JP Pawliw-Fry

The secret to high performance is culture, but most leaders misunderstand it: culture doesn’t live across an organization, it’s built team by team, in the toughest moments. Drawing on IHHP’s study of 72,000 people, published in the Harvard Business Review, JP Pawliw-Fry puts managers and people leaders at the center of building culture, in what IHHP calls “Last 8% moments,” the harder conversations and decisions most people avoid but that actually drive results. Audiences learn the two pillars of a high-performing culture, High Connection (psychological safety) and High Courage (the ability to do hard things skillfully), along with the emotional-intelligence tools to own and model culture on their own teams.

The organizations that pull ahead over the next three years won’t be the ones with the best AI, but the ones with the courage and capability to use it. In company after company, JP Pawliw-Fry finds the same gap: leadership is fully bought in, yet below that level conviction stalls, because the people being asked to change how they work fear it will cost them their jobs, and no one has given them the trust, or the specific answer, for what to do differently on Monday morning. Drawing on IHHP’s research into the world’s most courageous, high-performing cultures, now one of the Harvard Business Review’s most-read articles, this keynote equips people leaders to name the disruption honestly while still caring for their teams, make intelligent risk safe and expected, and lead with both high care and high accountability. Audiences leave with real agency, and a concrete plan, to act on AI rather than freeze in front of it, because AI can hand you every answer in the world, but it can’t get your people to act on them.

Your people are carrying more than any generation before them: pressure to deliver, AI reshaping work itself, and no clear playbook, all while being asked to change faster than ever. The problem, JP Pawliw-Fry explains, is that the brain isn’t wired for performance under pressure; it’s wired for self-preservation, which turns risk aversion into the enemy of the speed organizations now need. Drawing on the 12,000-person study behind the New York Times bestseller Performing Under Pressure and a 34,000-person study published in the Harvard Business Review, he shares the tools elite performers rely on, from the NFL, NBA, and Navy SEALs to Goldman Sachs and Intel, to think clearly under stress, build resilience, and close the gap between the risks people know they should take and the ones they actually take. Audiences leave able to turn pressure into a competitive advantage rather than a performance killer.

Most people handle the first 92% of a feedback conversation just fine, then hesitate at the hardest, most consequential part, the Last 8%, where the feedback carries real weight and real emotional risk, and back off from saying what most needs to be said. That avoidance leaves the other person unsure of where they stand, unable to improve, and feeling less psychologically safe, which quietly diminishes performance. Drawing on the growing science of giving and receiving feedback, JP Pawliw-Fry shows audiences how to manage their emotions, understand the brain under pressure, and start and navigate those difficult conversations with confidence, delivering feedback others can actually hear and act on, while building the psychological safety that fuels innovation and high-performing teams.