Liz is a highly experienced Organisation Development consultant, leadership team/executive coach and action learning set facilitator.
She brings over 30 years’ experience working across UK public services and with international NGOs, supporting organisations to live their purpose and values, navigate change and learn and thrive in a complex world. She enjoys working at depth with the ‘messy’ realities and power dynamics of organizational life in the ‘here and now’, as well as working across sector and cultural boundaries. She sees culture, strategy and leadership as inextricably linked and works with this inter-relationship in her leadership team coaching and accompanying long-term culture change work.
Her previous roles include working as OD lead in consultancies within the public and international NGO sectors , as well as Co-Director of a Masters leadership programme in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. She has also served as a Board member of an International disability NGO. Her development path includes a MSc in Organisation Consulting and Change from Ashridge Business School.
She is known for her naturally collaborative, creative and relational approach and has a strong track record of building long-term relationships with clients that sustain learning, impact and change. With this in mind, she is particularly keen in developing internal OD and change capability, through mentoring and designing and leading accredited programmes for OD practitioners.
Having worked and lived in Africa and Asia, Liz is skilled at working with diverse cultures and world-views and is fascinated by some of the challenges and opportunities these differences present. She is also increasingly interested in supporting new forms of democracy to address critical issues of our time, for example, engaging citizens to influence the climate and ecological emergency through the role of citizens’ assemblies.
She seeks to use her strong inquiry, relational and facilitation skills to create the conditions for different kinds of conversation and shifts in patterns of behavior that support ‘promising practices’ and sustainable change - be it with leadership teams and Boards, change agents and front-line staff, action learning sets, large multi-stakeholder groups or social movements.
She is deeply committed to reflective practice and draws on a wide range of contemporary approaches, including dialogic OD, complexity, Gestalt, systemic constellations, Theory U and embodied approaches.
Liz lives in Oxford and enjoys playing flute in a Cuban band. She also has a large garden that keeps her grounded, alongside her meditation practice, and is actively involved in climate change work locally.
Expertise:
- Working with top teams as a leadership team coach and executive coaching on a 1-1 and team basis.
- Working with complex, ‘wicked issues’, bringing together multiple stakeholder perspectives and supporting connections, learning and change across organisational, sector and cultural boundaries and systems, using methods such as learning labs, action learning sets, communities of practice and large group interventions including World Café, Open Space and citizens’ assemblies
- Designing and running large-scale innovative systems leadership programmes to Masters level drawing on contemporary leadership thinking and practice
- Designing and facilitating culture change and transformation initiatives in partnership with clients, drawing on complexity, inquiry and dialogic principles
- Providing supervision, mentoring and coaching to OD practitioners, OD directors, leaders and coaches
- Building capability of OD practitioners and action learning set facilitators
Recent examples of Liz’s work include:
- Long-term culture change work with Oxfam Uganda, Oxfam Ghana and Oxfam Sierra Leone, as part of a global transformation programme, Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service and Pancreatic Cancer UK
- Long-term leadership team coaching for SMT’s and Boards working with culture, inter-personal conflicts, external relationships, strategy and collective leadership with government departments, NHS, housing associations, charities and local authorities
- Co-led a four modular programme for change agents on organisational/systemic constellations (COLPI)
- Design and lead for accredited OD open programmes (OPM) and in-house (eg Oxfordshire County Council)
- Supporting health and social care integration in localities, prototyping and experimenting with new ways of working around complex social issues and supporting communities of practice and learning labs
- Co-Director of national systems leadership programme (Leadership for Change) Tutor on Roffey Park Masters in Organisation Development and 21st century leadership programme (Public Health England)
- Design and facilitation of citizens’ assemblies on climate emergency across the UK
- Leading a number of Action Learning Sets, including with women university academics and aspiring Directors of Public Health and an in-house ALS facilitator programme
- Mentoring a number of OD Directors in the NHS, local authorities, charities and consultancies
Education and Professional Accreditation:
- MSc in Organisation Consulting and Change (Ashridge Business School- 2004-7)
- Diploma in Human Resource Development (South Bank University- 1994-96).
- BA (Hons) Development Studies (University of East Anglia- 1982-5)
- Certificate in Executive Coaching and Leadership Mentoring (ILM Level 7)
- Certificates in Organisational Constellations and Systemic Constellations and Coaching
- Certificate in Supervision in Team Coaching (CTSD)
- Accredited Workplace Mediator (Open College Network)
- Accredited Trainer/Consultant with Scheme for Professional Development (Tavistock)
- Accredited trainer of Action Learning facilitators (ILM)
- Licensed to use MBTI and LQF 360.
- Member of ODN Europe, Association for Coaching, OD supervision group
- Various short courses in TA, Gestalt, NLP, Future Search, Open Space, World Café, Human Systems Dynamics (HSD)