I have been fascinated by leadership since I was old enough to watch it go wrong. Growing up in the 1970s with a father who ran a fifty-man foundry and news headlines dominated by industrial and political failure, I learned early that leadership is the variable that determines everything – in a firm, in a team, and in a life.

 

In 1975 I joined RMA Sandhurst to learn how to lead. I loved Sandhurst’s clarity, rigour, and principled leadership, exemplified by its motto: ‘Serve to Lead’. I experienced firsthand that when we pulled together in pursuit of our objective, we achieved results. I joined my regiment and continued to learn - and made mistakes, but the experience confirmed that when you look out for your people, they will look out for you (and your objectives).

 

After a degree in Economics and Politics, I spent twenty-one years as a private client wealth manager. My job was to establish trust and rapport quickly – and to assess the quality of leadership running the businesses I recommended. I learned that an organisation’s leadership quality is a vital component of longer-term performance.

 

I also delivered seminars at various institutions around the City on private client finance and portfolio construction, but in 1995, something happened that would change the orientation of my seminars and the course of my life. I bent down to pick up my children’s toys and found that my joints were less compliant. I took up yoga, which solved the physical problem, but it was yoga’s emphasis on the inner life that stopped me in my tracks. I realised that I had spent twenty years learning to lead other people, and very little time learning to lead myself.

 

I also trained as a leader in one of the major human development programmes of that era, which emphasised and deepened my understanding of the inner dimensions of performance and leadership.

 

By 2007, I was focusing my workshops and seminars on deeper interpersonal communication and presentation and less on finance. In 2012, I began teaching leadership at the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment, working with financial professionals on communication, self-awareness, and the behaviours that shape how a leader is actually experienced by their team. That work continues today in my workshops, seminars, and one-to-one coaching.

 

I have deepened that inner work in recent years by qualifying as a Certified Level 1 Ananda Meditation Teacher. Meditation is not a retreat from the pressures of leadership — it is how leaders develop the focus, steadiness, and self-command that make everything else possible. It is also, I have found, the most direct route to the quality of presence that distinguishes a leader others genuinely want to follow.

 

There is only ever one person you have to lead. Lead that person and the rest will follow. Fail, and your team may nod, “Yes” in meetings, but in what they then achieve, “No”.

 

Self-Mastery is the key to you and your team fulfilling your purpose and vision.

 

If any of this resonates with you, let’s talk. If you lead a firm, manage a team, work through others without formal authority, oversee projects, or face clients and stakeholders — this work is for you. 

 

I work through in-house workshops, one-to-one coaching, and speaking — and every engagement begins with a conversation.