About Me

My unique background and experiences have allowed me to hone the art of teaching human behaviours under pressure and translating and teaching this knowledge in a fun, interactive and highly effective way, so as to help individuals and teams work together in a respectful, more understanding and appreciative way, and to survive, thrive and develop as team mates, leaders, and managers.

I myself, have successfully built and led teams in high-stakes, high threat situations; learned to build unshakable trust with my teams and peers, and developed communication skills and training that drive positive change.

Throughout my career, I have never avoided the hard questions or tough decisions. In the Military and the Police my mantra was ‘train hard and fight easy’.
Tackling tough topics, facing my own fears, doubts, and weaknesses and learning from my own mistakes; has always been important to me. It’s how I have developed and grown, and will continue to do so.

Aged 27, I exited the Military after 9 years service and then I spent the next 24 years as a Police officer working in 4 different UK Police forces and in many different roles and specialisms.

Again, my main driver was to protect others, keep people safe and stop injustice, terrorism and criminality, by playing my part and putting service before self. I felt then and feel now, that was, and is my duty and calling.

During the 2000s, I had the privilege of spending time in various parts of the United States alongside law enforcement colleagues there. It started when I won the International Police Association study tour bursary and travelled to California and Nevada to study and report back on the differences between UK and US K9 sections, tactics and training. Patrolling and training in the USA gave me yet another perspective on a different and complex society prone to gun violence, and their different resolution and communication styles, and views on conflict management.

As I rose through the ranks of the Police, I had the honour of leading and managing men and woman, many of whom were the bravest of the brave and the most compassionate people I’d ever met, despite the horrors of what we all saw.

Again human behaviour was at the centre of it all. The conflict, the leadership, the management good and bad, it all came down to human behaviours and how people treated others, coped under pressure, and interacted with each other.

I made mistakes as a leader and as a manager, but always did what I thought was right, was fair, and ethical, and learned lots from my great bosses, and just as much from my worst bosses.

I learned about my own faults, failings and development needs, about my true values and about my impact on others as a team member, manager and leader, both in peaceful and stressful times. I learned how my attitude and behaviour affected people, both positively and negatively and that having self-awareness taught me a lot about myself. Some lessons I learned quicker than others, and some I have yet to learn.

Management and leadership can be a lonely place where you feel isolated, constantly under pressure and constantly ill equipped with the skills, knowledge, mindset and behaviours, to be responsible for others.

Luckily my careers taught me a lot, and I worked with and learned from, some of the best. You had to learn quickly in those jobs. Getting it wrong had huge consequences for all involved.

I learned and was told, I was pretty good at the ‘people thing’ and was able to help and guide others in how to act as a manager and leader, how to make decisions, especially under pressure, and how to read body language and adapt my style to make sure any interactions I had, where honest, authentic, meaningful, and impactful. This traits are reflected in the testimonials I receive.

I found that I was able to ethically and naturally persuade and influence people, quickly build trust with others, inspire and empower teams to share my vision, and do so willingly – but I wasn’t fully conscious of how I was doing it a lot of the time. So, I studied, asked, researched, watched, listened and learned.

During the latter part of my Policing career, I spent 5 years seconded to the Ministry of Defence, in a National Security Counter-Terrorism role, focused on the International terrorist threat to the UK, specialising in the areas of Yemen, Somalia and East Africa.

The operating environments, roles and ranks I worked in, from Belfast to Germany, Camden to Chicago, Team Member to UK lead roles, Street fights to Suicide bombers, Overt to Covert, and Terrorism to Training, all helped me hone my craft, and I now have the privilege of being able to share those experiences via my courses, scenarios and coaching.

The more I understood human behaviours, the more I realised that:

When people understand their own motivational values, the more they realise why they are driven to behave in a certain way, and that there are others with different behaviours or viewpoints, who probably share the same motivational values, but act differently and this is why tension and conflict exist.

It is possible to work with others who have different viewpoints and still respect each other values using compromise, and/or adjusting our own approach.

Having clarity on how and why we are triggered into conflict, helps resolve, reduce, or remove it.

We all have unconscious bias and hold prejudices, and its effect can be devastating if we are not aware of it.

Behaving in the right way, gains you respect and trust and gives your team confidence in your leadership and authenticity.

Situational awareness and the ability to read body language, is key to staying safe and spotting potential dangers, before situations escalate.

The brain remembers, retains and recalls information in a variety of ways, and how the use of story-telling, visuals, and humour, helps others engage, retain and recall important information, especially when under pressure. Train Hard – Fight Easy!

My roles and ranks gave me the platform to influence and help others feel more confident in building relationships and their own resilience. It allowed me to work with some of the world’s foremost behavioural scientists, especially in the field of ethical persuasion and influence, conflict resolution, and why people react well to the right motivation, but badly when the wrong triggers are pulled.

I have run small teams of highly-experienced specialists, large teams with inexperienced staff, mixed ability teams, remotely-based teams, and teams that varied in size, ability and functionalities.

I have worked alone in senior roles, but as part of a larger organisation, and have worked with senior ranking Government ministers, foreign organisations, multi-agencies, and across the political spectrum of views, priorities, and needs. I have worked in highly-sensitive environments where resilience, scrutiny, integrity, confidentiality, and threat-to-life decisions, where regular features.

Fast forward to 2018, when I retired from the Police and since then, I’ve carried out a variety of roles as a civilian instructor within the Police, operational and logistical support roles within the NHS and Ministry of Defence, I was a college lecturer at a Further Education college, and was the head of training within the property franchise sector, before founding Training for Reality in 2024.

Nowadays, my mission is to Inform, Inspire and Empower people to realise their potential, regardless of current role, doubts, concerns, background or academic achievement, and to leave a legacy of real change where, and when I can.

I give delegates the space and the psychological safety to open up about the real worries they have regarding their role and abilities, the loneliness and challenges of leading and managing people, and the imposter syndrome many of us feel, but fear talking about.

In summary, I deliver excellence, through experience!