Ben Evans

Ben Evans – leadership, wellbeing, and performance speaker on how to succeed with soul.  

Ben Evans is a leading voice and speaker on how to succeed in a world speeding up. As the pace of everything increases, from the impact of AI to rapidly shifting workplace expectations, there is a continual pressure to ‘hustle harder’. But in return for all our efforts we are also experiencing increasing levels of exhaustion, disengagement, and mental health problems.

As the Founding Director of Humantalk, Ben helps individuals, teams, and organisations achieve their goals without losing themselves in the process – enabling the shift from soulless slog to succeeding with soul.

Following a fifteen-year career in learning and development, Ben launched Humantalk in 2018.  Since then he has worked with the likes of KPMG, The Royal Academy of Arts, Claridge’s, Mandarin Oriental, Danone, the BMA, and the ITCILO (United Nations).

About Ben Evans

Ben kicked off his career working for one of the most famous publishing houses in the world – and quickly crashed out of that job disillusioned and burnt-out. His second attempt proved much more fruitful working in HR and L&D in both the charity sector and management consultancy. At the heart of Ben’s in-house career, which included working at both The Royal British Legion and the National Church Institutions, was the drive to help leaders and high achievers leverage the only resource that’s always available – themselves.

Highly ambitious and highly self-critical, Ben learned the hard way that ‘hustling harder’ is an awful strategy for sustainable success. Following a second crash with his mental health, Ben made a commitment to himself to finally bring together his personal lived experiences with his professional life and expertise. From that point on, launching Humantalk became an inevitable next step. Today, clients value Ben’s candour, compassion, and commitment to healthy leadership, connected teams, and wellbeing at work.

Ben Evans is a Fellow of the Learning and Performance Institute, a Chartered Member of the CIPD, and an Instructor Member of Mental Health First Aid England.

Ben’s first book, Slowfullness – How to succeed in a world speeding up (John Murray Business) is due to be published in Spring 2027.

A biker with big ideas, he lives in London with his wife, Anna and daughter, Eva.

Ben Evans Speaking Topics       

Ben Evans is an experienced speaker on resilience, high performance, healthy leadership, and wellbeing at work. His speaker topics include:

The Everest Experience – How humans achieve great things, together.

Since humans first conquered Everest, we’ve become increasingly obsessed with ‘success’. Today, our workplaces and social media feeds are full of people attending ‘leadership summits’, talking about ‘peak performance’, and attempting to ‘scale new heights’. How we speak about success comes straight out of the mountaineering playbook.

And yet, while we’ve lifted the language from events like the Everest Expedition of 1953, we have mostly failed to learn the lessons that famous stories like this provide. By almost any measure, we are failing at being successful. Burnout, disengagement, and mental health struggles are on the rise – and we’re not even seeing impressive gains in productivity thanks to our soulless slogs.

In the Everest Experience, Ben Evans reveals the forgotten lessons from Everest ’53 – the moment that humanity made it to the highest point on earth, and safely back home again to tell the tale. Being related to the deputy team leader of the expedition, Charles Evans ,and growing up with stories about Everest, Ben has unique insights into the truths that fuelled the team’s ultimate success.

For all of us climbing our own mountains today, The Everest Experience provides a timely and compelling blueprint of how to achieve your goals – and crucially, without losing yourself in the process.

Slowfullness – How to succeed in a world speeding up.

The world is speeding up. Social acceleration, the glorification of ‘hustle culture’, and now the AI revolution, combine to draw people into a never-ending flurry of activity. But speeding is not the same as succeeding and our confusion is costing us. Employee disengagement, mental health problems, and burnout are all accelerating alongside our quickening pace of work and life. We are also seeing little benefit from our soulless slogs – productivity and growth in most economies remains stubbornly slow.

But there is another way…

Backed by recent developments in strengths-based psychology, Slowfullness offers us a better way to win. It’s an approach evidenced by many examples of exceptional business leaders, sport professionals, and entrepreneurs. In Slowfullness, Ben Evans combines storytelling, psychological science, and an immediately applicable coaching framework helping high achievers and ambitious leaders to succeed with soul.  

Rethinking Resilience – Leadership for the long haul.

‘Resilience’ is one of the most frequently cited human capabilities. It is also one of the most misunderstood. We don’t become resilient by ignoring how we feel, or by working ourselves into the ground. Neither do teams become resilient because their leaders hope that they do. Resilience is something we build, together.

And because leadership is a long-haul game, resilience will prove to be one of the most important capabilities leaders can foster – both for themselves and their teams. In ‘Rethinking Resilience’ Ben Evans offers five coaching techniques designed to help humans look out for themselves and each other, bounce back from setbacks, achieve more, and succeed with soul.

Rooted in storytelling, psychological science, and practical tools, Ben will resource you with the mindset and the behaviours that help leaders to go the distance.

The Book (Coming Spring 2027)

Slowfullness – How to succeed in a world speeding up (John Murray Business) –A field guide for leaders and high achievers eager to succeed with soul.  Rooted in the story of the first successful ascent of Everest, and offering contemporary psychological research, philosophical reflections, and practical guidance, Slowfullness leads you through a four-part framework: SLOW. Learn how to go the distance so that you actually want the success you find along the way. Discover how to go SLOW – it’s the quickest way to win