Bio
Dr Stephen Barden, DProf, is a specialist in organizational leadership and strategy.
He works with board level leaders to help them and their successors develop and initiate strategies that benefit and sustain the entire organization.
His practise has worked with clients in Europe, the USA, the UK and Africa.
Dr Barden has been Chief Executive of News Digital Systems, Axel Springer Television and Quadriga plc.
He has been Chief Operating Officer of BskyB and Managing Editor of TV-am plc.
As an entrepreneur, he has founded businesses in the media, technology and communications sectors.
Stephen Barden holds a Doctorate (DProf) from Middlesex University for his research into how top organisational leaders learn to use power and authority.
He has a Diploma in Professional Coach-mentoring for Senior Executives from the Oxford School of Coaching and Mentoring.
He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Programme for Management Development and has substantial training in Organisational Development, Action Centred Leadership and Negotiation.
He is a trained Mediator accredited to the School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Regents University, London.
He is the author of the book “How Successful Leaders do Business with their World: the Navigational Stance” – which details his work on the exercise of leaders’ power and authority and forms the foundation for his practice.
My Approach
The Navigational Stance
4 years of research I conducted with top organisational leaders (including military Generals, Corporate CEO’s and Academic Presidents) together with my ongoing coaching practice, produced findings demonstrating that human beings act and exercise their power and authority according to assumptions they learned very early in life.
These assumptions are based on what they experienced in childhood as they progressively experimented and explored to make space for themselves in their early environment.
Successful organisational leaders learn early in life to create a manageable power balance between themselves and their world. They learned to assume that the best way to “do business” with the world is to partner with it, rather than be its master or servant.
The Navigation Compass
All human beings go on to develop a template of characteristics that support (or disguise) their Navigational Stance. Successful organisational leaders form a compass of tendencies which actively supports their stance of working in balance with the world.
What my subsequent coaching work has revealed is that, by understanding their Stance and Compass, clients can, if they wish, learn to change both.
The Navigation Model
The process entails:
- REVIEW AND REFLECT on
- • how the clients view their capacity to manage their world
- • what characteristics and behaviours they have developed to maintain that view
- • which of these help and hinder their ability to learn to be successful leaders in their organisation
- • what ‘being a successful leader’ in their organisation means
- DEVISE what kind of leader they want to learn to be
- • Devise an appropriate Navigation Stance and supporting Compass
- • Decide which current characteristics need to be changed and which strengthened
- • Devise a plan of action
- APPLY, REFLECT, REVIEW
- • Apply the new behaviours in bite size chunks back into the business
- • Reflect on what happened
- • Review their impact.
- ADJUST AND MAINTAIN
- • Make adjustments if necessary
- • Apply and maintain