John is a highly skilled and experienced consultant, facilitator and executive coach, specialising in emotional intelligence and personal growth for leadership development. He trains people nationally in the art of facilitating at emotionally challenging levels and delivers retreat centre personal development programmes.
He offers a complete consulting solution, with expertise in developing an insightful initial diagnosis, through to designing and delivering customised solutions both in workshops and in coaching, proactively responding to diverse environments and cultures based on wide experience of having worked as a consultant in virtually every organisational/business sector.
His strong base of experiential training in psychology, an original educational leadership background and his wide business experience enables him to skillfully develop dynamic interventions that enable participants to engage constructively with their own learning and growing edge such that they invariably get beneath the surface of issues and obtain powerful insights and learnings for their professional capability, their results and their own personal satisfaction. John has a reputation for asking just the right question that challenges people to grow and unlocks a whole new world for people and their organisations.
One of the leading facilitators in the UK, John is an expert at the art of building a safe space and working with the on-going process in a group, within a team or with an individual and his or her colleagues, and will go where others fear to tread to achieve a breakthrough. He gets his personal satisfaction from knowing he has helped people achieve powerful results for themselves and their businesses.
Practices
John’s practice frequently combines facilitating groups and coaching individuals. His specialist area is Leadership Development, as all his background knowledge and training has been focused in the field of personal growth and in methodologies to facilitate that in both project and operational environments. However, he likes to start his work with an enquiry into both the needs of teams and individuals but also an exploration of the business context and the overall vision and values of the organisation.
While John’s skill range enables him to work with a wide variety of people and at different levels, he usually operates at the senior team level. While he will be engaged to help people achieve a result, this is often done by working with the whole person, people in their business contexts and life in general, and teams in the contexts of the bigger business environment, since he finds little occurs in isolation but is part of a bigger, meaningful picture and an on-going process. Thus he often also works with key stakeholders as part of the process.
His style is very friendly and warm, aiming to quickly build confidence, but very alert and adept at exploring difficult areas and using challenge where it is likely to work to best effect. He has a strong commitment to integrity and to ethical working in all that he does.
Professional Background
John has 16 years’ organisational consulting experience, which has covered almost every sector in the UK, both public and private, at all levels of leadership from Board level downwards. Particular business areas have included Defence, IT, Engineering, Financial Services, Banking and Investment Banking, the Civil Service and Metropolitan Police, Telecommunications, Oil, Leisure and Retail. Previously he had 17 years in Education to senior management level, having been a Departmental Director for 10 years, and a Head of Examinations.
He holds a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education and a BA (2:1) from Oxford University and has trained in humanistic psychology to accreditation level.
Professional Affiliations
John is accredited as a facilitator with the UK Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners (Educator and Group Facilitator sections: see www.ahpp.org), having trained in Gestalt at London’s Metanoia Psychotherapy Training Institute and undergone a rigorous assessment of his training and personal development. Since one’s own personal development is seen as key to the development of the professional, this training also included over 3 years’ personal Gestalt therapy and coaching. He also receives on-going professional supervision and undertakes regular CPD. He is also a member of the Association for Coaching.
Personal Interests
John has a strong love of travel overseas and also is a part-resident of France, having a beautiful second home overlooking the lower Lot valley. He is very interested in personal growth, having attended numerous development programmes as well as his professional training. He also has a strong interest in Yogic Philosophy.