Leadership, organisational and network development
conflict, low morale, or poor communication and improving teamwork and creativity
high levels of stress and burnout
mergers, acquisitions, or global expansions,
expanding products and services
staff and leadership transitions
reorganisation and restructuring including redundancies and recruitment issues
recurring problems that haven’t responded to traditional management interventions
improving decision-making
improving partnership development processes
developing and growing networks and communities of practice
improving diversity, equity and inclusion into practice
What issues can I help with?
team facilitation and coaching
reflective practice and action learning
strategy development, foresight and horizon scanning
research and learning
1-2-1 coaching
What do I offer?
What approach do I take?
I draw on the work of the Tavistock Institute of Human relations as well as the University of Hertfordshire’s Complexity and Management Centre. I pay attention to both the formal elements of organisations such as purpose, strategies, job descriptions, systems and structures and the more human but less visible elements such as perceptions, values, emotions, informal roles, relationships and power.
Being a ‘guide on the side’ rather than a ‘sage on the stage’, I use these tools and concepts to help people and teams to recognise the patterns of action and interaction which don’t serve them and to generate new patterns that do. I can help teams ‘make a clearing in the forest’ to shed new light on the dilemmas an organisation is facing, which can in turn open up fresh ideas for decision and action. This might involve naming the ‘elephant in the room’, talking about why it’s there and considering how best to work with it.
2024: co-facilitating a skillshare programme on supporting leaders and managers in the international development sector to better understand and practice diversity, equity and inclusion
2023 - present: visiting lecturer at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust (MA Consulting and leading in organisations: psychodynamic and systemic approaches)
2023 - present: Coaching associates at On Purpose in the UK
2023 - present: Coaching managers at the World Food Programme (WFP) in Yemen and Ethiopia
Recent examples of my work
2023: Running ‘Delving Deeper’ a 3-month professional development course for leaders in the international development and humanitarian sector drawing on action learning
2022: Facilitating a leadership transition at St Hilda’s East Community Centre, UK
2021: Facilitating a founder succession at Mawazo, a Kenya based women’s empowerment organisation
2020-21: Learning about how and how well IDRC staff and teams learn from their efforts to promote policy impact.
Recent publications
2022: A review of the Indonesian Knowledge Sector Initiative's support to 16 policy research institutes. This report reviews the effectiveness of the Knowledge Sector Initiative (KSI)’s support to 16 Policy Research Institutes (PRIs) over its two phases of operation, taking place between 2013 and 2022.
2021: Improving organisational effectiveness: what are funders doing beyond providing general operating support? This paper addresses questions such as why is general or programme support insufficient to properly address the organisational effectiveness of grantees? And what have funders done to go beyond general or programme support?
2019: OTT-TTI Fellowship Programme Final technical report. This report reviews a leadership development programme for mid-career think tank professionals from around the world.
2019: Complexity, contradictions and struggle: facilitating change in the international development sector. This paper reflects on my experience of trying to facilitate change in organisational practices in a UK development think tank.
2018: Negotiating difference in an interdisciplinary collaboration: Lessons from a small islands developing states resilience project. This report reflects on the collaborative practices of a group of researchers convened to undertake an interdisciplinary project on the drivers of risk in small island developing states.
2023: Facilitating learning across research consortia. This article explains why it is helpful for large consortia to undertake collective learning, what this looks like in practice, what people might learn about and finally how learning might be facilitated.
2023: Consulting, leadership and diversity in the global development sector. This article reflects on an experience consulting in the international development sector highlighting how external pressures and dynamics within the client group impact on consulting teams and in particular People of Colour.
2023: Wrestling with difference: power, privilege and positionality in the global development sector. This article reflects on how my power, privilege and positionality in the UK’s international development sector is enabled and constrained by parts of my identity which are both visible and invisible.
Recent writing
2023: Social movements and advocacy groups: what lies beneath? Part 1 and Part 2: This article reflects on how the psychology of a social movement’s members and the social, economic and political context in which they work shape what goes on inside them and what they do.
2023: How to get stuff done more skilfully. This provides a critique of conventional management prescriptions, describes how things actually get done in organisations and provides some guidance for what managers and leaders might do to facilitate this.
