Manley Hopkinson

An internationally acclaimed and admired inspirational and motivational speaker, Manley uses powerful metaphors to enliven the topics of leadership, “team-ship” and “self-ship” all with a focus on delivering high performance. With the core of his talks revolving around his phenomenal experiences, Manley develops the personal themes of fulfilling your team’s potential and achieving far beyond your own perceived abilities, as well as drawing on the numerous leadership and team development lessons; give a team a real sense of purpose and direction, motivate and inspire them and it is incredible what can be achieved.

He led a team of volunteers, including novices, for 9 months in a 32,000-mile journey, the ‘wrong way’ round! Manley continued his adventures as part of the 3-man team that won the inaugural race to the Magnetic North Pole. The team faced polar bear attacks, and sub-zero temperatures, learning huge lessons about both surviving and competing in difficult circumstances – their record time of 10 days and 9 hours still stands.

In 2014, Manley published “Compassionate Leadership: How to Create and Maintain Engaged, Committed and High-Performing Teams”. In this book, Manley combines the two worlds of business and adventure to encourage leaders everywhere – at work, at home, in sports and mid-ocean – to take a new approach to creating teams of developed, self-aware and committed individuals. The 2nd edition copy was published in 2022, with 2 additional chapters on Resilience and Remote Leadership​.

Manley subsequently applies his leadership experience to great effect, designing and delivering a number of successful cultural change programs and sitting on the Board of organisations globally, including ATLAS Consortium, HP Defense UK and Ark Data Centres.

In 2018, Manley launched the Compassionate Leadership Academy (CLA) as a continuation of all his work and designed to transform the way people access leadership and personal development and further spread the impact of​ compassionate leadership worldwide. The CLA suite of products is accredited by the Institute of Leadership, CPD Approved and available in many languages.