Hello there.

What’s in a biography? And what do you want to take from the next minute or so?

Maybe I need to persuade you of my capabilities by discussing operational experience with the RAF and Tri-Service organisations? Maybe, I should try and demonstrate my leadership capabilities by dropping in the roles where I led teams at the RAF College Cranwell for the RAF’s future leaders and that I am a Chartered Manager? Maybe I should mention how I can do the academic angle by saying I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Graduate Member of the British Psychological Society?

Need to know about my personal resilience, then standby! I am an ex-RAF Marathon champion, have won a 50-mile ultramarathon held in the summer heat of Cyprus, and ran the London Marathon wearing a 40lb backpack, attempting the Guinness World Record having torn my Achilles tendon 2 months earlier!

Sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it? But what isn’t being said here?

Maybe how when I was in Afghanistan, working at a headquarters in Kandahar, my wife was working further towards the enemy, operating out of Helmand? Maybe how I was never selected for promotion within the RAF in competition with others (apart from commissioning from the ranks)? Maybe how I won the RAF Marathon champs in probably the slowest winning time ever? Maybe, how I never got the Guinness World Record because someone else was faster on the day? Maybe, that my BPS graduate membership was earned from a generalist Conversion Course, so have never specialised in are area of psychology? Maybe how when working as a Senior Lecturer, I was the least academically qualified out of all teaching staff?

So what?

Well, all of us people are complex beasts, and we create and curate our own views of the world all of the time – not just of our own biographies, but of Whole World views (and everything in between). So, becoming more aware of how and why we do this takes practice. Practice of doing, practice of reflecting, practice of learning. And this leads to my favourite thing: questions! I once got ‘told off’ for asking too many questions, yet fortunately I didn’t let that affect me and remain an annoyingly questioning person. I wonder about what questions we ask, why we ask them, why we don’t, and what great value they are! And so much more interesting than answers! I wonder and I wonder. And through all of this – we develop. We develop our skills, we develop our decision-making, we develop our safety cultures.

What else might you want/need to know? I am married to Ingrid (we have been married since 2007, yet Facebook reminds me every year that we have only been ‘friends’ since 2010…) and have 2 awesome kids, Anna-Lena and Sebastian. We are very lucky to live in the Cairngorms National Park and I still love to run and walk in the local area. Walking, particularly, helps me think, reflect, do self-therapy, and ponder.