Trust is not a soft skill. It is the most important leadership currency.
Shelley Anne Crawford — Coaching Psychologist, framework creator, and international speaker on trust-building, resilience, and leadership.
The most effective speakers don't just inform - they shift something. They give an audience a new way of seeing a problem they've been carrying for years, and a specific, practical place to start.
Shelley draws on more than twenty years of coaching psychology, original research, and two registered frameworks - The PACT® and Jess® - to deliver talks that are rigorous, human, and immediately applicable. She has delivered keynotes, webinars, workshops, and panel discussions for some of the world's leading organisations.
Google · Salesforce · KPMG · IBM · Deutsche Bank · Johnson & Johnson · Takeda · European Investment Bank · TikTok · Twitter · Red Hat · Irish Life · HSE · Primary Healthcare Corporation, Doha · Irish Management Institute · Fleury’s Engineering · Pernot Ricard - Irish Distillers · Stryker · DePuy Synthes
Organisations Shelley has worked with
Shelley holds two Masters degrees — an MSc in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology (Distinction) and an MSc in Health Ergonomics — alongside a BCom (Hons) in Industrial and Organisational Psychology.
She is an EMCC Accredited Master Practitioner, Accredited Supervisor, and Lead Global QA Assessor. She is registered with the British Psychological Society and certified in Hogan, MSCEIT, and psychometric assessment.
She is a Learning Specialist with a number of Higher Education Institutions, lectures at postgraduate level in coaching and leadership, and serves as EMCC Global Lead Quality Award Accreditation Advisor and Assessor.
Shelley has spoken at EMCC International Conferences as both speaker and presenter, delivered a keynote at the Irish Psychiatric Nursing Conference, and has spoken at the Irish Auditors Association and Local Authority HR Conference, among others.
Her first book — The PACT®: Trust-Building Strengths Inventory — publishes in 2026.
Background and credentials
Signature Talks
Most organisations know they have a trust problem. Few have a language - or a framework - for solving it.
This talk introduces The PACT®, Predictability, Ability, Care, and Transparency, and challenges leaders to move from talking about trust to building it behaviourally, one specific act at a time. It is grounded in original research and leaves audiences with something concrete to do differently on Monday morning.
Suited to: leadership conferences, L&D and HR forums, executive teams, coaching conferences
Talk 1: Trust is not a foundation. It is a response
Resilience has become one of the most overused and misunderstood concepts in leadership and wellbeing. This talk draws on the Jess® resilience-building model and its five domains to give audiences a clear, evidenced picture of what resilience actually is, why it fails under pressure, and what genuinely rebuilds it.
Suited to: wellbeing conferences, leadership development events, coaching and HR audiences
Talk 2: Resilience is not a personality trait. It is a practice.
For coaching and leadership professionals, this talk explores the intersection of coaching psychology and trust-building behaviour. How do we develop trustworthy leaders? What does psychological safety actually require? And how can coaches use The PACT® framework as a diagnostic and development tool?
Suited to: coaching conferences, EMCC and ICF events, supervision groups, L&D practitioner forums.
Talk 3: The psychology of trust - what leaders and coaches need to know
Talk 4: The Left Turn - On the quiet, irreversible choices that bend our lives and why we would make them again.
Every leader has a left turn in their story. A moment where they chose something - under pressure, with incomplete information, with more courage than they realised - and it changed everything that followed.
This talk explores the psychology of choice, the weight of hindsight, and the quiet grace of arriving somewhere you never consciously planned - and recognising it as exactly where you were meant to be.
Suited to: conference keynotes, leadership away-days, women in leadership events, wellbeing conferences, any audience navigating change or transition
Book Shelley to speak
To discuss availability, topics, or a bespoke talk for your event - get in touch