Cymraeg

Academi Wales

Coaching Conference 2021 - speakers

Director, Academi Wales
Paul has over 25 years’ experience in leadership development after joining NHS Wales as a development practitioner during the 1990s. Paul has worked in Academi Wales, Welsh Government since 2013. During this time, he has taken the lead on governance, executive and board level development across the public and third sectors in Wales.

Having developed senior team-assessment frameworks, for leaders, Paul is involved in enabling senior teams and boards, helping them to identify the characteristics, approaches and strategies required for organisations to implement and sustain organisational high performance.

Paul has a particular interest in exploring concepts around individual, group and system dynamics and their impact on effective decision making at board level. Following completion of the ‘Board Level Dynamics Programme’ with the Tavistock Institute, he contributed a case study chapter to ‘High Performing Boards – exploring the influence of unconscious behaviours for the Dynamics at Boardroom Level’ (A Tavistock Primer for Leaders, Coaches and Consultants), published in 2019 by Routledge.

Chief Executive, Wrexham County Borough Council
Ian took up his post as Chief Executive of Wrexham Council in August 2018 and for the previous fourteen years worked at a senior leadership level within large public service organisations in Greater Manchester, Merseyside and North East Wales. Most recently, since 2014, this has been at Flintshire County Council as a Chief Officer leading successfully the development and implementation of a number of major strategic programmes.

Ian is committed to public service delivery and aims to work with partners, local communities and residents to build and deliver a clear vision that achieves outstanding results. Ian has lived in Wrexham for the last 18 years and is passionate about the current positive opportunities Wrexham and Wales provides and the potential for the future.

HR consultant and Coach, Call of the Wild
Bethan Emanuel is a proud Fellow of the CIPD, with nearly 30 years’ experience in HR and L and D.

Bethan is passionate about including learning in all that we do, so that we can be the best we can be at work. She works with many public and private sector organisations, leading transformational change, delivering leadership development programmes and provides executive coaching and mentoring services. She is an excellent communicator, both face to face and digitally and applies herself professionally with energy to her work.

Bethan holds ILM7 in executive mentoring and coaching and a Masters in Strategic HRM. She is a Trustee of the charity 2 Wish Upon a Star and plays an active role in its work. Bethan is a fluent Welsh speaker and can deliver all services through the medium of English or Welsh at the client’s request.

Director, Leaderful Action
Allison is a consultant, facilitator, and executive coach, who has enjoyed a long (20 years!) and varied career in learning and development, working across all sectors. This is testament to her ongoing passion for developing others and working collaboratively with organisations to make change happen.

Allison loves leadership theory and coaching and works hard to apply both to her own leadership journey. This is especially true of resilience, which has been an area of focus and learning for herself and her clients for many years now. Allison doesn’t come to this workshop as a hyper-resilient superhero – quite the opposite - instead she is keen to share some tools and mindsets that have helped here develop more resilient thinking.

On a good day this sees her juggling the usual joys and challenges of leadership, complexity, multiple deliverables, parenthood (to two teenage girls, no less) and partnership – with some energy to read a good book at the end of the day! On a bad day it helps her see what’s not working and to try some things that usually help get her back on track as quickly as possible.

When coaching Allison focuses on values, behaviours and tangible outcomes to realise leadership potential. In the field of resilience, she is especially interested in supporting her coachees to become more psychologically flexible – managing thoughts differently to get different outcomes. She draws on approaches from positive resilience theory, CBT and ACT to create practical strategies that are suited to the preferences of those she is working with. She is looking forward to sharing these with you at this year’s conference.

Success Intelligence
Robert Holden, Ph.D., is Director of Success Intelligence. His innovative work on success and happiness has been featured on Oprah, Good Morning America, a PBS special 'Shift Happens!' and in two major BBC TV documentaries, 'The Happiness Formula' and 'How to Be Happy'.

His services as a keynote speaker, consultant and coach are employed worldwide by organisations and brands such as Dove & the Real Beauty Campaign, the Body Shop, IBM, Google and Virgin.

He has presented two TEDx talks - 'The Tea Meditation', and 'Destination Addiction'.

Robert is the author of best-selling books including 'Happiness NOW!', 'Authentic Success' (formerly titled 'Success Intelligence'), 'Shift Happens!', 'Loveability', 'Holy Shift!', 'Life Loves You' (co-written with Louise Hay), and his latest book 'Finding Love Everywhere - 67 ½ Wisdom Poems to Help You Be the Love You Are Looking For'. He is a Fellow of the Leadership Trust and on the Guest Faculty of the University of Santa Monica.

RobertHolden.com
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Added Value Learning
Byron has a background in health and social care, community, adult and higher education, counselling and leadership development; and has spent the past 30 years supporting individuals, team, community and organisational development, as well as systems and culture change.

Originally training as a nurse he went on to train as a teacher, counsellor, coach, and mindfulness teacher. During his career, he has supported many small, medium and large organisations in the public, voluntary and business sectors, working with front-line workers, senior leaders and whole teams. His passion is supporting individuals, teams and organisations weave together different sources of knowledge, wisdom and practice to support collaborative learning; navigate and engage with complexity; and build high performing practices and cultures that meet the needs of service users.

His current work involves supporting the development of compassionate and inclusive leadership within health and social care; system-wide culture change programmes; and building wellbeing and resilience into the system.

Academi Wales
Rhodri joined the Academi Wales team in March 2021 and is on secondment from the Senedd, where he’s worked in various roles over the past 12yrs. He has a proven track record in getting the best from people and works with senior leaders to enhance team performance, and help nurture a positive and productive team culture across the public sector in Wales.

As Organisational Development Manager he is passionate about diversity and wellbeing, and enjoys the opportunities to be creative in designing new and exciting initiatives. Key achievements include winning the CIPD Wales Gold Award for Best Inclusion and Diversity Initiative in 2018, and being shortlisted by Training Journal for Learning and Development Professional of the Year 2018 across the UK, and being a finalist in the Leadership for the Future category by the Leading Wales Awards 2018.

Academi Wales
Ross has been working in the public sector for over 15 years and has a background in HR and Learning and Development roles in National and Local Government. He is an experienced facilitator, enjoys helping people be their best and is a member of the European Network for Positive Psychology, he has worked with a large number of public/third sector organisations helping implement practices from the field of positive psychology, aiming to improve their services for staff and citizens of Wales.

Academi Wales
Some of you may know me in my role with Academi Wales as part of the Continuous Improvement and Change team. During the past 10 years with Academi and my work in continuous improvement; inevitably improvement results in the need to change and individual resistance to change can hinder improvement.

In particular I became interested in the theories of individuals’ resistance in change; and the psychology of this. What stops us doing great things? In many situations only ourselves. This interest was the beginning of my own journey of self-discovery.

I started to look more closely at how I was feeling in certain situations and my own self-limiting thoughts and beliefs. It was the realisation of the existence of these thoughts that led me to try to find a self-help solution. The self-help solution I discovered was through the study and practice of Mindfulness. Regular Mindfulness practice can enable us to become more aware of and change habitual and sometimes unhelpful thought patterns. My study and practice continues.