Description
Nathan Jones leadership speaker keynotes bring together experimental psychology, lived experience and more than two decades on stage and in broadcast. He helps leaders navigate emotion, make decisions under pressure, and build psychologically safe cultures at work and beyond.
Holding a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Adelaide, Nathan bridges science, leadership and lived experience. He is known for using intuitive cues such as colour, symbols and music to help people understand and work with the full emotional spectrum. His doctoral research, The Colour of Emotion, proposed a data-driven approach to understanding emotion in the digital age.
Over the past decade, Nathan has spoken at global events including SXSW, TEDx, and the World Congress on Positive Psychology. He has delivered keynotes and development programs across corporate, academic and entrepreneurial settings, and his work has been featured by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Sky News, ABC Radio, and SiriusXM.
Nathan is the founder of EQ6 Global and creator of EQ6®, a leadership development system designed to embed emotional wisdom from the inside out. His work is grounded in evidence, shaped by practice, and delivered to change how emotion is understood and led at work. Our leadership speakers page shows the same evidence base underpins every keynote below.
Connect with Nathan on LinkedIn.
Keynote Topics
Every Nathan Jones leadership speaker keynote is built around a distinct challenge leaders face today, from psychosocial risk to communication under pressure.
The Life Compass: How to Navigate Chaos at Work and Beyond
Work and life rarely unfold in straight lines. When pressure rises and familiar strategies stop working, people can lose their sense of direction. Drawing on psychological research and real-world leadership experience, The Life Compass offers a simple, human way to navigate stress, pressure and complexity. This engaging keynote helps people understand emotion as useful information, reconnect with their inner authority, and choose the response a situation genuinely requires.
Rather than promising a quick fix, The Life Compass restores orientation. Audiences leave with a memorable framework for making clearer, calmer and more grounded choices when life gets rocky.
Key takeaways — participants will learn how to:
- Reframe stress and emotion as signals to interpret, rather than weaknesses to suppress.
- Recognise the behavioural patterns that contribute to burnout, friction and fatigue.
- Apply the Four As — Alter, Accept, Avoid and Adapt — to challenging situations.
- Distinguish between moments that call for change, acceptance, boundaries or openness.
- Make more deliberate decisions when circumstances feel chaotic or uncertain.
Ideal for: emerging leaders, early-career professionals, whole-of-organisation conferences, wellbeing programs, and teams navigating change or sustained pressure.
The New EQ: Leading with Emotional Intelligence in the Age of AI
Emotional intelligence emerged a little more than 35 years ago, but the world it was built for no longer exists. Drawing on advances in psychology, neuroscience and the realities of modern work, The New EQ challenges the assumptions behind traditional emotional intelligence.
Classic models often assume that people have enough internal capacity to use emotional skills effectively. Today, trauma, neurodivergence, burnout and low psychological safety can fundamentally change how people function under pressure.
This keynote introduces a compassionate, practical upgrade to EQ through six emotional competencies: Detection, Connection, Reflection, Regulation, Communication and Motivation. It gives leaders and organisations a shared language for recognising limits, strengthening emotional capacity, and helping people perform without sacrificing their humanity.
Key takeaways — participants will learn how to:
- Understand why traditional emotional-intelligence models can fall short under sustained pressure.
- Recognise the relationship between emotional capacity, burnout and psychological safety.
- Apply six practical emotional competencies to contemporary leadership challenges.
- Respond more effectively to emotion in themselves and others.
- Use a shared language that supports more attuned, inclusive and human workplaces.
- Identify what human leadership can offer in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.
Ideal for: HR and People & Culture leaders, L&D professionals, people leaders, leadership conferences, and organisations responding to AI disruption, burnout or cultural change.
The Risk Playbook: Why Psychosocial Hazards Keep Coming Back
Why do psychosocial hazards persist despite policies, audits and action plans? Drawing on neuroscience, leadership psychology and psychosocial-risk research, The Risk Playbook reveals how sustained pressure can distort perception, decision-making and behaviour, even among otherwise excellent leaders.
Nathan introduces six hazardous leadership states that can emerge under stress, helping leaders use them as signals for better leadership. By understanding each state, leaders can begin to spot predictable risks across people, roles and organisational systems.
This keynote shifts the focus from compliance-based control to competency-based prevention, helping leaders recognise emotional impairment earlier, regulate before harm spreads, and interrupt recurring patterns of psychosocial risk.
Key takeaways — participants will learn how to:
- Understand how pressure distorts leadership judgement and behaviour.
- Recognise the six hazardous leadership states and the risks associated with each.
- Identify early signs of emotional impairment before harm escalates.
- Understand why psychosocial hazards can recur despite strong policies and processes.
- Move from reactive compliance towards leadership capability and prevention.
- Develop the emotional sobriety required for safer decisions and healthier cultures.
Ideal for: boards, executives, senior leaders, risk and governance teams, WHS professionals, and organisations strengthening their psychosocial-risk capability.
Master Your Voice: How to Communicate Like a Pro
Your voice is more than the sound you make. It is how you take ownership of an idea, communicate what matters, and allow yourself to be heard. Before becoming an experimental psychologist and international speaker, Nathan began his career in broadcasting and became the national promo voice of brands including MTV, Nickelodeon and Network Ten.
In Master Your Voice, he brings together more than 20 years of communication experience, psychological insight and lessons from high-stakes stages. This keynote explores what prevents capable people from speaking with authority and why confidence cannot be manufactured through presentation techniques alone.
Nathan shows audiences how to find the emotional truth of their message, communicate with genuine presence, and remain connected to themselves when the pressure is on. Because mastering your voice is not about sounding like somebody else — it is about becoming more fully yourself when it matters most.
Key takeaways — participants will learn how to:
- Identify the emotional barriers that make people shrink, perform or disconnect when speaking.
- Find the central idea and emotional truth that make a message compelling.
- Communicate with greater clarity, presence and authenticity.
- Manage nerves and stay connected under pressure.
- Adapt a message without losing their own voice.
- Speak in a way that helps other people feel seen, heard and understood.
