Baroness Manningham-Buller
Former Head of MI5 & Former Chair of the Wellcome Trust
Tim Collins
Colonel Tim Collins OBE
Security CEO
Tim's rallying cry to his troops on the eve of invasion in Iraq captured worldwide attention. He now heads a security services company that has trained Afghans and helped African armies contain the Ebola threat. Tim sets out the leader's role: ?Get your reason and organisation right, make sure the right people are in the right spirit, ensure your team pull together and fully understand each others' roles, issue the right instructions ? and then let them get on with it.?
Speaking Topics
- Leadership
- Resilience
- Risk & Risk Management
Biography
Colonel Tim Collins attracted attention on both sides of the Atlantic for his rousing speech to the troops before going into battle in Iraq. His autobiography, Rules of Engagement, subsequently went straight into the bestseller lists. As well as working on broader security issues he now draws parallels between his career as a military leader with the skills needed in the modern workplace from how to build trust and resilience within a team to how to plan and communicate that plan clearly, inspiringly and purposefully.
Tim was commissioned into the Army and joined the 2nd Battalion, Royal Irish Rangers in Berlin. After completing several tours including Northern Ireland and the Falklands, he became aide to the UN Chief of Staff in Cyprus. Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Tim took on the role of Project Director for the Peace Support Training Centre in Sarajevo, before returning to HQ Land Command with responsibility for training.
Once in Iraq, Tim soon realised he faced similar problems to Sir Gerald Templer when he was sent to defeat the Malayan Uprising in the 1950s. Saddam Hussein had ensured the country would be virtually unmanageable if he was removed from power and the British forces had entered without appropriate plans to back up their initial victory. Nature abhors a vacuum and the dissolution of the Iraqi National Guard, police force and utilities meant that an insurgency rapidly formed to fill the gap.
Tim is a naturally inspiring speaker, combining extensive experience of active service with broad knowledge of military and political history. An authority on teamwork, leadership and motivation, his speeches show a clear parallel between military problem solving and the challenges faced by leaders in any walk of life.
Tim’s philosophy can be summed up in a handful of rules. Know what your objectives are and have a plan; pick the right team; make sure everyone has a role and that it has been communicated clearly to them; understand your responsibilities as leader but learn to trust your team.
“Inspiring, funny and above all practical about what gets people committed.”
The highest score for content, relevance and style of any presenter at our annual supplier conference. I have had a great deal of feedback from delegates about his style and the canny way he linked a military view into the business environment and how similar the leadership of both has to be in order to perform.
Many delegates were wrting furiously in an effort to take detail on the key messages.
Throughout, Tim was professional, organised and delivered a speech far beyond what the brief requested. Without doubt, the best investment of our day.
Very well received by the audience – comments were that they found it very refreshing and inspirational.
There was a lot of positive feedback from our attendees regarding Colonel Collins. Amongst them were:
“The importance of the strategy presentation was driven home by some of the messages from Colonel Collins – we need to know what our boss’s boss is trying to achieve.”
“Colonel Tim Collins was a very interesting speaker and it was interesting that his first step to a successful team was “Figure out what you are for””
“Good to have an external speaker – Tim was interesting and engaging”
Our senior management have been cascading the messages down and I have heard several of them give direct quotes from Colonel Collins presentation.
He was even better than expected. We were a bit afraid that he might be too serious (army officer) or too much of a drill instructor, but he was great! He joined for a part of the conference, so he could feedback on the content during his own speech. He was funny, interesting, and made a perfect link between his own experience and our business.
The audience loved his speech. A lot of people were writing down some of the comments he made, they asked a lot of questions and were really engaged by his speech / stories. Big success!
We asked attendees to score 1-5 (1 very poor 5 excellent) Standard of Presentation: 4.9 Content: 4.8. Not bad! Some of the audience comments:
Excellent speaker, could have listened to him for a lot longer!
Inspiring!
Very interesting and inspiring session. Very well delivered by speaker.
Best speaker of the event
The best presentation of Live ‘09
Very interesting, like the new ways to look at situations
Excellent speaker, but too politically opinionated!
Brilliant, more like this please next year
This presentation made the trip to the conference worthwhile. Thank you for the inspiration!
Refreshing/realistic, a guy who has been there
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