Speak Up: Develop Your Executive Presence & Leadership Communication Style

How Elite Athletes and Great Leaders Build Unshakable Executive Presence Through State Management

Deri Llewellyn-Davies · June 17, 2026

Entrepreneur · Author · Leadership · Life Coach · Executive Coachin

Interview with Deri Llewellyn-Davies

How Elite Athletes and Great Leaders Build Unshakable Executive Presence Through State Management — Deri Llewellyn-Davies

Podcast: Speak Up: Develop Your Executive Presence & Leadership Communication Style

June 17, 2026 · 27 min

Speak Up Summer Camp (July 6 – Aug 1) A private podcast with 24 short daily leadership reps to help you build the communication habits senior leaders actually notice. → Enroll here Do you ever walk into an important meeting fully prepared—only to freeze, ramble, or fail to show…

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How Elite Athletes and Great Leaders Build Unshakable Executive Presence Through State Management

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Speak Up: Develop Your Executive Presence & Leadership Communication Style

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Key topicsThe hidden cost of coming home stuck in work modeMany high-driven fathers walk through the front door still carrying the pace, edge, and urgency of the day. Presence then gets framed as a character flaw - “I should be more patient” - rather than a physiological state that hasn’t shifted yet. From lived experience, Deri speaks to how intensity leaks into family life, and why good intentions alone don’t create calm, connection, or attention at home. Boards don’t fail on strategy - they fail when pressure locks them into one stateIn high-stakes environments, leadership pressure narrows perception and quietly reshapes how risk, dissent, and uncertainty are processed. Boards often respond by adding controls, data, and oversight, which can further entrench rigidity rather than restore clarity. From decades of boardroom observation, Deri highlights how unmanaged states distort collective judgment long before strategy visibly breaks. Founders burn out by living in one neurological state for too longMany founders operate in a prolonged high-urgency state, mistaking constant cognitive arousal for effectiveness until judgment, sleep, and creativity quietly erode. The common assumption is that burnout comes from weak discipline or poor time management, when the deeper issue is overexposure to a single performance state. Ultra States reframes founder burnout as a systems failure caused by mis-sequenced states, not personal inadequacy. View all topics →

About Deri Llewellyn-Davies

Boardroom Strategist and Creator of Ultra States Examining How Humans Actually Perform Under Pressure

30+ years Boardroom advisory experience330+ Boards advised or served on6 World’s highest mountains climbedTEDx Spoke at TEDxUniversityofEdinburgh

Deri Llewellyn-Davies grew up in a small rural village in Wales, where community wasn’t a concept, it was how life worked. That early sense of shared responsibility shaped how he later approached leadership, decision-making, and pressure, long before he entered boardrooms and high-stakes environments. Over three decades, Deri has advised and sat on more than 330 boards, becoming known for spotting the real constraint beneath the noise and helping organisations think clearly when the stakes are high. His signature Strategy on a Page methodology is a no 1 best seller and has inspired thousands of founders to scale with purpose.

Outside business, Deri has spent years testing human limits in extreme environments — climbing six of the world’s highest mountains, completing the Marathon des Sables, and racing the infamous Ironman. Those experiences became a lab for understanding how people actually perform under pressure, and why so many high-achievers quietly collapse when the adrenaline wears off.

That intersection of boardroom pattern recognition and extreme performance thinking led to the creation of Ultra States, a framework that reframes performance as state selection rather than motivation. Instead of treating focus, flow, connection, recovery, and peak intensity as accidents or personality traits, Ultra States examines them as distinct neurological and physiological conditions, each with trade-offs when misused or overextended.

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About this episode

Know Your Own Executive Presence Strengths & Opportunities:

Click here to pinpoint the specific area in your executive presence that’s keeping you invisible to senior leadership and guarantees you stay working hard as a pack mule who never gets promoted.

Do you ever walk into an important meeting fully prepared—only to freeze, ramble, or fail to show up as your best self?

Most professionals assume executive presence is about confidence, communication skills, or charisma. But what if the real issue is your mental and physiological state?

In this eye-opening conversation, Deri Llewellyn-Davis shares the science behind his Ultra State Framework and explains why modern technology, constant distractions, and dopamine overload are preventing leaders from accessing flow, focus, connection, recovery, and peak performance when they need them most.

After listening, you'll discover:

😱Why your phone and daily habits may be sabotaging your executive presence and leadership performance.

🚀How to intentionally access flow, focus, connection, recovery, and peak states to perform at your highest level.

🧩Practical techniques for staying calm, confident, and influential—even when everyone else in the room is stressed or emotional.

Listen now to learn how mastering your state—not just your skills—can transform your leadership, performance, and executive presence.

To learn more visit www.speakupwithlaura.com. New Speak Up podcast episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday early in the morning.

About our guest:

Advising over 330 boards and testing performance in extreme environments,Deri Llewellyn-Daviesreframes executive presence as a state-selection issue rather than a motivation problem. His Ultra States framework helps leaders understand why clarity, listening, and authority disappear under pressure.

From very humble beginnings Deri has worked his way up through the corporate ranks, built over 20 companies of his own and firmly established himself as one of the leading experts on business strategy and extreme performance.

Despite being told by experts that he would never complete several of his physical feats he has proved that you can do the impossible … if you simply use the right strategies.

He has helped his business clients produce an incredible 860% faster growth than the UK average.

As an adventurer and extreme sportsman, he has climbed 6 of the 7 tallest mountains in the world including an infamous feat on Mount Everest. He also completed the toughest footrace on earth, The Marathon Des Sables… a gruelling challenge that can make even the toughest men crumble, and this is just a small part of his many feats.

In Speak Up communication and executive presence coaching, high performing leaders and executives learn to enhance their influence and confidence, refining their communication style to increase visibility and effectiveness in promotion opportunities.

By honing communication skills and fostering a trusted advisor mindset, aspiring executives cultivate mastery in public speaking and beat imposter syndrome. Your leadership becomes more strategic and inspiring.

Guest: Deri Llewellyn-Davies