Description
Ant Williams leadership speaker sessions draw on his day job: building leaders. As founder and director of a leadership development firm, he has spent more than a decade helping leaders build courage, perform under pressure and deliver consistent results. He also holds two world records in ice diving, which give every lesson real weight.
Ant Williams Leadership Speaker: Building Leaders on the Job
Ant’s firm works across three areas. First, leadership development, where leaders are measured by the results their team delivers, the values they hold and their impact on others. Second, team performance, applying behavioural psychology to build high performing teams and mental toughness. Third, consulting skills, helping large professional services firms build world class advisory capability.
His approach builds leadership in the flow of work. Strong group sessions are backed by personalised learning, so the change lasts after the workshop ends. Organisations his firm has worked with include Thales, Fujitsu, PwC, Woolworths, Walt Disney, Foxtel, AustralianSuper, MYOB, Sydney Trains, Alinta Energy, Sportsbet and YMCA.
Signature Keynote: Teamwork at the Edge (60 mins)
Corporate teams don’t face Arctic cold. However, they do face relentless change, high stakes and the challenge of leading through uncertainty.
In 2019 Ant set out to become the deepest man under ice. Within 24 hours of arriving in the Arctic Circle, his elite dive team fell apart. Misalignment, poor communication and a lack of trust turned a world class operation into chaos.
In this interactive keynote, Ant takes leaders inside that mission. Through an immersive problem solving challenge, attendees step into the shoes of his dive team. As a result, they identify the decisions that could have turned it around before disaster struck.
Key takeaways:
- Matching your leadership to the situation and the person
- The cost of avoiding tough conversations
- Addressing the dysfunctions that erode team performance
Also Available: Fearless Under Pressure (60 mins)
This keynote shares the mental strategies behind his world record ice dives. Using sport psychology and his own extreme feats, Ant helps leaders and teams overcome fear, embrace uncertainty and thrive in times of change.
- Why taking positive, calculated risk is essential to achieving your goals
- How to rewire your brain for courage and composure
- Techniques to unlock new levels of performance
Leadership Tested Under the Ice
Ant began as a sport psychologist, coaching MotoGP riders, big wave surfers and rock climbers. Yet he felt untested himself. So he took up freediving to find out whether courage and resilience can be learned.
In 2019 he dived 70.3 metres under a frozen fjord in Kirkenes, Norway, setting the Guinness World Record for the deepest dive under ice. Then in 2024 he swam 182 metres under solid ice in Iceland, in water of 0.2°C, for the under ice distance record. Apple filmed that swim for Ice Dive, part of its Adventure series for Apple Vision Pro.
He can also hold his breath for more than eight minutes. In addition, he is the author of Let It Be Tough, which shows readers that mental toughness is trained, not born. For his mental toughness keynotes, see Ant Williams as a motivational speaker.
What Clients Say
“The way you seamlessly linked your rich experiences with our working environment and challenges was very clever, you left a very strong impression on me and on everyone else in the room.”
Macquarie Bank
“Ant made a massive impact on our top performing sales teams.”
Allianz
“Simply Brilliant, what an inspiration I could not recommend him more highly.”
GE Healthcare
Book Ant Williams for your next leadership conference, executive offsite or team development day.
