We are passionate about two things: How to lead?… and How to learn? Our philosophy is that great leadership requires deep thought and practice on a handful of themes that are fundamental to any organisation
Drawing on 35 years of working life, the context for what I write and talk about below resulted from asking myself what I truly believe in; what, in all that I had observed, experimented with and experienced had, consistently, made a difference. I then challenged myself to capture the essence of great organisations, great leadership and the mind in just a few connected themes. We are drawn to simple stories: 3-4 steps; connected; memorable.
For organisations it starts with trust; hard to get right; makes everything else easy. With trust and the right leaders in place you find a way out of the paradox of control (the further you advance in an organisation, the harder direct control becomes). The only true test of any system of control is when things go wrong, at which point forgiveness and a forensic approach to failure are critical in opening up the possibility to learn.
For leaders, storytelling, providing the right context in the right way at the right time is the second most important thing you will ever do. The most important thing is listening. Other than that you require a capacity for emotional intelligence and a deep understanding of peoples’ basic needs.
The correlation between work environments that are psychologically safe and those that are high performing is overwhelming. Behaviours underpin work environment and create a shared culture regardless of how different people are. Those differences will always mean that there are some individuals more susceptible to stress than others; in an uncertain World a robust approach to proactively managing resilience is more important than ever.
9 foundational themes are outlined in short videos below:
Our offer is two separate services:
One on one mentoring aimed principally at established leaders to get the best out of their people and to also help them through periods of challenge or change.
Inspiring workshops to allow emerging leaders to practice leadership and experiment with different models and approaches, to challenge their own and others beliefs about how organisations can be run most effectively and to develop new perspectives in the pursuit of becoming great leaders.
The kind of enquiry that is central to our thinking…
How does your organisation think about trust or respond to failure? How much of the learning that goes on in execution of activities is truly captured?
What are the few things that all leaders need to do really well? What is it that motivates some teams to perform at a consistently high level and others to be barely functional? How can you inspire people to be at their best when everyone is different?
How should we think about creating psychologically safe working environments? What role do organisations have in building resilience in their workforce?
The reason for our passion around highly effective organisations, leadership and the mind…
A high proportion of people are not satisfied with their working lives. We believe that people can and should meet their fundamental needs in life in the workplace and that addressing those needs is one of the keys to unlocking highly effective teams and organisations.
How can I help?
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Mentoring
One on one mentoring
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Workshops
Bespoke off site workshops
Contact me.
London
