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Here to help you create a workplace that thrives through great leadership

Hi, I'm Mac Farquhar. Thank you for visiting my website.

"What people want from leaders is to be straightforward, to tell it how it is, and much of the reason for our success has come from raising the self awareness of our leaders and making the building of trust a central focus for conversation throughout the business."

Engagement is not enough... what is vital is trust

Before you read about me, click on the link above to the inspiring article from which the quote was taken. It's by Sue Swanborough, HR Director at General Mills, the 6th largest food company in the world, where they have built their considerable success with well known brands such as Haagen Dazs, Jus-Rol, Green Giant, etc. through trust-based leadership.

This is why I love the work I do as an accredited leadership coach and skilled developer of people. I have a passion for delivering best practice leadership development, just like General Mills, to Scotland's up and coming business talent, and helping them to fulfil their ambition instead of being held back by lack of people skills.

I want to help you - and managers, business owners and professionals just like you - to become engaging transformational leaders. It's the best way of inspiring people to achieve outstanding results, deliver sustainable high performance, and drive Scotland's economy forward. People matter most, and they deserve the best quality leadership we can give them.

Here's an example of what can happen when we are at our best:

"Mac’s contribution to our senior management team has exceeded our expectations. The nature of the challenge we face, both in terms of organisational development and senior team leadership effectiveness, is huge. Mac quickly and skilfully went about his business to boost the confidence and cohesiveness of the team through intuitive one-to-one coaching and mentoring, and facilitation of management board workshops. His experience and insight are highly valued, and his objective and professional approach has gained him universal approval within the team."

Captain, Royal Fleet Auxiliary

So, I'm passionate about leadership and my clients fulfilling their ambition. What else?

To help you decide if I am the right person to help you,

I like to achieve results quickly and effectively by focusing directly on the impact that leaders are having - on themselves and on all those around them. No big, expensive programmes, just confidence boosting attention and skills development using the best tools around
The goal is high levels of engagement, performance, productivity and profit, but that's only achievable through trust and meaningful work, so context is everything and I work with your reality, not theory.
Around 80% of an employee's decision to engage or disengage is dependent on the relationship with their immediate manager. Right there is the reason why you would come to me. That's what my coaching and development focuses on. It's aimed right at the heart of turning managers into leaders, and by focusing on their impact on people, it's quicker and more effective than any training course or leadership programme, good as many of them are. And it's coaching rather than training for the same reason, i.e. more is learned in a shorter time from applying new attitudes, beliefs, skills and knowledge than attending courses and days away.
Leadership is first and foremost an "inside job", one of self-belief, healthy self-awareness, presence and personal authenticity. The "outside job" of building trust and strong relationships that inspire and engage others, is only possible if the "inside job" has been done, and done well. Once again, you won't get this from training courses or leadership programmes. You will from me.
Leadership and management go hand in hand to deliver outstanding performance. However, the temptation is for managers to do more managing than leading because it's easier. And the temptation for organisations is to spend a lot of money on leadership programmes that rarely deliver on their promises. It's not inspiring and it's not engaging, and it's not the best we can do.
Inspiring and engaging people is an emotional thing. People want to feel fulfilled and proud at work, and it is hugely important that we help managers as leaders to create a climate at work that makes this possible. "Simply put, a leader’s job is to energise others. It’s not part of their job; it is their job. Every interaction a leader has is either going to positively energise those around them or negatively energise them." Noel Tichy
Managers are put off leadership because it appears complicated and hard to describe, let alone do. In reality, it's not. Joe Griffen and Ivan Tyrrell worked out for us in the "Human Givens" what we, as leaders, need to focus on in order to lift people's spirits. You can count them on the fingers of two hands, but if you want to get even more succinct, Sir Terry Leahy, former chief executive of Tesco, summed it up like this: “People really only need four things at work: a job that interests them, a chance to get on, to be treated with respect and to have a boss that helps them. It’s not a lot to ask.”

And here's the really good news ....

I have done all the groundwork on leadership best practice, and I have all the career long expertise it takes to enable you to do a great "inside" and "outside" job of being an inspiring and engaging leader. We can get straight to it and see the results coming through quickly.

I'm helped in this by the deeply impressive leadership coaching and development "know-how" that gifted British experts like Amanda Knight of 'Minds4Success' and Steve Radcliffe of 'Leadership Plain and Simple' have provided, as well as all the cutting edge work that has been done lately by bodies such as The Training Foundation, The Work Foundation, the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development, and the Government through it's sponsorship of David MacLeod's groundbreaking work on employee engagement.

I have put all of this learning and experience together to develop scores of managers with my emotionally intelligent approach to leadership. You'll find details of this, and other learning and development solutions, under the 'Services' tab.

Check out the testimonials and professional accreditations below, and then trust your instinct on this. If it's positive, and I very much hope that it is, give me a call on 0131 664 5004 or 07710 447770, or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and we can start right away to do some really good work together.

Testimonials

I absolutely loved the emotional intelligence tool for improving personal performance and think it is the most accurate and useful report I have seen. I found your style to be very conducive to the process as I felt comfortable and at ease and felt that you had a very good knowledge of the tool and the reports.

HR & Total Quality Manager, Edinburgh International Conference Centre

Mac is an exceptional facilitator. Having had some less than ideal experiences previously with facilitators, Mac was exemplary. There is no way that the session could have achieved the success it did without his input. He constructed a very balanced but responsive programme for our top team review. His personal style suited the format of the day very well and he struck just the right balance of structure and facilitation.We will have another session in six months time. Mac will definitely be invited back to facilitate and build on what we did.”

Director General Ships, Ministry of Defence

Mac and Roger, were extremely skilled and knowledgeable, and I would certainly recommend them to anyone interested in learning anything about management and business skills. The practical exercises were particularly well thought out and kept us all engaged. I would certainly be interested in attending further courses run by these trainers. Definitely the best course I’ve been to.

Process Scientist, United Utilities, Cumbria

I just wanted to let you know that I have received some feedback from a recent attendee on your personal development programme. She gave it the highest review and came back “buzzing” from all the insight she had received via the 360° report and Myers Briggs coaching. Her mentor, who gave me the feedback, could already see the change in her approach and how she had grown in confidence over the last few weeks! She was highly complimentary about the trainers John and Mac, and I’d be grateful if you could pass this on to them.

Programme Sponsor, Ministry of Defence