About Brilliant Humans
Brilliance is
already
in the room.
We help leaders, teams and organisations find it, build on it, and perform brilliantly — without losing their humanity in the process.
Why we exist
Built from twenty years of watching the same pattern play out.
Brilliant Humans was founded because one question kept surfacing, in every role, in every organisation: why do some teams and leaders consistently bring out the best in the people around them, while others — with the same resources, the same strategy, often better technical ability — don’t?
The answer, drawn from over two decades of working at the intersection of people, culture and performance, is not about process or strategy. It is about the qualities organisations have largely stopped measuring. The things people respond to most — clarity under pressure, communication that actually lands, leadership that makes others feel seen — are rarely the things organisations reward or develop.
Brilliant Humans was founded in 2026 to close that gap. Not with theory. With original research, senior experience, and practical work that changes how leaders lead, how teams function, and how organisations tell their story.
We work with founders, CEOs and senior leaders of founder-led and PE-backed B2B businesses — typically between £5m and £50m revenue, in the UK, Europe and the US — at the moments when that gap starts to cost them.
“When people feel safe, seen, and trusted, brilliance follows.”
Jonathan Griffiths — Founder, Brilliant Humans
The research foundation
We didn’t build this on instinct. We ran the study.
In early 2026, we asked 105 people across industries and borders what qualities they most associate with brilliance in others. We gave them six attributes to rank. The findings were clear — and they are not what most organisations currently reward.
54% chose kindness and empathy first. Not vision. Not results. Not creativity. The independent workplace evidence — Gallup, the Global Workplace Happiness Report, the IC Index — confirms the same story from a different angle. The organisations that invest in the things people rank last are losing ground to the ones that have started investing in the things people rank first.
This research is the intellectual foundation of everything we do. Every engagement, every framework, every workshop is built around what 105 people told us, and what two decades of convergent workplace data confirms.
The founder
Jonathan Griffiths
Jonathan Griffiths founded Brilliant Humans in 2026. The practice is built on over two decades of leading teams at the intersection of people, culture and performance — across B2B technology, global SaaS, and some of the largest sporting events in the world.
He has spent his career asking the question that most organisations avoid: not what are people capable of, but what is getting in the way. The answer, consistently, is not talent or resource. It is leadership, communication, and the conditions teams work in.
He hosts The Brilliant Humans Podcast, conducted the original n=105 research that underpins the practice, and won the PSA Emerging Speaker of the Year award in 2026 for a talk about why the qualities we most admire in each other are the ones we’ve stopped building into our organisations.
Jonathan is also available as a keynote speaker, MC, and panel host. His three talks — Be More Fudge, Ignore the Algorithms, and From Crisis to Prosperity — are built on the same research and ideas that underpin everything Brilliant Humans does. He has spoken at major conferences, hosted sales kickoffs, moderated leadership panels, and MC’d large-scale customer events across the UK and Europe. If you are looking for someone who brings substance as well as warmth to a stage or room, you can find out more and make an enquiry at jonathangriffiths.co.uk.
20+ years leadership
B2B tech, global SaaS, and major international sporting events
Rugby World Cup 2019 & Tokyo 2020 Olympics
Director of Marketing across two of the world’s most prestigious events
Original researcher
n=105 Brilliant Humans study, Jan–Feb 2026 — the evidential foundation of the practice
PSA Emerging Speaker of the Year 2026
Won with talk Be More Fudge. Guaranteed main stage at PSA Impact! 2027.
Host, The Brilliant Humans Podcast
Conversations with the people who shape lives and build organisations
Keynote stages include
Pax8 Beyond EMEA, Acronis MSP Global, PSA Impact! 2026
The brilliant network
Senior thinking. The right hands, when they’re needed.
We do not pretend to be a sixty-person agency. What we are is a senior practice with deliberate access to the right expertise when it is needed — and we have built the network to make that happen without compromising on quality or intent.
Every partner in our network has been hand-picked. They share our standards. They share our worldview. And every engagement is led by us from start to finish — so the thinking that earns the brief is the same thinking that delivers it.
Every partner is hand-picked. Every engagement is led by us.
Brand & Design
Studio-quality creative partners for identity, campaigns, and visual storytelling
Executive Coaching
Accredited coaches for leaders navigating high-pressure transitions
Marketing Leadership
A vetted bench of senior marketing leaders for permanent and interim hire
Comms & Content
Specialists in narrative, internal communication, and high-stakes messaging
The Brilliant Network exists because the best outcomes rarely come from one person operating alone. It is how we earn the right to use “we” — and how our clients get more than they expected.
How we work
We bring senior thinking, honest challenge, and structured listening.
Every engagement starts in the same place: listening. Not because we don’t have a view, but because the presenting problem is rarely the actual problem. We spend the first part of any engagement separating symptoms from causes — before we recommend anything.
We work with a vetted network of partners to make sure the work gets done as well as it gets thought. But every engagement is led by us. The thinking that earns the brief is the thinking that delivers it.
Listen, audit, name the problem
Every engagement starts with a structured listening phase. We talk to the leadership team, the people around them, and where relevant, their customers. Then we name what is actually getting in the way — separating the symptoms from the cause.
Decide and design together
We co-author the strategy, the plan, or the design with the leader who has to live with it. The output is something that survives our exit — not a deck that sits on a drive.
Deliver, with the right partners
Where execution is needed, we bring it. We work with our vetted network — and we stay on the engagement to ensure the original intent is honoured throughout.
Let’s be brilliant, together
The brilliance is
already there.
A 30-minute conversation costs nothing. If there’s something worth exploring, we’ll both know by the end of it.