Karen Ellis
I’ve worked as an organisation consultant and development practitioner for the last three decades in fields as diverse as strategy development, large scale change initiatives, leadership development programmes, top team facilitation and executive coaching. For the last fifteen years or so I have been concentrating my practice in three main areas:
Vertical Development
Systemic approaches to organisations and leadership
The impact of meaning making on groups and interpersonal relationships
As my practice has matured I have tended to be called in when leaders are seeking to create new ways of thinking, deal with particularly stuck relationship issues or to galvanise colleagues when things have got too cosy. This has resulted in my involvement with about a hundred organsiations in the public and private sector, sitting alongside leaders as they reshape their businesses.
For the last three years my focus has been on uncovering the underlying internal capacities that help individuals and groups make sense of the complex and unstable worlds that we now all operate in. This cycle of theory creation has resulted in two practical handbooks on the subjects of individual and organisational development, one co-authored with Richard Boston and the other with Joe Simpson, which will both be available in 2019.
In terms of my work with individuals I have coached or supervised more than 200 people and contributed developmental debriefs or one off consultations to hundreds more. This has given me experience of working with people across the broadest spectrums of development, psychological issues and organisational role. I have tended to specialise in working with people who are ‘later stage’ in their meaning making. People in these stages often feel isolated and poorly understood and despite the maturity and sophistication of their meaning making. The experience of ‘transitioning’ can still be sticky, bumpy and sometimes downright terrifying. I am familiar with all of these types of personal upheaval and can act as a compassionate guide around the odder parts of people’s own heads.
