Paul Whitman

Prior to becoming a consultant I worked as a leader in Barclays across a range of functions and businesses. In particular I spent 4 years with Barclays Africa where I discovered my passion for learning and development. Since leaving the bank in 2005 I have worked in a broad range of clients and sectors at senior and executive leadership levels. I have been fortunate to work with clients right across the globe including Scandinavia, Europe, USA, Latin America, Asia, Africa, India and the Middle East.

I love to work with clients to help them understand and clarify their learning needs and then create a learning journey to deliver them. I enjoy working with leaders in all settings but in particular senior leaders who want to understand more about the impact they have on creating the conditions for their teams to truly perform. My facilitation strengths lie in my ability to manage the tension between engaging a group and challenging them to really reflect on their own practice. I am able to quickly build connection with leaders and help them to relate the learning content into practical action. From a design perspective, my strengths are in creating interesting and creative learning interventions that are rigorous but pragmatic and allow leaders to genuinely learn in the flow of their own work.

I am driven by a desire to help leaders develop the skills to really understand themselves and their people with an intent to help create the best possible environment for performance.

I work with LIW because I believe the frameworks and approaches are practical and easily relatable. This is key to my work with leaders as I believe the challenges they face do not require complicated or over-engineered solutions but rather pragmatic and usable tools. LIW believe passionately in the responsibility of leaders to be the providers of the right conditions for success for their people and this directly aligns with my own approach.

By blending a supportive atmosphere with a touch of challenge and directness, I like to foster meaningful conversations and inspire personal and professional development which is why my participant described my approach as engaging, challenging, supportive, and direct.