James Knight
James Knight is a former Royal Marines Commando Officer with over 20 years of leadership and wellbeing experience and a speaker on finance, change and team-building.
In 2007 James Knight was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry on operations, and as a result of his experiences he is able to offer a wealth of lessons that he has learnt. James describes leadership as a combination of learnt experiences and ‘borrowed’ ideas.
Throughout his time in the Marines he travelled extensively and operated in some of the most demanding and challenging environments on earth. He has had the distinct privilege of commanding men and women on combat operations on numerous occasions.
James Knight now runs his own financial advice practice where he has developed techniques that inspire his clients to be more engaging and passionate about their personal finances. Building a practice through fostering deep relationships with his clients and really getting to know what emotions drive their financial decisions, James draws on his leadership skills to get the very best outcomes for his clients.
He is passionate about financial wellbeing and how our emotions drive our personal finances. During his wellbeing talks and sessions he demystifies some of the perceived challenges around personal finances and shows us how good leadership principles can help us address an area that causes a great deal of anxiety for most people.
As a consultant he routinely speaks and advises on the following topics:
- Understanding the basic principles around good financial planning
- What drives our financial decisions
- How do we build robust financial plans
- Making sense of the market
- Team building – how do we build and lead successful teams
- Realities of conflict – an emotive subject focussing on the human emotions that are exhibited when placed in extreme circumstances
- Cultural change – how do you change the culture of an organisation, who leads the change
- Developing leaders, how do we get the best performance out of our people
“I interviewed James for our forthcoming book, ‘The Leaders Secret Code’. We chose James because he displays a set of exceptional leadership behaviours that our research confi rms are aligned to the top performing leaders.When you engage with him it is very easy to see why he has achieved so much.”
— Ian Mills, Author of The Salesperson’s Secret Code and CEO at Transform Performance International
“James delivered a superb leadership presentation on the closing module of a Global Executive Development Programme I managed. James’s impactful and engaging presentation, provided pragmatic insights intoleadership challenges and refl ections. James is an impressive and humble leader who received excellent feedback from all the senior leaders.”
— Karen Green, Senior Organisational Change Manager
“We asked James to come and share his insights as a leader in the Marines. He ‘wowed’ the audience. James has a wonderful, modest (almost humble) style which wins people over instantly. His mature self-reflection on some of the mistakes he’s made in leading others and the lessons he’s learned in the heat of battle, make James a role-model for
all of us. Thank you, James, for showing us in business that we can learn and apply lessons from ‘parallel worlds”
— Mark Ridley, Founding Director of Transform Performance International
