Ciarán Fenton

Leadership consultant

Boards:

off-sites
effectiveness reviews
ESG training

Leaders:

First 100 Days
Career-Crossroads
Portfolio launch

Specialism:

lawyers-as-leaders

DOWNLOAD MY MODERN LAWYER ARTICLE PDF HERE: LAWYERS AND THEIR REGULATORS CAN MAKE OR BREAK THE ESG MOVEMENT

My podcast

Are your company's biggest competitors sitting in your boardroom?

Do you recognise these personality traits in your board colleagues, or in you?

The micro-manager: always interfering
The defensive: rarely acknowledges a mistake
The pleaser: either won’t challenge anyone or say what they really want
The intellectually superior: won’t listen or must be the brightest in the room
The irrepressible: likes to please with many good ideas, but struggles with focus
The anxious one: never trusts their own judgement
The bully/passive aggressive: makes everyone's life a misery

Individual behaviour can frustrate business goals. It competes with your business as surely as your biggest competitor. And yet, boards live with such behaviour, month in, month out.

I led several companies through organisational change in my corporate career and, since 2002 as a consultant, I have advised leaders at listed and private companies on how business strategy and individual board member behaviour are inextricably linked in achieving objectives.

Using a methodology I developed over 15 years working in all sectors, I identify the specific behaviour of each board member, including yours, that may be frustrating your business goals. This includes behaviour which hides individual potential.

I reflect these behaviour agreements in a special type of business plan I have designed which integrates behaviour planning into traditional business planning. Then, usually over a three to nine month period, I support the implementation of the plan, especially when it goes wrong, which it usually does. Because people are people.

In this way, I combine business consulting with behavioural change consulting so that your board can agree a shared purpose, a shared strategy and shared behaviour to implement that strategy.

Then I facilitate agreements between everyone on small behavioural changes. I find that small changes get big results. That’s because confronting counterproductive behaviour, even a little, releases hidden potential in individual board members and, then, in aggregate from the board as a whole.

The problem with many boards is that they don't know how to integrate all three components - purpose, strategy and behaviour, without conflict or suppressing hidden talent.

The Fenton Model helps them negotiate this process, quickly.