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Carl Jones, known as The Caveman, spent 19 years on the frontline of British policing — including being awarded the National Bravery Award after an incident that involved being shot at 6 times.
He knows how it looks, sounds, and feels when human beings are pushed to their limits and expected to continue to operate.
Now he delivers that experience in his Keynote talks, something organisations desperately need but rarely want to talk about openly. He does this with humour and balls, giving the science of why we struggle, why we burn out, and more crucially, what we can do about these things called stress, burnout and resilience.
As the author of The Caveman Principles and creator of the SLAP Technique™, Carl has built his talks around one simple but impactful idea: your brain is running 200,000-year-old survival software in a world it was never designed for. And that mismatch is costing your people and your organisation more than you know. What makes Carl different is what he does with a room. He takes a subject that most people find uncomfortable, confusing, or quietly terrifying, and makes it feel completely safe to explore — often hilarious, always deeply human, and never preachy. Audiences don’t just leave entertained. They leave genuinely understanding themselves in a way they didn’t before, and with tools they can use before they are back at their desks.
Carl has delivered for organisations across the public sector, legal, higher education, and corporate markets — from HMCTS and Staffordshire Police to the University of Gloucestershire and City of Portsmouth College. He is also the Professional Speaking Association’s South West Regional President (2025–2026) and is an experienced MC and compere for conferences and awards events.
Why do smart, capable people crumble under pressure? Why do teams fall apart during change? Why does communication break down at exactly the moment it matters most? The answer isn’t weakness — it’s evolution. In this keynote, Carl reveals how our ancient survival instincts drive our modern behaviour, for better and for worse. Drawing on evolutionary psychology, frontline policing experience, and his own Tribal Sorter framework, Carl helps audiences understand their stress responses, decode how they and their colleagues are wired to communicate, and build the tools to navigate change without losing their footing. Funny, science-backed, and disarmingly honest — this session changes the way people see themselves and the people around them.
Burnout doesn’t arrive without warning. It builds quietly — in the gap between what people can carry and what they’re being asked to carry — until the wheels come off. The CNW Framework gives individuals and teams a simple, powerful way to recognise the early signs, take responsibility for their own wellbeing, and ask for help before crisis hits. Capacity asks: what can I realistically hold right now? Need asks: what actually has to be done? Want asks: is this task genuinely mine — or am I carrying something that belongs elsewhere? Together, these three questions cut through overwhelm, restore clarity, and give people the language to manage their workload and their wellbeing with honesty and confidence.
When someone on your team hits the depths of burnout, the instinct is often to fix it fast — and that instinct almost always makes things worse. The SLAP Technique™ was forged from crisis (frontline policing, major incident command, and the kind of high-stakes human situations where getting it wrong has real consequences). In this session, Carl equips leaders, managers, and HR professionals with a proven four-step framework for supporting people through the most serious end of burnout whilst navigating the complex, often uncomfortable process of helping them return to work with dignity, confidence, and sustainability. This is the session that fills the gap most wellbeing programmes don’t want to go near.
Knowledge of the SLAP Technique would have really helped me, and I feel it would be beneficial to raise wider awareness of it.
Carl gave a powerful and engaging talk about trauma and PTSD, reflecting on his personal experiences and keeping us hooked to the end. His use of props helped us visualise his core message, as did the very catchy SLAP acronym.
