Margot Ellis is the author of Slow Power, the bestselling book on why the calmest leaders make the best decisions, and one of the most requested keynote speakers on leadership and attention.
Slow Power spent 31 weeks on bestseller lists and is now required reading in leadership programmes from London to Singapore.
Plate 1Margot reading from Slow Power at a London bookshop.
The leadership book I give to every new manager.Chief People Officer✱
Quietly radical.The Ledger Review✱
A rare book that changes how you spend Monday.Northfield Business Journal✱
She makes slowness feel like an advantage, because it is.Leaders Weekly✱
Most leaders are not short of ideas. They are short of attention. Every meeting, message and deadline trains us to answer faster, and fast answers feel like progress. But the decisions that shape a company are rarely urgent. They are *important*, and important decisions need *room.* *Slow Power* is not about doing less. It is about deciding better, so the whole team can move faster with less noise.
A deliberate ninety seconds before any decision that's hard to reverse. Long enough to notice, short enough to keep moving.
Three questions that sort urgent from important, asked out loud, so the whole team learns to ask them too.
Meeting-free mornings, written briefs and weekly thinking time, made normal rather than heroic.
Four ways to bring Slow Power to your people, each tailored to your audience and every one ending with something they can do on Monday.
The signature keynote. Why the calmest leaders make the best decisions, and the small, practical habits that get any team there.
Request this keynote →For all-hands and conferences. How constant urgency quietly taxes every team, and how to win attention back without working longer.
Request this keynote →A hands-on workshop for leadership teams: writing to think, and short written briefs that replace long meetings.
Request this workshop →A leadership offsite programme built on the book, with signed copies for every participant and a 60-day follow-up.
Request this programme →How calm leaders make better decisions.
"Slowness isn't the opposite of ambition. It's how the best leaders protect it."
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The calmest person in the room is usually the one who decides what happens next. Urgency is contagious, but so is composure, and composure spreads more slowly and lasts much longer. Most bad decisions are not made by bad leaders; they are made by good leaders in a hurry. Give a hard choice ninety seconds of quiet and it will often tell you what it needs. Speed is a habit. So is clarity. You get to choose which one you practise.
— 112 —Most of Margot's hosts add copies of Slow Power to the keynote, so the ideas keep working long after the applause. See what that looks like for your event.
We gave every manager a copy and booked Margot for our summit. Six months on, "take the ninety seconds" is how we talk.
The calmest, sharpest keynote I've hosted in ten years of running this conference.
She signed six hundred books and still remembered names. People talk about that as much as the talk.
Slow Power is the book I give every new leader. Hearing Margot live made it stick.
The signing line, Slow Power tour
Tell us about your event. Her office replies to every invitation within two working days.
Thank you. It's on Margot's desk.
Her office will reply within two working days with availability, fees and a short planning call.