About Me
From Chaos to Counsel: How I Turned a Wild Start into Wisdom for Leaders
Looking at my life many years ago, doing the work I do today was most definitely not predictable. Had you followed me around for a while, you might have said homelessness (I’d already ticked that box), jail, and most likely an early death were on the cards. I didn’t think I’d live to see 30, let alone 50. I feel very lucky that I did.
Beginnings
From a small farm in the far North of Ireland, to hitchhiking & following punk bands around Europe, to riding motorbikes & partying through the last years of the Northern Irish troubles – by my late 20’s I had drunk my way to abject ill health, broken relationships and an increasingly desperate life.
There are lots of stories I could tell, filled with hell-raising and mischief (when the local chapter of a notorious biker gang throws you out of their party for behaving badly, it might be time to consider your choices). The stories don’t interest me that much anymore, but the memory of the suffering that drove that behaviour drives me every day, as does the knowledge that change is possible no matter where you start.
The internal transformation required has been the deepest source of wisdom and inspiration for the work I do now.
The road out of that lifestyle was harder and longer than I could have imagined, but the internal transformation required has been the deepest source of wisdom and inspiration for the work I do now.
These days, I’m a sounding board, trusted thought partner and advisor to smart, capable and ambitious leaders and teams who are willing to do the work of connecting deeply with themselves and bringing forth what wants to be expressed through them and their business.
The people who work with me are interested in transformation, not augmentation, and they want help with implementation, not just more information. We are in a world where leaders need to hold an incredible degree of complexity, whilst being highly attuned to their people, and what the future is calling for from their enterprise. That attunement is a skill that can be learned – but first, you must do the inner work to integrate and digest the events of your own life, both light and shadow, to become someone who people will willingly follow into an uncertain future.