Why I support teams build psychological safety

In 2012 I worked with a brilliant leadership coach, Richard Brown. In our first session he asked me a question. “Gary what’s your purpose?”. I was unsure what he meant. Perhaps my puzzled look prompted Richard to ask the same question in a different way, “what gets you up in the morning…what lights you up?”. I scrambled for answer. Still unsure, I uttered, “to give my family choices”. There was a pause, and then Richard replied, “we’re going to have to work on that”.

At the time I thought it was a decent answer. I also learned, the role of a coach is support and challenge, not one or the other. Richard was awesome. He put me through my paces, and after seven or eight sessions, during which we discussed motivation, thinking traps, career highs and lows and the type of leader I aspired to be, I wrote down four words. ‘Unlock and ignite potential’.

This changed everything for me. In 2013 I got my first Board Director, UK Marketing Director, a team of thirty great colleagues and a portfolio of twenty brands including Glenfiddich, Hendrick’s and Monkey Shoulder. My purpose was to unlock and ignite potential in the brands and the team. For me this meant the right level of support and challenge, compassion and accountability – not a civil war between any two things, rather the judgment in the moment of when and how to do both. And I might have got this right approximately 70% of the time. I don’t mind sharing, I felt ready for the role about 12 months after I got it!

More powerfully unlock and ignite potential made sense personally. When we had our daughter diagnosed with dyslexia, my wife and I decided we would move house three times in four years to get Lily-Anne into an environment that would play to her strengths for empathy, creativity and hard work. Geographic moves were necessary to get her in to both primary and secondary schools that specialise in the multitude and unique challenges and opportunities being dyslexic brings.

Unlocking and igniting potential is why, in 2020, I asked my boss, Rita Greenwood, at William Grant & Sons, to support me undertaking a three-year Masters Degree in Coaching and Behaviour Change at Henley Business School. Why? Because leadership coaching is about unlocking and igniting potential. It’s why I did my dissertation and my own proprietary research into psychological safety, and now do keynote speeches and breakthrough sessions on how to cultivate environments where all voices are heard and valued in organisations and teams. Why? Because it supports unlocking and igniting potential in individuals, teams and organisations. It has been proven through over a generation of research, enhancing psychological safety improves creativity and innovation, makes inclusion and diversity real, and it enhances engagement and high performance.

So far I have worked with several consumers good businesses including Nestle, Fortitude Spirits and my previous employer William Grant & Sons; transportation business Kion; educational institutions including Bath University; an elite Premier League football club and most recently the World Association of Nuclear Operators. And, 1:1, I am coaching leaders in the Charity sector, FMCG businesses, Government bodies and business founders.

All I do, all day now, is help people.

So if you are motivated to unlock and ignite potential in yourself and/or your team, please get in touch for an exploratory no obligation discussion.