About David
MENTOR | FACILITATOR | CONSULTANT
David supports the critical relationship between senior managers and boards.
Experience
- Chief executive
- Strategic leader
- Trustee and chair
- Consultant
- Mentor
- Facilitator
Expertise
- Leadership, governance and management
- Organisational development
- Business planning
- Change management
- Budgets
- Operations
Themes
- Developing and implementing plans for recovery and improvement.
- Supporting relationships among trustees and executive officers.
- Analysing complex organisational data to avert a crisis.
David Williams is an experienced mentor, facilitator and consultant including roles as chief executive, trustee and chair.
David supports the critical relationship between senior managers and boards of ethically driven organisations because we know this can make the difference between a functioning and dysfunctional company. He is passionate about developing resilience and sustainability through transformative and lasting change because we all live in an age of uncertainty, austerity and increasing scrutiny.
David brings his practical experience to support best practice because it’s about living our values. He has over 30 years experience in leadership, governance and management in the third sector. He is also a mentor and facilitator with further specialist training in emotional and cultural intelligence and nonviolent communication (often used in mediation).
David is a trustee of The Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland; Boots and Beards and Changing the Chemistry. He is also a volunteer mentor for Sported, an Olympic legacy company empowering community groups to improve the lives of disadvantaged young people through sport.
David joined Creative Help in 2018.
Projects include
Including:
- Facilitating Board Development days
- Mentoring Chief Executive Officers
- Supporting the Scottish Recovery Consortium on governance issues
- Development of business plan and creation of budget for new arts centre in Cumbernauld.
- Facilitation of workshops across the Highlands as part of arts strategy review.
- Research and consultancy for an American writer seeking to establish a production company. Provided budget scenarios for West End, Broadway and touring.
- Mentoring the senior management of theatre company Boy Blue Entertainment touring their Olivier award-winning show Pied Piper to venues such as Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Birmingham Hippodrome and Cardiff Millennium Centre.
- Assessment of Sharjah Theatres Group in the UAE and mentoring to the artistic director.
- Board Development work for Craft Scotland including business plan review and coaching the first-time chief executive through a period of difficult and significant change.
- Development of business plan for new Asian theatre company.
- Review of business plan for Shetland Arts Development Agency as they prepared to open their new venue Mareel.
How David can help your organisation
Build business resilience for long-term security
- Redesign board processes for consistency, priority-setting and clarity of purpose.
- Gain clarity around strategy, fundraising and succession planning.
- Review the work of your board, including skills audits, recruitment and induction.
Focus on reputation excellence by creating safe, trusting spaces.
- Step back to refocus on the big picture.
- Open dialogue and name the elephants in the room without fear of being judged.
- Use risk management as a core tool to improve planning and impact monitoring.
Improve performance and effectiveness through mentoring.
- A confidential thinking partner for who need to work things through before sharing.
- A focused start for newly promoted people to help them off to a secure start.
- Objective support for people who feel trapped and can’t see a way through.
Key document support
Researching, drafting and editing key documents.
In times such as this, a short, sharp intervention can make all the difference without breaking the budget. Here are a few examples:
- Taking raw information and writing the Trustees Report for the Annual Report.
- Commenting and then editing funding applications from first to final draft.
- Creating job descriptions.
- Taking raw data and writing a board report with key findings and recommendations.
- Risk Register review to make it a “live document” and simpler for trustees to analyse.
For this occasional support to charities and CICs, the basic charge is £300 +VAT per day.
Interested?
Get in touchTestimonials
“David’s help and support was invaluable, and he was incredibly supportive throughout our mentoring relationship. His experience and knowledge was extremely helpful to my work journey. He made great suggestions, was incredibly empathetic and was a superb sounding board. I would whole heartedly encourage anyone to work with David in a mentoring capacity.”
– Gayle Bell, CEO
” I came into the coaching session with preconceived ideas about where I wanted to go, but by the time I left, my plan was very different. David’s calm but direct probing was able to get me to think outside of the box and I was able to generate new ideas. Within a week, I had planned and launched my promotional campaign and got two new clients signed up. I doubt that I would have actually have got it off the ground, were it not for our coaching session.”
– Fiona Macintosh
“Working with David was invaluable to our organisation. His two-day facilitation of a workforce and organisational development event allowed a small team of highly committed and talented staff to rediscover their individual and collective confidence and fulfilment… All of this achieved within two days with skill, insight and wisdom. Would recommend David to any organisation looking for empathetic consultation or facilitation.”
– Jardine Simpson, CEO of the Scottish Recovery Consortium