Optimist Performance was founded in 2014 on a simple observation: organisations don’t have a knowledge problem, they have a behaviour problem.

Leaders know what good looks like. They’ve read the books and been on the courses. But under pressure people revert to instinct.

We close that gap. We work with leadership teams at organisations like JLL, Willmott Dixon and Barwood Capital, combining the psychology of elite sport, the rigour of business strategy and experiences people genuinely don’t forget.

How We Work

Discover. Our Spotlight behavioural diagnostic shows you how your people actually operate; how they cope under pressure, how they flex with others and where the friction really sits. 

Develop. High-challenge, high-participation development built entirely around what Discover found. 

Embed. The bit almost everyone skips. Coaching, follow-up and measurement.

What Makes Our Approach Different?

• • We measure before we prescribe. Spotlight diagnostics mean every programme is built on data about your team.
  • We’ve done it, not just taught it. Our facilitators are Olympic coaches, world-record holders, professional athletes and senior operators who have led under genuine pressure.
  • We design for retention, not for the room. A session everyone loved and nobody remembers is a failure. We build for what people do six months later.
  • We work in the real world. Boardrooms, building sites, mountainsides. Wherever the learning will actually land.

    Whether it’s leadership development, executive coaching, or team experiences, our approach transforms more than just skills,
    it transforms mindsets, relationships and performance.

Meet the Founder – Ollie Phillips

Ollie Phillips has led teams in some of the most demanding environments on earth.

He captained England Rugby 7s for three years, was named World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year in 2009, and led England to three World Series titles. He is a four-time world record holder, having rowed the Atlantic, sailed the Clipper Round the World Race, swum the English Channel, and led record-breaking expeditions at the North Pole and on Everest, raising millions for charity along the way.

His career after sport has been just as demanding. He was Head Coach of Wales Women’s 7s and Head of Performance for China’s Olympic Ball Sports Programme, building national high-performance systems from the ground up. At PwC, he was Head of Digital Innovation and Transformation and a Director in Real Estate and Construction responsible for a £250m+ portfolio. He holds an Executive MBA from Cambridge (Queens’ College).

Ollie founded Optimist Performance in 2014 because he had seen the same truth in a dressing room, on an ocean and in a boardroom: performance is decided by behaviour under pressure. Everything else is commentary.

the eternal optimists

Ollie doesn’t work alone. Our facilitator network, the Eternal Optimists, brings together elite coaches, cultural strategists, performance psychologists and business leaders. Every engagement is matched to the facilitators best suited to your challenge.

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