About Matthew
Matthew Syed is one of the world’s most influential thinkers in the field of high performance and cultural change. He has worked with leading global organisations to build a mindset of continuous improvement. A multiple award-winning journalist for The Times, he is a highly-acclaimed speaker and the author of five bestselling books. In his work, he explores a thought-provoking approach to success and high performance in the context of a complex and fast-changing world, looking at the scientific correlation between mindset and performance and how we cannot develop unless we are prepared to learn from our mistakes.
Book SpeakingPersonal Bio
Born in 1970 to a Pakistani father and Welsh mother, Matthew Syed attended a state school in Reading, UK, leaving at the age of sixteen to focus on table tennis. He taught himself A Levels in the downtime after training, working his way through various text books, before applying to the University of London Examination Board to sit his papers in a small room near King’s Cross along with students doing their re-sits.
Having passed his A Levels, he was accepted by Balliol College, Oxford University to study for a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. He played in the Olympic Games in Barcelona towards the end of his first year at Balliol, and gained a prize-winning First Class degree four months after becoming the British table tennis number one in 1995.
He is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a strong believer that sporting and academic excellence are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, he argues that developing the body and mind provides a powerful synergy – a point well understood by the Ancient Greeks.
Sporting Career
Matthew was the British table tennis number one for almost a decade, won the men’s singles at the Commonwealth Championships three times, and competed for Great Britain in the Olympic Games in Barcelona in 1992 and Sydney in 2000. His style was unusually defensive, playing what a colleague described as “spectacular roof threatening parabolas” from the back of the court.He was not always successful. He admitted to choking at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, falling apart under the pressure of the biggest competition on the planet. The experience provided the impetus for trying to understand how the mind responds under conditions of stress – and to develop techniques to perform without inhibition. In 2015, he made a programme on the subject for Radio 4 called The Choke
Journalism & Media Work
Matthew is a columnist and feature writer for The Times. He writes regularly on football and other sports, as well as on culture, media and politics.
He has won numerous awards for his writing including Sports Journalist of the Year at The British Press Awards on 2 occasions, as well as Sports Feature Writer and Sports Columnist of the Year at the Sports Journalist Association Awards 6 times. He also won Sports Commentator of the Year at the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards and Best New Writer for his book, Bounce, at the British Sports Book Awards.
A regular contributor to radio and television, Matthew provides analysis for Sky News, Newsnight and CNN. His film for the BBC, China and Table Tennis, won the bronze medal at the Olympic Golden Rings ceremony in Lausanne. He has presented a number of television and radio documentaries on mindset and performance for the BBC.
Community Work & Accolades
Matthew was a co-founder and is a trustee of Greenhouse, a charity that empowers youngsters through sport. Greenhouse currently supports more than 10,000 young people on 31 full-time school programmes. He is also a member of the FA’s High Performance Committee alongside Sir Dave Brailsford and Baroness Campbell, an ambassador for the PiXL educational foundation, and a member and co-founder of the Greenshaw Learning Trust. Matthew has also been recognised for his work in advising government departments – namely The UK Department of Health in 2016 – and for his influential contributions to the HR sector, being lauded as one of HR Magazine’s HR Top 30 Most Influential Thinkers in 2018.
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