Description
TLC Zoom
Wednesday 16th December 18:00 GMT
Colin Nicklas
Beyond the Dunes – Lessons in Resilience
Endurance, Decision-Making and Leadership Under Extreme Pressure
Colin has been a member of TLC for some considerable time yet it was only when I read a post of his on LinkedIn that it dawned upon me that there was a heck of a story behind it so I asked for the background.
Colin Nicklas was diagnosed with a broken ankle in 2010, an unhealed injury he had unknowingly walked around on for six months. Nine weeks later, against his doctor’s advice, he completed the Marathon des Sables: 156 miles across the Sahara Desert in temperatures reaching 52°C, carrying everything he needed to survive for a week on his back. It remains one of the toughest footraces on earth.
Colin now draws on that experience, together with a 24-year career in the Royal Navy and a decade advising businesses on leadership and change, to help organisations perform under pressure. He is known for talks and workshops that are as commercially rigorous as they are personally compelling — combining a genuinely remarkable true story with practical, structured frameworks that leadership teams can put to work immediately.
Colin joined the Royal Navy as an Engineer Officer in 1988 at the age of 18. Over 24 years he deployed to the Gulf, the Arctic, the Far East, the Caribbean, Central America and South Africa, moving between system engineering roles and leadership development — including a period as Head of the Royal Naval Leadership Academy at Britannia Royal Naval College. He finished his military career in strategic planning for the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, working through the Arab Spring and the Ivory Coast civil war.
Since leaving the Navy, Colin has worked as a business consultant, executive and performance coach, and leadership development specialist, extending his working geography to Canada, the US West Coast, West Africa, South-East Asia, Australia and the South Pacific. He combines the lessons of the Sahara with this professional experience to deliver high-impact talks and facilitated workshops on leadership, resilience, decision-making under pressure and team performance — engaging audiences with humour, candour and a powerful personal connection.”
Colin’s talk tells the full, unfiltered story of the Marathon des Sables: the misdiagnosed injury, the doctor who tried to stop him, the 52-mile non-stop stage through the night, and the moment, physically and mentally exhausted, that he found the reason to keep moving. It is a story about belief, preparation, teamwork and the discipline to keep going when every rational argument says stop.
Key Takeaways:Â
- The significance of genuine motivation (“the why”), the discipline of proper preparation, the value of letting go of unnecessary baggage, and the belief required to push through the hardest moments
- A shared framework for the 9 Lessons in Resilience (including Create a Vision, Identify the True Why, Prepare Properly, Ditch the Baggage, Lead Others, Perseverance and Belief), greater clarity on decision-making under pressure, and concrete individual commitments to take back to business and life
