People
John Watters is the Founder of Living Leadership.
He applies his understanding of the dynamics of living systems to unlock unrealised potential working at the interface between the individual, team and the wider system. Over 25 years John has crafted and refined a distinctive approach: working with focused, high impact, small-scale interventions (rather than big, disruptive and costly interventions) to release the natural capacity of human systems to learn, develop and thrive.
Clients and colleagues describe John’s way of working as inspiring, courageous, robust, fun, challenging and warm-hearted.
John brings a breadth and depth of experience from work in most sectors and every size of organisation: UK Cabinet Office, many UK central government departments, local government, healthcare across the UK and Ireland, education (sixth form colleges, secondary schools, further education colleges), charities large and small, a wide range of commercial organisations from railways, social enterprises to SMEs, global corporates including Shell, Roche, Microsoft, Standard Life, Standard Chartered, Aviva and international bodies like NATO and UNESCO. He has worked across the UK and in USA, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai, India, Vietnam and across Europe.
John worked in partnership with systems thinking pioneer, Barry Oshry, for 15 years, leading the introduction of this approach to systems change to organisations across Europe, accrediting trainers and consultants worldwide in this framework. He continues to run experiential workshops to introduce systems thinking as part of leadership development programmes, Master’s degrees and in his consulting work.
John is also a Facilitator with the Center for Courage & Renewal and regularly hosts Circle of Trust® retreats, unique spaces of refuge and potential which renew the human spirit and connect participants to their courage, compassion and inner wisdom.
He has three degrees: a Master’s in Individual, Team and Organisational Change from the University of Surrey; a Master’s in Health Planning from the London School of Economics; and an honours degree in Business Studies from the University of Edinburgh. Earlier in his career John worked for six years in general management roles across the English National Health Service and for eight years as a consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers.
He draws on a wide network of close and trusted associates as client needs require. He is also an Associate Partner with Fraendi.
John lives in Shoreham-by-Sea, UK.