Mark Agnew
The keynote
Find Your Polar Bear: a keynote on resilience through change
For organisations that want resilient teams who see change as an exciting challenge, not an obstacle to endure.
Resilience keynote
A resilience keynote built on a polar bear encounter
Find Your Polar Bear is a keynote on resilience through change for conferences, leadership teams and change programmes. It starts with the night a polar bear tried to get into Mark Agnew's tent.
Mark and his teammates rose to the challenge with resilience. It was one day of 103 through the Arctic's Northwest Passage, on a journey that made history and earned Mark the title European Adventurer of the Year and two world first records. Your audience gets the adventure, and leaves with a way to handle change.
"It really was one of the best, most inspiring talks I've ever heard."
Ricco Zuschlag, Country Lead, Google
Built with psychologists, forged in the Arctic
A resilience framework built with psychologists
Resilience research meets lived experience. Before going to the Arctic, Mark interviewed five specialists. Find Your Polar Bear is the framework he built from their research and tested when the stakes were life and death.
Team cohesion and camaraderie
Finding meaning in the challenge
Authentic experiences on the journey
Suffering and happiness as social glue
Building resilient teams
A practical framework your team can use on Monday morning
"His research into the psychology of human behaviour was fascinating, especially when talking about teamwork."
Rachel Day, Marketing GB, Bosch
"He has a special way of talking about and learning from failures."
Richard Whiteoak, Senior Manager, Swiss Re
Keynote takeaways
POLAR
When you love to strive you always arrive.
Give your staff purpose in the pursuit, so they are motivated and driven day after day. The joy of striving is always better than arriving.
There will be headwinds. You cannot control the wind, but you can keep paddling.
So your people stop wasting time and start overcoming obstacles by focusing on what they can control.
Fight the problem, not the feeling.
By accepting that fear and stress are normal, appropriate responses, we give ourselves permission to find a solution.
Tough people know how to persevere. Resilient people know when to persevere.
If you are too tough you won't adapt, and you won't ask for help. Then you will fail. That's not resilience.
Camaraderie is formed when tough times are shared.
Strive for deep bonds between teammates by taking on tough challenges together.
BEAR
Be the best at basics.
When you are uncommonly good at the common, you become a high performer and maintain high standards even through change.
Mistakes create experience. Experience avoids mistakes.
Failure is inevitable. How your organisation uses it is a choice that could lead to great things.
Tough things are tough. That's not the problem, that's the point.
Staff must embrace adversity and see the chances for growth through challenges.
The miles take care of themselves when you take care of the strokes.
Measure consistent inputs, not variable outputs, as a pathway to success.
Keynote formats
Keynote formats for your event
The Find Your Polar Bear keynote usually runs 45 to 60 minutes. Mark has delivered it as a 15-minute tone-setter to open a conference and as a 90-minute interactive keynote. He meets you beforehand to tie the story to your objectives, your values and the change your team is facing.
- Conference keynotes
- Change and transformation programmes
- Leadership offsites
- Sales kick-offs
- Company all-hands
- Virtual events
If your staff can reframe change as an exciting challenge to enjoy, they'll outperform everyone who only sees an obstacle to endure.
Mark AgnewCreator of Find Your Polar Bear