WHAT I DO

I'm a leadership development specialist who has worked for more than two decades helping individuals, teams, organisations and movements radically optimise their ability to take wise and timely action in the face of complexity and mess.

I have spent my whole working life helping groups and individuals do their best thinking. Whether I'm coaching, facilitating, speaking or consulting, I function as a steady presence, allowing clear practical steps to emerge from each unique situation.

These days I’m focusing exclusively on working as a leadership coach, supporting interdependent leaders to do more of what they’re here to do.

Find out more about what I do here.

HOW I GOT HERE

No dogma

I tend to dive deeply into topics, buy all the books, read all the articles, meet all the people, let the learning change my view on the world, then I drop the clunky/dogmatic bits and move on. This means you get someone who is adaptable and flexible rather than someone who is always looking to shoehorn in their specific approach.

If you really want to know my roots, around the turn of the century (!) I started work as a skills trainer for a national IT firm, then became the internal Learning and Development manager (though we still called it 'training'!).

I had to create all the soft skills training for the whole company, so I quickly learned about and synthesised sessions on selection interviewing, disciplinary interviewing, coaching, Train The Trainer, time management, problem solving, assertiveness, selling skills...

It was a real baptism of fire in terms of learning how groups function and how they gain expertise fast.

I then fell into and managed to escape two worlds:

(a) the Neuro-Linguistic Programming world (ew… I took a few things from it, like how to stay conscious in conversations, but wow, eventually I learned what an asshole magnifier NLP is)

and

(b) the whole white supremacist, undisciplined, wrong-footed, spiritually-bypassing mess that is the world of ‘New Age’ spirituality.

I trained with the creator of Neuro-Linguistic Programming as, ultimately, one of a handful of ‘Master Business Practitioners’, but you won't see me "doing" much NLP. It did teach me to really hear the words people say and see the plain truth of interactions somewhat outside of my set of filters for which I’m grateful, but, ultimately, the shadow side of NLP is a fundamental disrespect of people, which is not something that sits right with me.

I do have gratitude for all those rose quartz crystals and arrogant people who think they’re wiser than you, as they led me to my meditation teacher, who I’ve been studying under since 2004, with a daily meditation practice based on developing rock solid spiritual vision. This means I can be really still and listen to you, tracking and matching and seeing.

I started my journey as a coach in 2006 when I trained as a High Performance Coach with the late great Ed Percival, who remained my mentor until just before his death.

In more recent years, I’ve travelled to Boston and Helsinki to work with two of the four major research practitioners in the ways that adults develop lenses on complexity. (I’m about to work with the third of those four in 2024/25.)

This means that I support you not just with the content of what you’re talking about, but also helping you loosen the current limitations of the shape of your mind and the way it frames everything.

Always learning

I do the research and synthesis so you don't have to. And if I don't know enough about a particular topic, I love finding out. I think it's important to always be a beginner at something.

Work-wise, I am constantly reading and thinking about, discussing and experimenting with approaches to our relationship to self, emotions, complexity, conversations, meetings and organisations, as well as how social justice and climate justice live alongside each other.

I have a deep interest in group dynamics, conflict resolution (I’ve trained as a transformative mediator) and participatory decision making, most memorably training organisers in Birmingham how to queer the way they hold meetings. 

A friend called me Dr Book once as I always have a book (and often a chapter!) to recommend.

(I put out a periodic email sharing what I'm reading and thinking about if that's your jam.) 

And I not only was Europe’s lead trainer for a productivity method, but, as someone with ADHD-flavoured neuro-sparkle, have tried out most ways of getting stuff done. So if the conversation turns to where the rubber hits the road, I’ve got some thoughts about the fundamentals that might be useful for you.

In my spare time, I am a total language nerd (I'm currently polishing my Spanish, but have ambitions in German and Madarin), and I cycle through a range of hobbies, including drawing/painting, handwriting/calligraphy, knitting/crochet, jazz piano/guitar, growing my own food and making my own clothes.

I often stay up way too late reading cookbooks and planning tomorrow’s dinner. I make excellent bread.

I'm motivated by equipping individuals to make the world better so I'm interested in providing you with skills to do your thing better. I'm constantly on the lookout for ideas and practices that have the widest utility.

Largely unfazeable

My aim is to always approach things with a combination of pragmatism and compassion.

My clients often remark on how calm I am when coming to work on their projects and that comes from a sense of perspective stemming from years of being in the thick of it!

I have helped businesses from one-person micro businesses, high-growth tech and law SMEs, through to HSBC (in UK, Hong Kong and China), GlaxoSmithKline, Siemens, Merrill Lynch Bank of America, and even 10 Downing Street. I have worked with accountants from the Philippines, IT managers from India and bankers from Canada to Mexico.

I have trained trainers in Thailand and engineers in Indonesia. I have run workshops from New York to Bali, from Kuala Lumpur to Basel. I have coached software developers in Guangzhou on how to present in English, business development teams in Canary Wharf on how to be more persuasive, and IT directors in Hong Kong on how to run successful conference calls.

I spent 14 years or so travelling with my partner, running masterclasses in presentation skills, which ended with Pearson publishing my book on planning presentations rapidly. In those years, I coached about 4,000 presentations by speakers from 21 countries. 

I also had the honour of being Co-director of Speakers for TEDxBrum, coaching 40+ speakers for one of the largest TEDx events in the country.

All that listening gave me insight into the common challenges for leaders all across the world, as well as a wild amount of practice in holding the highest potential of who someone could be, even when they couldn’t see it themselves.

I meditate absolutely every day, and write a lot, so I know about the power of stillness, emotional wellbeing and how to stay steady in the face of challenges. 

What else might you want to know..?

• I’m a white, queer, currently able-bodied, neurosparkly trans woman working hard to nurture the parts of myself that are marginalised and deconstruct the parts that have been trained in dominance.

• I’m active in educating myself and others around racism, misogyny, ableism, transphobia and queer antagonism

• After five years running a business in South East Asia, and then five years at Impact Hub Birmingham, a community of purpose-driven entrepreneurs, I’m now settled in Manchester, England’s second city.

• I work four days a week managing a city-wide health service, but I save Fridays (and Saturday mornings) for you.

• I particularly love working with folk from marginalised backgrounds.

Whatever challenges you're facing as leader, I'm there with you.

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