Sébastien Sasseville

Speaking topics

Presentations listed below include in-person and virtual keynotes, as well as workshops, fireside chats, and other presentation formats.

• The Immersive Keynote Experience

  Wow your audience with something new and totally unique!

  Each of Sébastien Sasseville’s topics and keynote can be transformed into an immersive experience. This unique keynote format is supported by music, immersive projections around the room, lighting, and sound effects.

  What is an “Immersive Keynote Experience”?

  • Images and videos projected around the room.
  • Real stories supported by music, sound effects, and lighting to create a blast of emotions and an awe-inspiring experience.
  • An immersion into some of the most impressive landscapes and endurance events on earth, including Mount Everest, the Sahara Desert, the toughest ultra-cycling event in the world, and a run across Canada.

  The enormous power of this experience inspires audiences to take action, set bigger goals, change their mindset, and believe that they can succeed.

  This keynote style is for creative organizations and planners looking to create a memorable experience. An extensive AV set-up is preferred, but multiple versions of this experience are available and customizable to your budget, room size, and equipment.

• Bees and Eagles: Building and Leading High-Performing Teams

  The Race Across America (RAAM) is the toughest ultra cycling event on earth: 4800km across the United States — twice the distance of the Tour de France to be completed in half the time. This superhuman challenge demands that participants bike a mind-blowing 22 hours per day, 12 days straight; a feat endurance athlete Sébastien Sasseville completed in 2022.

  In this awe-inspiring, experiential keynote supported by cinematic videos, imagery, and music, Sasseville immerses audiences in his RAAM journey to show leaders how to unleash the power of teams to increase performance. He’ll share how he and his team went from strangers to high performers to achieve the impossible, and how you can do the same in your organizations.

  Key takeaways:

  • How to build empowered and autonomous teams to increase performance.
  • The Importance of sharing and transferring leadership to put the interests of the team first.
  • How to build a culture of ownership and accountability and use it to increase resilience.
  • How to create a strong emotional connection to the mission.
  • How to lead with humility and put your top strengths to the service of the team.
  • How to create and nurture trust to foster a safe environment where all team members can thrive.

  “When you don’t know, the team knows. My proudest moment was to realize that this project wasn’t mine anymore. Everyone had taken extreme ownership and I had created a team of leaders. When the race started, I was in charge of nothing except pedaling. I trusted the team with every decision, gave them permission to make mistakes too. Trust should never be an expectation of perfection. Trust should feel empowering.”

  – Sébastien Sasseville

• From Mount Everest to the Sahara: Thriving in Change to Win the Long Game

  Top performing organizations are in a constant evolution — continuously transforming and most importantly, always moving forward. Change is a culture, not a project.

  From Mount Everest to the Sahara, from running across Canada to the toughest ultra cycling event in the world, Sébastien Sasseville has had to learn how to maintain peak performance while in rapidly changing environments to survive and conquer. He is one of the most accomplished endurance athletes in the world and delivers an awe-inspiring session on change, agility, and transformation.

  Sasseville will walk organizations through the keys to creating corporate agility and achieving successful transformation — embracing discomfort and building resiliency — while showing leaders how to inspire forward-thinking and build high-performing teams.

  Supported by breathtaking visuals, this unique presentation lifts spirits, bolsters engagement, and inspires audiences to take that first step in meeting any challenge. Sasseville’s keynote is a practical guide to winning the long game and learning how to pivot quickly in order to thrive in perpetually evolving environments.

  Your team will be motivated to:

  • Take a first step.
  • Accept changing the “how” to serve the “why”.
  • Change the story we are telling ourselves.
  • Set bigger goals.
  • Focus on learning.
  • Accept imperfections and continue moving forward.
  • Change to win (not catch up).
  • Eliminate unintentional complacency.
  • Build endurance and resilience.
  • Become comfortable with counterintuitive actions.
  • Change their mental posture and become enthusiastic about challenges.
  • Uncover the power on consistency and transform one step at time, every day.

• The Mission: A Leadership Story

  “You don’t have to tell people what to do when you start by giving them something to believe in.” — Sébastien Sasseville

  An accomplished athlete, Sébastien Sasseville has built, led, and inspired high-performing teams to accomplish astonishing achievements. Today, he helps leaders build compelling missions to generate engagement, win the long game, and deliver extraordinary results in extraordinary times.

  Ultimately, your ability to lead is directly connected to your ability to inspire. In his motivational, moving, and dynamic talks, Sasseville shares leadership lessons learned from his high-pressure journeys and shows leaders how to lead with purpose, create engagement, and cultivate environments where all team members can deliver their best work.

  Leaders will explore how to:

  • Create a compelling mission.
  • Build a culture of performance, accountability, and collaboration.
  • Inspire their teams to deliver their best work.
  • Lead with purpose.
  • Put their oxygen mask first.
  • Develop a position of service.
  • Always serve the mission first.
  • Understand the importance of their role.
  • Use vulnerability to inspire their teams.
  • Build psycho-social safety in their teams.
  • Generate engagement.
  • Build a learning culture.
  • Self-motivate and motivate employees.

• Together to the Top: Building Dynamic Teams

  “To sit on the summit isn’t success, it is to be part of success.” — Sébastien Sasseville

  When you are roped together with your teammates on Everest, there are no silos, and you learn very quickly that you are co-dependent. If you don’t do everything in your power to make others successful, you aren’t going anywhere.

  Sébastien Sasseville has built, led, and inspired high-performing teams to accomplish astonishing achievements. This includes a successful ascent of Mount Everest and more recently the Race Across America, the toughest ultra-cycling event in the world. He had a team of 10 people supporting him 24/7 while he cycled 4,800km in 12 days.

  Top performing teams have a lot in common. In this awe-inspiring talk on teamwork supported by breathtaking imagery, thrilling stories, and scientific research, Sasseville outlines the principles that enables teams to collaborate efficiently and reach peak performance to separate themselves from their competition and reach the top.

  Teams will learn how to:

  • Serve one shared goal.
  • Operate as one team.
  • Communicate to create performance.
  • Create a culture of extreme accountability.
  • Build a learning culture.
  • Increase interpersonal knowledge.
  • Relentlessly work on culture.
  • Foster diversity and enable each team member to use their strengths.
  • Understand the links that make them co-dependent and co-responsible.
  • Be guided by your mission, vision, and values.
  • Receive and give feedback.
  • Create psycho-social safety.
  • Serve the mission first.
  • Keep everyone engaged.