Our approach – SURVIVE
“Who do you choose to be for this time? Are you willing to use whatever power and influence you have to create islands of sanity that evoke and rely on our best human qualities to create, produce and persevere?”
Margaret Wheatley
We support people and organisations to survive at this time of volatility and disruption. Some say that we face an unprecedented global predicament, whether our perspective is informed by economics or geopolitics, mental health concerns or environmental dis-ease. Many of our organisations are creaking under the weight of market expectation, retrenchment, financial constraints and demands for exponential growth.
In such environments, our work is typically to gear people and institutions up for survival. We often operate against the emotionally-charged backdrop of restructuring and business turnaround, supporting people and systems through the inevitable anxiety, opportunism, uncertainty and change. At these times, we tackle the dynamics of internal competitiveness, alliances and cliques, mistrust and political manoeuvring. We troubleshoot and solve tricky relational problems, between individuals and in teams, which are often exacerbated by a climate of stress and ambiguity.
As trained therapists and coaches, we are also equipped to diagnose and work with some of the more difficult leadership and organisational pathologies including narcissism, sociopathy, depression and anxiety. Our interventions dissolve conflicts, align groups, shift cultures and, ultimately, equip people to survive under extreme personal and professional conditions.
Our approach – THRIVE
“We do good work because we do good work”
Angela Blanchard
We support people and organisations to thrive by creating appropriate, respectful and pragmatic individual and group leadership development interventions that deliver the outcomes our clients want, both personally and professionally. We do this by providing a space and stimuli for people to connect with their full intelligence and passion.
Our individual and group development programmes provide opportunities for people to mature. Often lasting 10-15 days over the course of a year, we work deeply and intensely to help people, teams and organisations increase awareness, consciousness and confidence. Our work provides a framework for understanding functional and dysfunctional behaviours, for increasing compassion for self and others and to uncover pathways to further growth, all of which ultimately improves engagement, productivity and performance.
Critically, we have psychotherapy skills and thus we can unravel the impact of childhood and our early socialisation on leadership and thus support leaders to have more meaningful and effective lives at work and at home.
Our Theoretical Roots
We come from very diverse backgrounds combining academia, business and psychology. Important influences in how we work include sustainability theory, the leadership maturity framework, existential psychotherapy and philosophy, process orientated psychology, organisational development, the Enneagram, integral and ontological coaching, eco-psychology and varied manifestations of spiritual development.
Each programme and intervention draws on different theorists as is appropriate. For example, some of our work is devoted to building leadership freedom and responsibility and as such draws extensively on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Steve Biko.
Two senior colleagues are currently using their doctoral programmes to develop the Aephoria methodologies. Simon has been focusing on Boarding School Syndrome and its impact on leadership and his thesis is on consumption and shopping addiction. Julia has been extensively researching leadership freedom, responsibility and choice through the works of Sartre, Fanon and Biko and her thesis focuses on building a theory of executive leadership stuckness and release.
