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For many years after graduating, I was engaged in three main areas of activity– bringing up my children, earning a living and being active politically and in local community organisations (For more details, please see C.V.).

Of course, my children grew up, there were moves in jobs and neighbourhoods and major political changes took place.

Many life lessons however, were continually reinforced, whether it was in the lecture theatre, the council chamber or at a child’s birthday party.

For me, the most enduring of these have been:

* less is expected of most people than they’re capable of delivering
* the perceived expectations of others strongly influence self expectation
* low self expectation limits performance
* most undesirable or ineffective behaviour arises from a lack of understanding of people and information and/or effective ways of using it.
* many people remain unaware of what motivates either themselves or others
* a vast amount of interpersonal irritation arises from such lack of awareness
* these limitations can usually be turned around.

There can be no doubt that the jobs people do, the places they live, the money they have, bring to bear unequally on the extent to which such limitations are suffered. For many years I focused on working to bring about the social and political changes necessary to lessen those inequalities. Such action is still needed; in some parts of the world desperately so.

If, however, we are to have the mutual respect which needs to underpin any joint endeavour, be it a public/private sector partnership, a voluntary committee or a task based company team, it is also vital that as individuals we develop:

* awareness of and regard for both ourselves and others
* the capacities and tools which help us make and implement wise decisions.

It is on these tasks that I have come to focus.

This has entailed paying attention to the ways in which people think, learn, share and make decisions. Given how much of these processes takes place in meetings of one kind or another, I have also given a great deal of attention to how meetings are most effectively designed and run or, at times, dispensed with.

Building on teaching, management and research skills and experience, and extensive experience in organising and facilitating events, I have obtained certification in meeting management, in competence in the use of psychometric instruments, including the Myers Briggs Type Indicator®* and as an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) Practitioner. I have also created my own personality type assessment system, Rainbow-Plus ™.