Keynote · Sustainable High Performance
Burn bright, not out.
Sustainable high performance is doing excellent work, repeatedly, without degrading the people producing it. Brad Hook is a high performance speaker based in New Zealand, speaking internationally, with a decade in performance science and a keynote about how the best performers update faster than their circumstances change, and last.
Why Brad
Performance science, not hustle culture.
The idea sounds obvious and the practice is rare. Much of working life still runs on an extractive model: push harder, recover never, replace people when they break. The costs show up as burnout, disengagement and attrition, and most leaders can feel them before they see the numbers. The alternative is not a lower bar. It is building the conditions that make a high bar repeatable: regulated nervous systems, honest stories, deliberate action, and systems that work with human biology instead of against it.
Brad spent close to a decade at the Resilience Institute as partner, Head of Innovation and, for a period, CEO, where sustainable performance was the product. His book Resilience Mastery draws on a survey of 26,000 people to identify the factors that separate the most resilient performers from the rest: focus, purpose, optimism, sleep, vitality, presence and more. That work took him into PwC, Shell, Electronic Arts, Fonterra and Fletcher Building, and in front of more than 100,000 people across five continents.
The keynote is built on the predictive brain: brains do not passively perceive the world, they predict it, and the performers who stay at the top are the ones who update their predictions faster than their circumstances change. It is the same idea behind FLAME, the Sustainable High Performance Program Brad delivers inside organisations, and the subject of his next book. And it is honest about the failure mode: there is a version of flow that feels productive and quietly costs you. Brad calls it shitty flow, and the difference between that and the real thing is where sustainable performance lives.
What the keynote covers
State. Story. Action. System.
State: manage the budget before you demand the output
Performance begins in the body. Sleep, recovery, breath and movement set the budget every other capacity spends from. What 26,000 assessments say about the performers who last, and a live heart-rate demonstration that calm is a skill.
Story: the brain is a prediction machine
The story your brain runs becomes the experience you have. Working with it is not positive thinking, it is prediction management, and it is trainable. Why top performers are fast updaters, not just hard workers.
Action: flow, including the shitty kind
Small actions aligned with your values compound into results. The conditions that produce genuine flow, the compulsive busyness that masquerades as it, and focus as the raw material of performance.
System: nobody outperforms a broken one for long
Team norms, psychological safety and workload design decide whether high performance is sustainable or extractive. Leaders own the system. What to change on Monday.
How it works
Keynote, workshop or the full programme.
The keynote runs 45 to 60 minutes and is tailored to your audience and industry: conference main stage, sales kickoff, leadership offsite. For teams who want to go deeper it extends into half-day or full-day workshops built on the same research, and for organisations that want it to stick, the FLAME programme carries it over months with assessments, sessions and a team report.
Every session is interactive and grounded in evidence, usually with a live heart-rate demonstration, and every participant receives a follow-up resource pack. Virtual and hybrid formats are available.
Use the enquiry form below, or email brad@bradleyhook.com.
Brad delivered an engaging and insightful presentation on wellbeing and performance that resonated strongly with our audience. The session attracted excellent feedback from attendees, who valued the practical relevance of his FLAME framework and his engaging presentation style.
What sets Brad apart is his ability to translate high-performance concepts into something tangible and actionable. We've seen the impact firsthand — not just in the moment, but in how our people keep applying the tools in their day-to-day roles.
His ability to bring together science, storytelling and practical ideas made the session incredibly relatable. Brad introduced the idea of our ‘body budget’ and how the everyday things we do, like sleep, movement, connection, nourishment and moments of calm, can either add to or draw from the energy we have available. Our people came away feeling energised, reflective and, as one person put it, ‘fired up!’
Brad has a remarkable ability to take important and sometimes complex topics and make them engaging, practical and relevant to everyday working life. What particularly stood out was his ability to connect the content with our own organizational context, making the experience feel genuinely tailored rather than like a standard webinar. People left with practical ideas they could apply immediately, and many asked for more opportunities to learn with Brad.
The FLAME full day workshop was an extremely engaging professional development opportunity for our team. Brad's authentic approach, expert facilitation, and ability to read the room created an environment that encouraged genuine reflection, connection, and learning. The practical frameworks with real-life experiences made the learning both meaningful and immediately applicable.
Brad delivered an outstanding session for our team at our Connexa Connect Session. His content was engaging, practical and highly relevant to the challenges and opportunities our people face every day. He has a unique ability to make important concepts around mindset, performance and resilience simple, relatable and actionable. Our people left with practical tools, a shared language and plenty to reflect on. I’d happily recommend Brad to any organisation looking to build more resilient teams.
I've had the pleasure of working with Brad over several years while supporting the wellbeing and development of a globally dispersed organisation of around 160 people. Brad has a rare ability to combine deep expertise with genuine warmth and humility. From the resilience-based thinking that underpinned our early work together to the development of the Values Institute and now FLAME, Brad has continued to refine and strengthen his approach while remaining human-centred and evidence-based. I would recommend him without hesitation.
What an insightful and thought-provoking session. There are a lot of takeaways, and we’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback on the tips and tricks we can all apply in our lives.
Quite honestly, the star of the two days training. His subject matter expertise was exceptional; delivery style was masterful and was a true inspiration to witness speak.
Bradley delivered an engaging, informative, and practical presentation that held everyone's attention and gave us plenty to reflect on. We would be happy to recommend Bradley to any organisation looking for a professional, insightful, and engaging speaker.
What a presentation — I honestly was blown away. All of what you presented resonated with me and my journey so far, from professional sport to my vocational life.
Engaging, thoughtful and deeply practical. Everyone is still talking about it days later!
The majority of attendees rated the session a perfect 5 out of 5, and many highlighted Brad's content as a personal highlight of the programme.
Brad's stories are engaging, and certainly resonated with all of us. We can highly recommend Brad.
Absolutely brilliant, engaging, practical, and energizing.
Outstanding presenter, facilitator, communicator and educator.
A special shout out to Bradley Hook, whose presentation skills were on a whole other TED Talk level!
My biggest takeaway was learning about his FLAME Method, a clear, actionable framework designed to help us “burn bright, not out” by redesigning our habits for the modern world. This framework is exactly what we need to sustain high energy levels, perform at our peak, and most importantly, avoid burnout.
Genuinely helps people improve their wellbeing and health.
It was great to hear Brad talk, and I've had a couple of good wins coming out of the session. My three-year-old's sleep routine is down to about 30 minutes — it used to take a couple of hours!
Trusted by leading organisations
Questions
Booking the sustainable high performance keynote: the practical bits.
What is sustainable high performance?
The capacity to do excellent work, repeatedly, without degrading the people producing it. It treats energy, attention and connection as capital to be stewarded rather than fuel to be burned, and it is built with four levers: state (the body budget), story (the predictions the brain runs), action (small behaviours aligned with values) and system (the team norms and workload design that leaders own).
What does the keynote cover?
The neuroscience of sustainable performance: how the predictive brain works at speed, the conditions for genuine flow and the trap of the counterfeit kind, focus as a trainable asset, and energy management over time management. Grounded in research from 26,000 assessments, finished with tools people can use the next morning.
How is this different from typical high performance talks?
No hustle culture. Brad spent a decade in performance science at the Resilience Institute, and the keynote treats recovery, sleep and attention as performance infrastructure, the way elite sport does, rather than pushing harder as a strategy. It is high performance that lasts past the quarter.
Who is the keynote for?
Sales teams, leadership groups and conferences where the audience already works hard and needs an edge that does not cost them. Brad has worked with organisations including PwC, Shell, Electronic Arts, Fonterra and Fletcher Building, and tailors every session to the audience.
How do I book, and how far ahead should I plan?
Use the enquiry form on this page, or email brad@bradleyhook.com. For major conferences, three to six months' notice is ideal; smaller events can often be arranged with a few weeks' lead time. Brad is based in New Zealand and speaks internationally, in person and virtually.
Go deeper
Brad writes extensively about performance.
Book Brad
Book the sustainable high performance keynote.
Use the enquiry form below, or email brad@bradleyhook.com. Tell us about your event and we'll come back within a day or two.
- 1
Enquire
Send the form, or email brad@bradleyhook.com. Dates, audience and the question you want answered are the useful bits.
- 2
Discovery call
Twenty minutes with Brad to shape the session: your industry, your team's dynamics, what success looks like.
- 3
Confirm and prepare
A clear proposal, then a tailored session, with a resource pack for your people afterwards.