Nik Kinley

Managing Director at Talent Solutions Ltd.

Speaker

Psychologist and psychotherapist Nik Kinley is a leadership assessor, coach, and consultant, whose work sits at the point where psychology meets organisational reality: why capable leaders get stuck, why good decisions go wrong under pressure, and what it takes to shift ingrained patterns of behaviour.

His career includes work with an unusually wide range of people: from royalty and politicians, to criminals, CEOs, and children. And the leaders he has coached and assessed range from the CEOs of national banks and $90b businesses, to heads of national security organisations, hedge-fund bosses, and Formula 1 engineering leads.

With over 35 years' experience, his background spans senior corporate HR roles, leadership consulting, and more than a decade as a forensic psychotherapist. He has worked across sectors and geographies, with more than half of the FTSE-20, and extensively with private equity and portfolio companies. As an assessor, he has evaluated more than 1,500 senior executives globally, primarily for C-suite roles.

Alongside this, he has led a 15-year research programme in collaboration with IMD Business School, focused on three core themes: how leaders are shaped by their experience; how power affects judgment and behaviour; and how leaders shape the responses, culture, and performance of their people. He has written a series of books on leadership, many of which are translated into multiple languages, and is a prize-winning author of over a hundred articles.

He has appeared as an expert on major television networks including the BBC and France 24, been featured in outlets such as The Economist, Forbes, and The Times, and regularly lectures at institutions such as IMD in Switzerland.

Clients typically engage Nik in three contexts: to reduce the risk of critical leadership selection decisions; to support senior leaders operating under sustained pressure and uncertainty; and to deliver change when success depends on shifting deep-seated behaviours.