Keynote · Leadership
Leaders make the weather. Learn to forecast well.
Brad Hook is a leadership speaker based in New Zealand, speaking internationally. His sessions show leadership teams how the predictive brain turns a leader's state into the whole team's climate, and what to do about it before Monday's meeting.
Why Brad
Someone who has led, researched it, and can explain the brain behind it.
Brad spent close to a decade at the Resilience Institute as partner, Head of Innovation and, for a period, CEO, working with leadership teams across sectors and co-developing the programmes those teams ran, including its Resilient Leadership programme. He has taught inside The Icehouse Owner Manager Programme (two blocks) and its Leadership Development Programme, where the majority of attendees rated his session five out of five, and delivers Values-Based Leadership and Team Dynamics Facilitation through the Values Institute, and Human Operating Styles as part of FLAME. In total he has spoken to more than 100,000 people across five continents.
The sessions are built for real pressure, not the hypothetical kind: leadership resilience for the Delegat C-suite, leading through change for the Schindler global leadership team, leading under pressure and accountability for Bridgestone, and leading through crisis for WebBeds during conflict in the Middle East. He has delivered leadership training to PwC leaders globally, to Electronic Arts producers and the wider business, and Leadership Antifragility for Fonterra, alongside leadership and performance sessions for Shell, Fletcher Building, Toyota, Sport New Zealand and Open Polytechnic.
His leadership lens is the neuroscience of the predictive brain. A leader's brain does not react to the team; it forecasts, pre-loads a state, and then broadcasts that state through emotional contagion to every nervous system in the room. Brad calls this the weather you make. Once leaders see it, psychological safety stops being a poster and becomes what it actually is: a prediction the team runs about whether it is safe to speak up (the research, minus the buzzword, is in What Is Psychological Safety?).
He writes about leadership for Entrepreneur and is the author of Start With Values (Hatherleigh Press, distributed by Penguin Random House), founder of the Values Institute, and creator of the FLAME leadership development programme. A new book on sustainable high performance is forthcoming. Every session serves that one outcome: leaders and teams that burn bright, not out.
What the keynote covers
From the leader's nervous system to the team's results.
The weather you make
Your brain is a forecaster, not a reactor. It predicts what is coming, prepares a state in advance, and that state spreads to your team within minutes through emotional contagion. Leaders leave knowing how to audit their own forecast before they broadcast it.
Psychological safety, properly
Not niceness, not comfort, not lowered standards. Amy Edmondson's research reframed through the predictive brain: safety is a prediction your team has learned about what happens when someone speaks up, and it is rebuilt in seconds, in meetings, in the moment after bad news arrives.
Values under pressure
Under load, the brain defaults to old priors and values quietly get compromised. Brad shows leaders how to name what matters most, notice the moment it slips, and lead from it when it is hardest. Built on Start With Values and the Global Values Report.
Curiosity: the capacity to update
The best leaders are not the ones with the most answers. They are the ones who update fastest. Practical ways to stay curious, regulate under pressure and keep a leadership team adaptive in the age of intelligence.
How it works
Conference keynote, leadership team session or full programme.
The keynote runs 45 to 60 minutes and is built for conferences, leadership summits and all-hands events. For executive and senior leadership teams, the half-day and full-day workshop formats go deeper: leaders map their own forecasts, practise the state-shift tools live, and leave with a shared language they can use with their own teams the next morning. Modules Brad teaches regularly: presence, flow for teams, leadership EQ, leadership well-being, leading through change, leading through crisis, leading under pressure and accountability, leadership resilience and antifragility, human operating styles, and team dynamics facilitation.
Feedback from a full-day leadership programme at Open Polytechnic, from Melanie Boyd, Manager, Learning and Teaching: "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 also delivers modules inside longer leadership programmes and offsites, as he has for The Icehouse and the Resilience Institute. Feedback from Connexa's Senior People & Culture Business Partner: "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."
Brad is based in New Zealand and available across the country, from Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga to Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown, as well as internationally, in person and virtually. For multi-session leadership development, the <a href="https://flame.live/for/leadership-development" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FLAME leadership programme</a> is the container.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 a leadership speaker: the practical bits.
What does Brad's leadership keynote cover?
The neuroscience of the predictive brain applied to leadership: how a leader's internal forecast becomes the team's emotional climate, psychological safety as a prediction the team learns rather than a value on a poster, how values get compromised under pressure and how to lead from them anyway, and curiosity as the capacity to update. Workshop modules include presence, flow for teams, leadership EQ, leadership well-being, leading through change, leading through crisis, leading under pressure and accountability, leadership resilience and antifragility, human operating styles, and team dynamics facilitation. Every session ends with tools leaders can use in their next meeting.
Is this for a whole conference audience or for a leadership team?
Both, in different formats. The keynote suits conferences, leadership summits and company-wide events. Executive and senior leadership teams get more from the half-day or full-day workshop, where the team works on its own forecasts and agrees a shared language, as the Delegat C-suite, the Schindler global leadership team and PwC leaders globally have. Brad also delivers modules inside longer leadership programmes, including The Icehouse Owner Manager Programme and Leadership Development Programme.
How is this different from other leadership speakers in New Zealand?
New Zealand has outstanding leadership speakers, from Richie McCaw and Dame Susan Devoy to Mai Chen and Sir Ray Avery, and Brad has profiled many of them in his guide to New Zealand keynote speakers. His session is a different instrument: it explains the brain science underneath leadership behaviour, it is highly interactive, and it comes from someone who has led an organisation, co-developed leadership programmes for the Resilience Institute, The Icehouse and the Values Institute, and written the research up. Many organisations pair a story-led speaker with Brad's science-led session across a year.
Where does Brad speak?
Brad is based in New Zealand and speaks across the country, including Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown, and internationally. Virtual and hybrid formats are available for distributed leadership teams.
How do I book, and how far ahead should I plan?
Bookings run through FLAME at flame.live, or contact Brad directly. Conference keynotes are best booked three to six months ahead; leadership team workshops can often be arranged within a few weeks. Every booking includes a discovery call so the session fits your leadership team's actual pressures.
Go deeper
Brad writes extensively about leadership.
Book the leadership keynote.
Enquiries and bookings run through FLAME. Tell us about your leadership team and the pressure it is under.