Major General Arthur Denaro CBE speaks with experience and great insight on how to motivate, inspire and lead others in testing times.
Major General Denaro's distinguished career began when he was commissioned into the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars; his life as a young officer included being involved with clandestine operations worldwide with UK Special Forces.
Prestigious appointments during his career included commanding his Regiment in the War to Liberate Kuwait, and becoming Chief of Staff of 44,000 troops during the Balkans conflict. The UN Protection Forces in the Balkans were drawn from no less than 31 different nations and they had to operate in a particularly complex and often cruel environment. Major General Denaro's role included ensuring international relations were maintained despite fraught and often-dangerous events, including the vital military link between Koffi Annan, who was then UN Special Adviser to the Balkans, and the military on the ground.
He was awarded the OBE in the Gulf War Honours List and the CBE in 1995 following the Balkans Conflict. Other appointments of note during his career have included Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of British Forces Cyprus.
Between 1997-2000, Major General Denaro was Commandant of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst where British and overseas graduates were being trained as the future leaders of their 'beloved soldiers'. He was also the Middle East adviser to the Secretary of State for Defence and the Chief of Defence Staff for six years until 2002. In this role, he led high-level delegations to the Heads of State in all of the countries in the Gulf region as well as to Jordan, Syria and Egypt.
Keynote Speaker:
As a keynote speaker, Major General Denaro speaks on issues such as Effective Leadership, Change Management, Teamwork and Motivation. Without doubt his skill at leading, managing, motivating and developing others was essential to his successful career. He is a skilled negotiator and has led others at times of crisis and change in both peace and war.
He knows how vital it is to encourage and inspire people across cultures and how to deal with sensitive and difficult issues.
During his talks, Major General Denaro draws upon many dramatic examples, both moving and highly amusing, to emphasize his key messages about professionalism, team-building, communication, leadership and integrity and perhaps above all, maintaining a caring attitude.
Major General Arthur Denaro is a truly charismatic character. He is in demand to address senior managers and members of the board on aspects of leadership or change management, but he also particularly enjoys giving motivational talks to younger corporate audiences about how to work with integrity and professionalism and how to assume responsibility.
His compassion, humour and extensive international experience in leading others combine to produce an address that is entertaining as well as memorable and thought provoking.
LEADERSHIP IN TESTING TIMES
'A deeply personal, exciting and at times, amusing and moving glimpse at Arthur's military life, based on the story of the Irish Hussars part in the War to Liberate Kuwait. He focusses on 4 key issues, after a brief run through the operational experiences that shaped him for the leadership challenges he had to face: they are Team Building, Professionalism, Communication, and Judgement. The lessons that he draws out are applicable to any form of leadership role in civilian life….as he said to his instructors at Sandhurst, "Teach people the things you wish you had been taught…."
YOUNG LEADERSHIP
Junior leadership and responsibilities, based loosely around the command of SAS soldiers on operations. It covers: learning the trade and identifying the lessons; coping with pressure for the first time; acceptance of criticism; self development; applying integrity in decision making.
LEADING FAST
Leading at major unit level, with lessons drawn from commanding on Operation Desert Storm 1991. It covers: confidence and team building; professionalism; balancing the priorities; managing dramatitcally changing situations: taking the tough and hard decisions; communication at all levels.
LEADING TOWARDS PEACE
Leadership at a strategic level, from experience as Chief of Staff of UN Forces during the war in the Former Yugoslavia. This includes: decision making at the highest level and the penalties of indecisiveness; international team building, and nurturing of national egos; dealing with major crisis and the fall-out from them; acceptance of responsibility at the highest level; maintenance of morale when things are going badly; judgement of duty, loyalty and honour.
Your excellent speech certainly made a hit here: the children thought you were cool; the fathers said they would follow you into battle, and the mothers said they would follow you anywhere.
Winterfold House School
Thank you most warmly for being our guest speaker. The words 'excellent' and 'inspiring' were on all our lips afterwards. You made a very appreciated impression and contribution.
St Dunstans
I just wanted to send you a follow up note with my deepest appreciation for your time and presentation yesterday morning. Personally I thought it was incredible, inspiring and humbling. Your messaging on Team work, Communication, Professionalism and Judgment are all themes that I hope to contract to myself put as a priority in leading my professionally life forward. The feedback was overwhelming positive. Everyone was buzzing the entire afternoon and discussing your presentation. I can't thank you enough for being a part of our special day, which allowed us to reflect on our own behaviours of success. Thank you for sharing with us your life, career (so different from ours), successes and your perspective on the topic.
Green & Black's Organic
A most excellent presentation at our Leadership Development week. The event was a great success providing a unique opportunity for our senior mangers to focus on enhancing their leadership abilities. There was an overwhelming response from attendees and their comments include: "Fantastic choice of external speaker, lots of parallels to draw and a great lesson in humility"; "Covered all aspects of leadership and was highly relevant even in our environment", and "Excellent, engaging, humorous."
University for Lloyds TSB
'The content of your speech was very appropriate and the delegates and business leaders found it fascinating, interesting and most thought provoking. Fantastic feedback included: "Most interesting and certainly made me think" and "Our leaders and future leaders will take heed of your key themes and integrate them into the way they lead their teams and our business."'
Marsh McLennan & Companies
'Major General Arthur Denaro experiences were quite different and in a way more interesting due to their nature. He had some great messages supported by experience and also had a good sense of humour which always makes a speaker more appealing. I would definitely love to hear him speak again and would recommend him particularly for corporate functions. I always believe that a year on from hearing a speaker you won't remember a lot of what he/she said but you will remember how they made you feel. For me this is key and Major General Denaro definitely did that.'
Ernst and Young
'There are great similarities between the military and business world, but the stakes are somewhat different! A most interesting and insightful presentation.'
Warburtons
It is always so valuable and interesting to hear from successful leaders who have operated in other fields, be they business, political, sporting or, as in your case, military. So many of the basic principles are equally transferable across all sectors. The group had an interesting discussion after your departure and were able to make the clear distinctions which separate policing from the army, and that was important for them, as their organisation is working very hard at a strategic level to put clear blue water between their military background, and their concentration on the community policing which they (quite rightly) see as their future.
QATAR POLICE TRAINING COLLEGE
Major General Arthur Denaro was inspirational; it is reassuring to know a Commander leading men to war can have a crisis of confidence, like any other leader. Superb!
Thought the talk by Major General Arthur Denaro was really motivating and inspiring and it translated well into the world of business.
Arthur has had to make decisions that cost lives - not just of the men who served under him but also the ongoing impact to their families - you can draw huge comparisons between the two however you can never separate the part of the value of life!
A brilliant evening. Perfect venue, excellent food and outstanding speakers. It was interesting to see another aspect of management from an army perspective when the stakes are much higher.
Great event, with a refreshingly different view from the general. Would have liked him on for about twice the time.
Great session, some good messages and reminders from Major General Denaro, within some stories of powerful real-life experiences.
Thoroughly enjoyable - shame didn't have time for Q and A with Arthur - I'm sure it would have been illuminating & re-enforced his themes.
I enjoyed the Major General's talk. A thoroughly enjoyable evening.
I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. The main speaker was excellent
Entrepreneur's Forum Event
I thoroughly enjoyed your moving and thought provoking talk. Our Veterinary Director and a man who has achieved a great deal within the veterinary field (who briefly thanked you at the end), commented that it was the best keynote speech in his 7 years at CVS.
You made many interesting points - two that struck me were the fact that you had self-doubt when taking command in the Gulf. Not something that you would necessarily be accused of and I found your admission very humbling and a reassurance that everyone is human and needs to override self-doubt with positive actions. You also talked of successful leadership involving good delegation - It has been commented to me in the past "that graveyards are full of indispensable men", and we should certainly make maximum use of our teams around us and allow (controlled) mistakes to happen.
Talk to CVS Conference
We were honoured to have a visit from Major General Arthur Denaro. As a former Army officer for his whole life I had a huge degree of respect from him. I had already experienced first hand, men and women of the Army - I was always struck by their worldclass leadership ability. I was looking forward to what he had to say and it didn't disappoint.
Romantic, nostalgic, thought-provoking, inspirational and dare I say it, somewhat tear-jerking at times through stories of operations in Iraq we heard about the foundations of great leadership - real leadership where the outcomes were high. The outcomes were as blunt as life or death. This is leadership at the raw end. I don't think there is a purer form.
His powerful message touched all and will pick out just one thing for now, to share.
Integrity. Arthur called it 'old-fashioned.' I thought it's darn well what we need more of. He believed in it and lived it. The cousin of integrity is care. A leader has to care for others more than themselves. And in this scenario it wasn't about offering to stay late for your team to finish a presentation - letting them go home - no it was willing to put your needs above your team's in the horrendous conditions akin to war.
Marketing Hall of Legends
Just listening to conversations after your presentation it was clear how much everyone had enjoyed listening to you and how touched they had been by the experiences and the insights you shared. Your modesty, humility and sense of humour were evident throughout and I, and many others I talked to, were very moved by what you said.
Please thank Mrs Denaro for coming. The time you both took to stay and talk to everyone was greatly appreciated.
A dynamic and versatile speaker, Josh is able to draw upon his experience and expertise to give inf…