J.P. Pawliw Fry Speaker Biography
Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, and High-Performance Culture Expert
JP Pawliw-Fry is an internationally recognized emotional intelligence expert, leadership strategist, bestselling author, and co-founder of the Institute for Health and Human Potential (IHHP). Known for his research-based approach to leadership and human performance, Pawliw-Fry helps organizations understand why talented, intelligent people sometimes struggle under pressure and what separates exceptional teams from those that fall short of their potential. His expertise spans emotional intelligence, resilience, organizational culture, psychological safety, and leadership through change and uncertainty. As businesses navigate artificial intelligence, workplace transformation, and increasing performance demands, JP Pawliw-Fry brings valuable insight into the human capabilities that enable organizations to adapt, collaborate, and succeed.
Keynote Speaker JP Pawliw-Fry at a Glance
- Co-Founder of the Institute for Health and Human Potential (IHHP): A leadership development organization specializing in emotional intelligence, performance, and organizational effectiveness.
- New York Times Bestselling Author: Coauthor of Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most.
- Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Expert: Specializes in the relationship between human behavior, decision-making, and organizational performance.
- High-Performance Culture Strategist: Helps organizations strengthen trust, psychological safety, accountability, and courageous leadership.
- Leadership Educator: Has taught leadership at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
- Global Corporate Advisor: His experience includes working with organizations such as Goldman Sachs, Google, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, and Salesforce.
- Change and Resilience Specialist: Focuses on helping leaders and teams adapt effectively to uncertainty, workplace transformation, and demanding circumstances.
Co-Founder of the Institute for Health and Human Potential
JP Pawliw-Fry co-founded the Institute for Health and Human Potential, an organization dedicated to helping individuals, teams, and businesses improve performance by developing emotional intelligence and leadership capabilities. Through IHHP, Pawliw-Fry has helped advance the understanding of how emotions influence decision-making, workplace relationships, and professional effectiveness. His work emphasizes that strong organizational performance depends not only on technical knowledge and business strategy but also on how people respond to challenges, communicate with colleagues, and make decisions under pressure. JP Pawliw-Fry’s approach connects research in psychology and human behavior with the everyday demands facing executives, managers, and employees. By translating complex behavioral concepts into practical leadership principles, he helps organizations develop more resilient, collaborative, and effective teams.
New York Times Bestselling Author of Performing Under Pressure
JP Pawliw-Fry is coauthor, with Hendrie Weisinger, of the New York Times bestseller Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most. The book examines why pressure can undermine performance even among highly capable individuals and explores research-based strategies for managing the emotional and cognitive challenges associated with high-stakes situations. Drawing on examples from business, sports, and other demanding environments, Pawliw-Fry investigates the difference between possessing the ability to succeed and consistently demonstrating that ability when it matters most. His work challenges the assumption that pressure automatically improves performance. Instead, he emphasizes the importance of developing emotional awareness, resilience, and practical skills that help individuals maintain judgment, focus, and effectiveness during critical moments.
Emotional Intelligence and the Science of Leadership
Emotional intelligence plays a central role in JP Pawliw-Fry’s approach to leadership development. His work examines how self-awareness, emotional regulation, empathy, and interpersonal communication influence the decisions leaders make and the relationships they build. Pawliw-Fry emphasizes that leadership effectiveness is not determined solely by intelligence, experience, or technical expertise. The ability to understand emotional responses, navigate challenging interpersonal situations, and remain effective under stress can be equally important. JP Pawliw-Fry helps organizations recognize how emotional intelligence contributes to employee engagement, collaboration, adaptability, and better business outcomes. His research-based perspective is particularly valuable for leaders responsible for guiding teams through uncertainty, addressing performance concerns, and maintaining trust during organizational change.
Building High-Performing Cultures Through Courage and Connection
A strong organizational culture requires more than ambitious goals, shared values, and talented employees. It depends on the everyday behaviors that determine whether people communicate honestly, take appropriate risks, and hold themselves accountable. JP Pawliw-Fry explores the relationship between psychological safety, trust, and the willingness to address difficult situations. His work emphasizes two complementary characteristics of effective teams: High Connection and High Courage. High Connection involves creating an environment where employees feel respected, supported, and comfortable expressing concerns or contributing ideas. High Courage involves the willingness to make difficult decisions, challenge assumptions, and engage in conversations that support meaningful improvement. Pawliw-Fry demonstrates why organizations need both qualities to create cultures where employees feel psychologically safe while remaining committed to high standards of performance. By balancing care with accountability, leaders can strengthen team relationships, improve communication, and create conditions that support sustainable organizational success.
The Last 8%: Courageous Conversations and Accountability
One of JP Pawliw-Fry’s areas of expertise involves the difficult conversations that influence workplace relationships and organizational performance. His work on the Last 8% examines why people often communicate most of what they intend to say but withhold the final, most consequential portion of a message. Fear of conflict, concern about emotional reactions, and uncertainty about how feedback will be received can prevent leaders and employees from addressing important issues. These communication gaps can contribute to unresolved problems, unclear expectations, diminished accountability, and reduced trust. JP Pawliw-Fry helps organizations understand the emotional and behavioral factors behind these situations and the importance of creating environments where honest, respectful communication is encouraged. His approach connects emotional intelligence with the courage required to address difficult issues constructively and maintain productive professional relationships.
Leadership, Resilience, and Performance Under Pressure
Rapid organizational change, economic uncertainty, technological disruption, and increasing expectations place substantial demands on today’s leaders. JP Pawliw-Fry examines how these pressures affect judgment, emotional responses, communication, and team performance. His work highlights the importance of resilience and adaptability, particularly when leaders must make consequential decisions without complete information or clear outcomes. Rather than treating resilience as simply enduring difficult circumstances, Pawliw-Fry emphasizes the development of practical emotional and behavioral capabilities that support effective performance. These capabilities help individuals remain focused, respond thoughtfully, and maintain productive relationships even during periods of significant uncertainty. JP Pawliw-Fry’s expertise is relevant to organizations seeking to improve leadership effectiveness, strengthen collaboration, and build teams capable of navigating complex business challenges.
The Human Side of AI Adoption and Organizational Change
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how organizations operate, make decisions, serve customers, and manage employees. However, successful transformation involves more than selecting the right technology. JP Pawliw-Fry examines the human factors that influence whether employees embrace new tools, adapt their behavior, and participate meaningfully in organizational change. Fear of job displacement, uncertainty about expectations, and concerns about making mistakes can create resistance even when senior leadership strongly supports technological innovation. Pawliw-Fry emphasizes the importance of trust, psychological safety, curiosity, and courageous leadership in overcoming these barriers. His work demonstrates how organizations can encourage intelligent experimentation while maintaining clear expectations and accountability. By focusing on the people responsible for implementing change, JP Pawliw-Fry helps organizations recognize that the effectiveness of AI investments ultimately depends on human judgment, adaptability, and the willingness to act.
Trusted by Leading Global Organizations
JP Pawliw-Fry’s experience includes working with organizations across financial services, technology, healthcare, professional services, and other industries. His corporate clients include Goldman Sachs, Google, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, and Salesforce. These organizations operate in environments where leadership effectiveness, employee performance, collaboration, and adaptability are critical to long-term success. Through his work with business leaders and teams, Pawliw-Fry brings a practical understanding of the challenges organizations face when balancing demanding performance expectations with employee well-being, trust, and engagement. His ability to connect research on human behavior with complex organizational challenges makes his expertise relevant to executives, managers, human resources professionals, and teams navigating workplace transformation.
Leadership Education and Research-Based Insights
In addition to his work with global organizations, JP Pawliw-Fry has taught leadership at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. His experience in leadership education complements his work in organizational development and provides an additional foundation for translating research into practical business applications. Pawliw-Fry’s professional focus includes the relationship between emotional intelligence, performance under pressure, team culture, and leadership effectiveness. By connecting academic concepts with real-world organizational challenges, he helps leaders understand why human behavior is often the deciding factor in whether business strategies succeed.
An International Keynote Speaker on Leadership and Human Performance
JP Pawliw-Fry is an engaging international keynote speaker whose expertise addresses some of the most important challenges facing modern organizations. His work brings together emotional intelligence, organizational psychology, leadership development, resilience, high-performance culture, and the human dimensions of technological change. Pawliw-Fry’s research-based insights are especially relevant to corporate leadership conferences, executive retreats, management meetings, human resources events, technology conferences, healthcare leadership programs, and association meetings. His emphasis on practical behavioral change helps organizations move beyond awareness and develop the leadership capabilities necessary for lasting improvement.
JP Pawliw-Fry inspires leaders and teams to build trust, develop emotional intelligence, embrace courageous conversations, and create high-performing cultures capable of thriving through pressure, uncertainty, and change. JP Pawliw-Fry can be booked for keynote presentations, corporate meetings, leadership conferences, executive retreats, HR events, technology summits, association meetings, and organizational development programs through Speakers.com. Contact Speakers.com to learn more about JP Pawliw-Fry’s speaking fee, availability, and customized presentation options.
J.P. Pawliw Fry Speaking Topics
Winning with AI: The Human Side of Adoption
The organizations that pull ahead over the next three years won’t be the ones with the best AI. They’ll be the ones with the courage and capability to use it. Here’s the gap we find in company after company: leadership is fully bought in — CEO-led, funding for the platforms, committed to scale. But below that level, the conviction stalls out. As one senior executive told us recently, the middle and lower ranks aren’t leaning in anywhere near as hard as the top expects. And the reason isn’t complicated: people at that level are afraid this will end in job losses, starting with their own. The people being asked to change how they work are rarely the ones setting AI strategy or choosing the tools. They know something is being asked of them. What they don’t have is the trust needed to take the risks AI adoption requires or a specific, actionable answer for what to do differently on Monday morning. That’s the gap this keynote closes. It equips your people leaders to help their teams change, take risks, and move faster than your competitors, who are stuck facing the exact same challenge. Our research on the world’s most courageous, high-performing cultures — just published in Harvard Business Review, now its third-most-popular article — comes down to one thing: people need to be equipped to do hard things under pressure. Such as naming the disruption honestly while still caring for the people living through it, before anxiety hardens into avoidance and quiet resistance. Skip that and your AI investment quietly stalls, no matter how good the tools are. At the End of This Keynote, Your Team Will Be Able To: • Make the hard thing safe and expected. A culture where intelligent risk is rewarded, and where acting under ambiguity, even failing, gets treated as learning, not liability. • Lead with high care and high accountability. The human operating system for AI. You can deploy AI in weeks; trust takes longer—this is how you build the two dimensions that close the gap. • Default to curiosity and better judgment: the two things AI can’t supply, and has only made more valuable. Your team leaves with real agency over a challenge that, right now, feels like it’s happening to them. It comes down to one question: will your people do the hard thing when avoidance is easier, faster, and no one’s watching? They’ll leave with a plan—and enthusiasm—to win with AI, not someday, but in the choices they make the very next morning. Because AI can hand you every answer in the world. What it can’t do is get your people to act on them.
The Secret to Building a High Performing Culture
A high-performing culture is built through everyday team interactions, particularly when leaders and employees face difficult decisions, challenging conversations, and pressure to deliver results. Drawing on research involving 72,000 people, this keynote explores why culture is shaped primarily within teams and how leaders can create the conditions for greater trust, accountability, and performance. Participants discover the importance of High Connection, which creates psychological safety, and High Courage, which enables people to take appropriate risks and address difficult issues. The presentation introduces practical emotional intelligence strategies for navigating Last 8% moments, strengthening collaboration, and developing teams that can adapt quickly without sacrificing trust or engagement. Key takeaways: • Understand the two foundations of high-performing cultures: High Connection and High Courage. • Develop emotional intelligence skills for difficult conversations and decisions. • Create greater psychological safety while maintaining accountability. • Strengthen collaboration, engagement, and performance across teams.
Performing Under Pressure: How to Lead Through Change and Uncertainty
Today's leaders and employees face growing pressure to deliver results while navigating rapid change, uncertainty, and new technologies. Technical expertise alone is not enough. Organizations also need the emotional intelligence, resilience, and adaptability to make sound decisions and work effectively when the stakes are high. Drawing on research behind the bestselling book Performing Under Pressure and work with elite performers in business, professional sports, and the military, this keynote provides practical strategies for managing emotional responses, maintaining focus, and improving performance. Participants learn how to respond constructively to uncertainty, collaborate with colleagues under stress, and help their teams recognize opportunities during challenging circumstances. Key takeaways: • Build resilience, adaptability, and effective collaboration under pressure. • Understand how the brain responds to stress and uncertainty. • Apply practical strategies to improve decision-making and leadership. • Develop habits that strengthen focus and reduce burnout. • Help teams maintain performance through change and adversity.
Having High Impact Last 8% Conversations
Most people communicate approximately 92% of what they want to say during a difficult feedback conversation. The final 8%—the uncomfortable truth, challenging observation, or consequential feedback—is often left unsaid because of concerns about the other person's emotional response. This keynote explores why people avoid these critical conversations and how emotional intelligence can help them communicate more effectively. Drawing on research into human behavior, psychological safety, and performance, the presentation equips participants to manage their reactions, initiate difficult discussions, and deliver feedback in ways that encourage understanding and improvement. By addressing the Last 8%, leaders can reduce uncertainty, strengthen relationships, improve accountability, and create environments where honest communication supports individual and organizational growth. Key takeaways: • Understand the Last 8% concept and its impact on performance. • Recognize why people avoid difficult feedback conversations. • Manage emotional reactions when giving and receiving feedback. • Learn practical approaches for initiating challenging discussions. • Build psychological safety and a culture of constructive communication.
How to Perform Under Pressure
Your people are facing the most intense challenge of their careers, yet most continue to rely on their IQ and technical skills to manage through. It’s not enough. To survive, your organization needs to be agile and see opportunities where others do not. Your team needs to learn how to work effectively with others who are, themselves, under pressure themselves. In this powerful program, your team will learn: • Specific tools learned from working with high performers in the NFL, NBA, Olympic teams, Navy seals, Goldman Sachs, Intel, among others to be more adaptable, resilient, collaborative and opportunistic. • How to manage their brain so they think, perform and lead under pressure. • The single most important daily habit that increases focus and decreases burnout • This virtual program is based on a 12,000-person study we did for our New York Times best-selling book, Performing Under Pressure
All Change is Personal
The usual approach to change does not take into consideration the human brain and its neurological realities. The brain’s primary hardwired mission is ‘first, keep alive.’ When change is coming the brain senses personal danger and all too often its built-in responses are to trigger emotions that cause people to resist and prevent change. This is the major reason why over 80% of change efforts fail. In this program, you will: • Learn what Last 8% situations are and how they impact the personal aspect of change • Understand what happens to your brain in face of change, uncertainty, and pressure • Specific tools and strategies to manage emotions so you can deal effectively with change • Understand how to apply the strategies to increase resilience, as well as promote creativity and innovation.
J.P. Pawliw Fry Books
Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most
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J.P. Pawliw Fry Speaker Testimonials
"Best keynote presentation I have been to in years! Very different than the usual: extremely interesting and powerful – yet highly entertaining. It is not often I hear someone who can really ‘put it together’."
- Ernst & Young |
"J.P. is an inspirational Presenter and he infuses passion into his material... He can take complex ideas and simplify them, giving the members of the audience real solutions they can easily implement."
- LANSA Inc. |
“I do not say this lightly – the most powerful keynote I have ever heard.”
- Pfizer |
“Fantastic! Very leading edge thinking. JP has huge energy and passion.”
- IBM |
