─── GLENN DOBSON KEYNOTE
From Battlefield
to Boardroom
to Monastery
Three lives. Three complete reinventions. What happens when everything you have built collapses, and what it takes to rebuild with more clarity, more purpose and more strength than before.
DURATION
45 – 75 min
FORMAT
Keynote + Q&A available
BEST FOR
Leadership conferences, away days
Download our keynote details here, share with your Events Team or Programme Director.
─── ABOUT THE KEYNOTE
Three lives.
One thread.
Glenn Dobson has lived three distinct lives. Soldier. CEO. Ordained Buddhist monk in the jungles of Northern Thailand. Each one complete. Each one followed by a collapse that could have ended everything, and instead became the foundation for what came next.
This is motivational talk. It is not a redemption arc dressed up in leadership language. It is an honest account of what identity crisis looks like at the highest level of performance, and what the discipline of rebuilding from nothing actually requires.
The audiences who respond most to this talk are the ones who already know that something needs to change. Leaders who have achieved what they set out to achieve and found it wasn’t enough. Owners who have built successfully and find themselves wondering what it was all for. People who are between versions of themselves and haven’t yet found the language for it.
Glenn gives them that language. And the permission to use it.
01
The Battlefield
Military service and what it teaches about discipline, identity and the cost of operating under sustained pressure. The leadership lessons that no business school covers.
02
The Boardroom
Building a group to £35m exit. The collapse during COVID. £1m rebuilt in under nine months. What the destruction of everything you have built actually teaches you, if you let it.
03
The Monastery
Ordained as a Buddhist monk in Northern Thailand. What silence, structure and the complete removal of ego taught a man who had built his identity on performance. And why he came back.
─── WHAT AUDIENCES LEAVE WITH
A shift in.
perspective and direction.
Permission to rebuild
The most capable leaders often get stuck in the version of themselves that succeeded. This talk gives them permission to outgrow it.
Identity separated from performance
A framework for understanding where leadership identity ends and the person begins, and why that distinction determines long-term performance.
Practical discipline
Not philosophy. Specific behaviours and decisions that come from three complete reinventions and the hard-won clarity they produced.
─── OTHER KEYNOTES
Booking enquiries
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hello@shrinelondon.com
+44 (0) 208 064 6072
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London, EC1V 2NX
United Kingdom
SHRINE LONDON
128 City Road
London, EC1V 2NX
United Kingdom
hello@shrinelondon.com
+44 (0) 208 064 6072
© 2026 Shrine London Ltd. All rights reserved.
Private Advisory · Leadership Development · Keynote Speaking