His sessions connect behavioural psychology and neuroscience with real workplace challenges.
Book Sean to bring twenty years of applied experience and a practical leadership framework directly to your team.
Topics, sessions and talks
Sean Attwood argues that the defining leadership challenge of the AI era isn't whether machines will replace human judgement, but whether leaders can build the capacity to respond to disruption rather than react to it. Drawing on twenty years of applied neuroscience and behavioural psychology, Sean connects established research on decision-making directly to the pressures AI now places on leadership teams. Audiences leave with a practical framework for building deliberate response under fast-moving technological change.
A 0.3-second neurological window sits between every stimulus and every response, and Sean Attwood argues most leaders never learn to use it. Grounded in Amy Arnsten's research at Yale and refined across twenty years of keynotes and workshops reaching 40,000 people in more than 40 countries, Sean's Step Zero framework explains why adaptive leadership breaks down under stress. Audiences come away with a concrete method for widening that window in their own highest-pressure moments.
Sean Attwood frames resilience and high performance in commercial terms rather than wellbeing language, treating failure as data and antifragility as a practice rather than a mindset. Drawing on his own experience rebuilding after losing a business, Sean shows organisations how to learn faster than the cost of failure compounds. The session is built for performance outcomes that last beyond Monday morning, not a temporary lift in morale.
Sean Attwood tells the version of his founder story that comes before the tidy lesson takes over. He built a company from a single market stall into a chain of shops heading toward a public listing, then lost it through circumstances outside his control. Rather than smoothing the story into a moral, Sean gives an honest account of what failure actually costs and what it builds, aimed squarely at founder and entrepreneurial audiences who want the unedited version.
Sean Attwood built this session for founders and leaders who need to communicate big ideas to investors, boards, and senior stakeholders. Drawing on ten core story structures, founder psychology, and the neuroscience of how humans decide who and what to trust, Sean shows audiences how conviction actually gets built in a room. The session gives founders a repeatable structure for pitching under scrutiny.
Testimonials
often considered together
Neil Edge
Effective Leadership
Dealing With Pressure
High Performance
Penny Mallory
4.7
Resilience
Growth Mindset
High Performance
frequently asked questions
Something we've not covered here?
Email sean.attwood@getapeptalk.com or call PepTalk on +44 20 3835 2929 (UK) or +1 737 888 5112 (US), and one of our speaker agents will contact you within hours to confirm Sean's availability and fees. If you can, please include your budget upfront – it helps us fast-track your request. It’s also helpful to know the date, format (virtual or in-person), location, and a bit about your audience.
Sean Attwood structures his sessions around Step Zero, a proprietary framework built on Amy Arnsten's neuroscience research, which centres on a 0.3-second window between stimulus and response. He uses this mechanism to walk audiences through why leadership breaks down under pressure and how to widen that window deliberately, leaving them with a concrete method they can apply to their own high-pressure situations.
Sean Attwood's sessions cover adaptive leadership in the AI era, decision-making under pressure, and resilience as a performance practice. He has delivered over 300 keynotes to 40,000 people across more than 40 countries, with clients including BCG, KPMG, Nike, Mastercard, and GE Aerospace.
No. PepTalk adds no booking fee, so you pay the speaker's fee and nothing beyond it. The service, from shortlist through to contracts and event-day logistics, is included. For repeat or multi-event bookings, PepTalk can agree preferential rates with your procurement team.
Share your event date, audience, format, objectives and budget, and PepTalk sends a hand-picked shortlist within 24 hours. Each suggestion comes with a profile, a fee and a recommendation on the strongest fit. Once you choose, PepTalk handles contracts, travel and logistics through to event day.
The typical fee range is the speaker's standard in-person fee in their home market, shown in their local currency. It moves with format, location, date and session length: virtual sessions and shorter slots usually cost less, while international travel and peak dates cost more. Send your brief to PepTalk and the team will confirm the exact fee in your currency.
Not all of them, and it makes no difference to your booking. PepTalk's network of 15,000+ speakers covers talent the team works with directly alongside speakers represented by agents and agencies worldwide. PepTalk approaches the speaker, negotiates the fee and handles contracting either way.
Three to six months ahead is comfortable for most events, and 12 months is better for large conferences, peak-season dates or one specific in-demand speaker. Shorter timelines are workable, and PepTalk regularly fills last-minute and replacement bookings within days. Availability is the constraint, so get in touch as soon as you have a date.
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