Perspectives
My work is guided by deep-seated beliefs and insights about leadership, coaching and risk.
Beliefs on leadership and coaching
To enable others to enhance their achievements, experience and fulfilment, leaders need to ground their actions on a sense of identity and meaning.
People have an unceasing ability to grow and unlock their potential, in ways that they and those around them did not envisage.
Leaders and coaches have an important role in creating the space and time required for others to learn, explore, collaborate and perform.
Leaders need to provide ‘external, organisational and inner’ leadership to guide their organisations and people in an era of volatility, with the qualities of openness, humility, purpose, compassion, balance and calm this requires.
The personal and professional aspects of leadership are inextricably linked, including the importance of ‘inner work’ and our sense of care for our teams and ourselves.
Beliefs on risk
Organisations’ approach to risk is a critical foundation of their impact, growth and innovation, as well as a core part of their governance, controls and licence to operate.
Organisations across sectors have an imperative to take a holistic, systematic approach to risk, that goes beyond traditional areas of financial, operational and regulatory risk.
The foundation for effective risk management is substantive, engaged discussion at all levels of an organisation, from the board through to operating teams, with time made available from already busy diaries to explore complex, nuanced issues.
Leadership on risk needs to form an integral element of organisations’ capabilities and culture and of what it means to be a leader in an era of volatility.
Leaders need a dual pivot: facing internally to their organisations and people; and externally to stakeholders across business, government, civil society and the media.
Selected articles and speaking engagements
‘Making music without sound, what today’s leaders can learn from great conductors, working paper (publication forthcoming, 2025), presentation at Meyler Campbell event, 2024
Family and family business reputation in an era of transparency (with Charlie Bain, Julian Hanson-Smith and Iraj Ispahani), International Family Offices Journal, volume 9, issue 2, December 2024
Protecting and enabling the firm, managing risk in law firms, Modern Lawyer, volume 8, issue 3, October 2024
Enabling multi-generational impact, five ways for family business leaders to take a systematic approach to risk, International Family Offices Journal, volume 8, issue 4, June 2024
Managing risk in professional services, interview with Alastair Levy, Saxton Bampfylde Insights, June 2024
Leading in an era of volatility, keynote address to annual leadership conference of the Association of CEOs of Greece (ΕΑΣΕ), Athens, May 2023
The risk imperative for professional-services firms, Alastair Levy Advisory working paper, 2023 (available on request); earlier version presented at International Bar Association Building the Law Firm of the Future conference, November 2021
How global companies can manage geopolitical risk (with Andrew Grant and Ziad Haider), McKinsey & Company, 2021
Better for less, improving public sector performance on a tight budget (with Eric Labaye, Lenny Mendonca, Charles Roxburgh et al.), McKinsey & Company, 2009; presented at IESE Business School, Madrid
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