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From the battlefield to the boardroom, and beyond.

“I was acutely aware that until now, the closest I had been to a desert was a short holiday to Tunisia. All of my training had been conducted in the UK’s wet, cold mountains and here I was about to lead 35 soldiers on operations in the deserts of southern Iraq.”

For as long as I can remember, my dream had always been to join the Army.

Aged just fifteen, I attended the Army's selection weekend for potential officers and subsequently embarked on six gruelling years of training and assessment to fulfil my childhood dream.

After graduating from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, I completed two tours of duty in Iraq as a Captain in the British Army. It was during my first tour in 2003, at just 23 years old, that I had to ask the unthinkable of two young soldiers. This experience and reflecting on what made them do as I asked caused the passion that I have for leadership to burn even stronger.

“It is not what we say or do in the moment that inspires people to follow us. It is our actions in the preceding days, weeks, months, even years that enable us to make big requests of those that we lead.“

I decided to leave the Army in 2006, and accepted a position as Global Head of HR, World Challenge, later part of Tui Travel before moving to Tesco, as part of the team responsible for developing their Leadership Academy. During this seven-year period, I focussed relentlessly on blending my military leadership skills with those required in the corporate environment, whilst studying in great depth how adults learn and create new habits.

In 2011, I noticed that a great deal of corporate leadership training was heavily focussed on using tools and models, which tends to create an inauthentic, leadership by numbers approach. An approach that I have experienced many times in my career, and I still remember just how uninspired and manipulated it made me feel.

It was at this point that I decided to step out of the corporate world to start working as an independent leadership mentor and performance coach so that I could help senior people to stop doing leadership and start become the most authentic version of themselves as leaders.

“It is not good enough for leaders to practice what we preach. We must live what we preach.“

Alongside my military and corporate career, I have also led soldiers and students on developmental expeditions around the world to places as diverse as the Himalayas, Malaysia and the Mongolian Steppe country.

I believe that the greatest leaders have an insatiable appetite for learning and this is an area where I proudly live what I teach. My passion for self-improvement and extensive military and corporate experience, coupled with a deep understanding of how adults actually learn enables me to bring a truly unique approach to my work as a leadership mentor, performance coach and keynote speaker.

I now work exclusively with senior leaders and their teams to help them be the most effective version of themselves as individual leaders whilst also becoming a genuine, high performing leadership team.

“Everyone we lead is the most important person in someone else’s life.“

Leadership is less about the tools and models and more about understanding what it really means to be a leader.

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