Graham Silverthorne

I don’t mean this in any disrespectful way but pigeons in England are unbelievably fat. Looking at them, it’s hard to understand how they can actually leave the ground at all, let alone remain airborne long enough to reach a garden fence or a tiled rooftop.  In fact, it’s hard to understand a pigeon’s day […]

The 360 Leader of Influence I’m certain that anyone who has moved into a new job in a senior role will share an insight into the phenomenon I like to call ‘the spiky interface’. When you arrive new in post, as keen and sharp as a poacher in a moonlit forest, you invariably experience a

I’ve been thinking and reading about this idea for several months and what follows is my attempt to capture something which I feel is critical – and at a point of crisis. I don’t know how well I’ve done it but it’s something I felt that I needed to write.  As dutiful consumers, we have

Is there any other two-word phrase you can use at work that conjures up such a variety of emotional contexts? Euphoria. Anger. Fear. Hope. Freedom. Bitterness. It’s the full roulette wheel of limbic possibility.  A current phenomenon, in our Covid-skewed world of work, is that people are leaving their jobs. Some expat workers are simply

I was surprised by a new single dropping onto my Spotify feed last week from John (Cougar) Mellencamp. It’s a great track, also featuring Bruce Springstein – a bit like a deep gravelly voice grand final sing-off, missing only recent Bob Dylan – and it’s called ‘Wasted Days’. It made me reflect. Is it really

I’ve been happily engaged with learning over the last month, leading a series of two-day coaching skills workshops at both Dulwich College, Singapore and UWCSEA. As usual, these workshops bring new thinking and reflection. Is there anything better than being a teacher? I wonder sometimes how this most ancient of arts became so deeply devalued

Do you ever find yourself opening up your LinkedIn feed, or your Twitter feed, or any of a myriad of other feeds that you thought you should add your name to and feeling a sense of rising intimidation? It all looks so interesting, so professional, so worthy, so essential for you to consume to be

When I changed my career path, at the start of 2021, I decided to support that decision with some focused self improvement. I know the conventional ways to do this might include a Doctorate, another Masters, learning a language, stockpiling some micro credentials and so forth but I decided, instead, to hire a personal Pilates

For an educational leader, a Governing Body or Board is critical to the beating heart of an organisation. Depending on how that pacemaker performs, it will either enhance the flow of life-giving sustenance or it will clog the arteries, inducing calcification and the significant risk of organ failure. It’s generally one way or the other.

“Man, man your time is sand, your ways are leaves upon the sea” I have always been drawn to romanticised and fictional versions of the past, in this case Al Stewart singing about Nostradamus (and I acknowledge the gender specificity), but for the past few (blog free) weeks, I have been engaged in writing some