Following a career as a professional squash coach, Jonathan climbed the corporate ladder becoming Executive Head of HR for a national retailer, helping rescue it from foreclosure.
After learning a huge amount about business and boardroom politics, Jonathan started his own consultancy spending the next 20 years supporting leaders across industry.
In 2018 Jonathan took a gap year to go backpacking around the world, celebrating his 60th birthday along the way.
With all that experience of life, leadership and business, Jonathan is ready to share the lessons he learned to help others find their own path to success and happiness.
Jonathan's story
From a young age I played squash. It helped that I lived in a squash club and had a three times world champion as a coach. That grounding enabled me to make a living from the game, playing and coaching abroad. I came back to the UK with the offer of managing a new squash club, but no-one asked if being a decent player made for a good manager. Clearly not in my case and I soon found myself out of work. It was a lesson that really helped me understand the nature of careers later on.
Over the next fifteen years I made my way in the retail industry, starting out as a sales assistant and, with a sabbatical to gain my professional qualifications in human resources, I was invited to become executive head of HR for a large private retailer undergoing a major restructure.
The pressures of turning round the business took its toll on both me and my family and so I left to start out on my own. Over the next 20 or so years I built a successful learning and development business developing leaders from supervisors to senior executives.
In 2018 following some long and traumatic family illnesses, me and my wife decided to make some radical changes. I ended my business interests, we rented out the family home and went backpacking around SE Asia, Australia and New Zealand. The experience was life changing and life affirming. To have an opportunity to share what I’ve learnt with you presents an exciting challenge and opens a new chapter.
anything is possible, it's only a question of how...
what people say...
“His expertise, insight and knowledge are remarkable, and his discussion and comments are enormously valuable and practical. In all our meetings, Jonathan helped me not only to refine my ideas but to be able to see the big picture and yet also spot those tiny details that might have got in the way. He is really a professional, creative and pleasant to work with”
“Jonathan is the sort of person that you want in times of crises and turmoil, when things aren’t going quite right. He is able to offer calmness to things and has an ability to see the wood for the trees.”
“thanks to his persistent challenging and coaching, as an Engineer, I eventually began to genuinely appreciate the Management/ Business-person’s perspective which has contributed to development of a sustainable competitive advantage for my business”
