Nick Arding

Motivational Speaker

Nick Arding

After 23 years as an officer in the Royal Marines Nick now specialises in helping teams and team leaders in realising achieving their maximum potential. As a Royal Marines officer Nick saw operational tours of duty in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Afghanistan. He commanded teams at a number of levels, finishing his time as the Commanding Officer of the 1700 strong Commando Training Centre at Lympstone in Devon.

In 2003 Nick lead the Royal Navy Everest North Ridge expedition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the mountain’s first ascent. As well as putting two team members onto the summit his team rescued two injured climbers from a commercial expedition and six members of Nick’s team (including Nick) were awarded the Royal Humane Society’s Bronze Medal. In 2005 Nick was made an OBE as a result of his work on the project.

Nick resigned his commission in 2005 in order to train as a science teacher at his local Community College, something that he describes as being ‘far harder than commando training’! He now works as a freelance consultant concentrating on team performance and leadership performance as well as the delivery of inspirational talks based on his leadership experiences. He is also a mountain instructor and runs summer and winter climbing courses throughout the UK.

During the spring of 2003 Nick lead the Royal Navy expedition to climb the North Ridge of Mount Everest.

Over the past six years Nick has spoken throughout the UK and internationally about his epic adventure during which his team not only summited the 8850m peak but also rescued two members from another expedition. As a result of the rescue members of the team were awarded six Royal Humane Society Bronze Medals, the Society’s Silver Medal and the Stanhope Gold Medal, with Nick personally being awarded one of the bronze medals. In 2005 Nick was awarded the OBE for his work throughout the project.

Nick speaks in a fluent and self-effacing way about leadership of a high performing team in the face of considerable danger in an extremely hostile environment.

His talk covers the challenge of formulating and managing the two year project, of leading the team and dealing with challenging personnel issues and coping with considerable technical difficulties and finally orchestrating a complicated and highly dangerous rescue during which he personally lead one of the rescue teams despite his own debilitating eye injury.