Douglas McEncroe

When I arrived in Italy 30 years ago nobody in southern Europe was consulting or training in leadership development and organizational culture. I found myself in a situation offering a lot of possibilities. When I moved to Madrid in the 1980s and set up my company it is probably true to say that I became the pioneer working in these two areas, which for me are intrinsically interrelated.

Since then I have designed and implemented projects in more than 140 organizations, some mainly on leadership development, consisting of programmes supported by coaching, many others large projects lasting many years working on organizational change through strategic alignment and developing the company’s leaders.

During this period I collaborated with some 50 senior management teams in 20 countries. Outside Spain, where I originally based my company, I have worked as a Senior Trainer for Ashridge Management College, CCL, DDI and Mercer Delta/Oliver Wyman on many projects, using four languages, English, Spanish, Italian and French. From each of these prestigious organizations I have learnt different approaches to leadership development and organizational change which have enriched my own philosophy and have eventually led me to the integral approach that has proved so successful.

I launched the first Open Enrolment Leadership Programme in Spain in 1992. We were the pioneers in using 360º Feedback and linking the feedback to a battery of personality questionnaires giving participants great insights about the impacts of their present leadership styles while identifying key leadership behaviours that would help them be successful in the future. Soon after, we began an abbreviated in-company version in over one hundred Fortune 500 companies. It has been as satisfying journey.

Over time I realized that working only on leadership development would not be sufficient to produce organizational change. Therefore I started to work in the field of organizational culture which led eventually to strategic alignment. Since the late 1990s I have applied my integral approach linking strategic alignment with cultural change and leadership development. It is an approach in which I believe passionately.

I have published many articles in the mainstream economic press and in specialist management magazines and in 2010 published my first book, Cooking up Leadership. This year I was invited by Expansión, Spain’s leading economic newspaper to write their blog on Leadership. I am presently Managing Director of Douglas McEncroe Group where I lead a group of dedicated professionals, all experts in strategy, organizational culture and leadership.

My education has been varied. I have a BA DipEd in History, Linguistics and Education from Macquarie University in my native Sydney. In the 1980s I did a Masters in Education and Management at Lancaster University in Great Britain. During the following decade I continued my studies, focusing on leadership at the Covey Center of Leadership and the Center of Creative Leadership (CCL) in the United States. I am accredited as an Executive Coach by Ashridge Management College, OPP, CCL and Newfield, and also for the use of various 360º Feedback instruments and a wide range of personality profiles with OPP in Oxford. In the mid 1990s I obtained a Diploma in Organizational Psychology from the Tavistock Institute in London and in 2007 was selected by Harvard University to participate in a programme exclusively for experienced leadership educators, The Art and Practice of Leadership Development.

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