Richard Boston

STRATEGIC • INVENTIVE •  ALLY

Richard, LeaderSpace’s Managing Director, is committed to helping leaders become as good as the world needs them to be – particularly in challenging environments.

He loves learning and is continually evolving. He’s also a big fan of running, writing and paddle-boarding.

Richard is an organisational psychologist focused on enhancing leadership and team effectiveness to improve organisations’ performance and culture. He’s worked with a wide range of clients including BHP, BT, Cancer Research, Deutsche Bank, Ernst & Young, Gucci Group, HM Prisons and Constabularies, the UK’s NHS and FCO, various nations’ armed forces, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, Shell, Siemens, Southampton Football Club, the South Australian Government, Virgin and the wildlife charity Wildscreen.

He’s written three books:

  • ARC Leadership, helping leaders and their teams to be more Authentic, Responsible and Courageous – three qualities he tries to embody in everything he does

  • The Boss Factor, which offers ’10 lessons in managing up for mutual gain’

  • Upgrade, with Karen Ellis, helping leaders build their capacity for complexity by upgrading their own and others’ ‘internal operating systems’ – the ways they see themselves, the world, and everyone and everything in it

Richard is known for his commitment to making a lasting difference, whatever it takes. His clients and colleagues describe him as genuine, down-to-earth, challenging and a deeply curious lateral thinker. He’s also keen to contribute to the development of his profession. Hence, he wrote two chapters for Routledge’s Practitioner’s Handbook of Team Coaching, has appeared on industry podcasts and has run sessions for coaches on behalf of one of coaching’s governing bodies.

Focus

  • Coaching leadership teams

  • Coaching individual executives, up to CEO level

  • Designing and running leadership and management development interventions for groups of leaders

  • Profiling leaders and leadership teams for recruitment, promotion, development and management audits

  • Writing and speaking about leadership, team performance, leadership development and coaching

  • Delivering insight through psychometrics – Richard used to train the trainers in the use of tools such as MBTI and Hogan’s ‘Dark Side’

  • Running seminars on change, complex / VUCA environments, ‘followership’ and Authentic, Responsible, Courageous leadership

  • Providing insight on the implications for organisations on developments in automation, robotics, AI and ‘cyborg teams’

“A highly skilled coach who won respect from senior managers, whose respect in this area is not easily given. Richard combines personal authority, gravitas, empathy and expertise in a way that creates trust and productive coaching relationships.”
— Alistair McIntosh, Head of Organisational Development, British Library

Career Highlights

  • Designing and delivering one-to-one and group coaching for CEOs and senior staff across Gucci Group’s brands worldwide, including Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and YSL

  • Designing and running Southampton Football Club’s Senior Management Team Development Programme, a one-year intervention combining coaching, team development and team-to-team facilitation and training, with continuing support after the programme to keep the learning flowing

  • Designing and running a leadership development programme for Deloitte senior managers on the cusp of directorship. This unique programme ran for seven years, helped over a thousand participants and was a finalist in the 2011 Training Journal Awards

  • Designing a global ‘leading change’ programme for a well-known FMCG company

  • Helping with a joint venture between two telecoms giants, which included working with the CEO, his team and the rest of the top 70 to help build leadership capability and integrate the people and cultures of two merging organisations

  • Speaking on leadership at a conference for middle-eastern CIOs, in Abu Dhabi

  • Writing three books and contributing to Routledge’s handbook on team coaching

Qualifications

  • Chartered Occupational Psychologist

  • Chartered Coaching Psychologist

  • Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society

  • Postgraduate Certificate in Executive Coaching

  • Certificate in Supervision in Teams and Organisations

  • Postgraduate ‘Master Practitioner’ in Systemic Team Coaching

  • Postgraduate Certificate in Occupational Psychology

  • Certified Practitioner Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)

  • Certificate in the Fundamentals of Systemic Coaching and Constellations

  • MSc in Investigative (Forensic) Psychology

  • BA (Hons) in Psychology and Philosophy

  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: essentials

  • Registered with the Health and Care Professions Council

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