Leadership & Engagement Practitioner

Training | Seminars | Keynotes

Bob lives in and works out of out of Calgary, Alberta.    He retired from forty-five years of public service in 2014 and is now engaged in his own “leadership through engagement” practice.

He is well known across the country as a thought leader, author and a down to earth practitioner of new models for employee and citizen engagement, systems thinking and building leadership at all levels.  His emerging and new style of leadership is based on the concept of an entrepreneurial “practice” off the corner of the desk.  This exciting approach is predicated on the belief that the real job of leaders is to create more leaders and that leadership can be found in the file rooms as well as the boardrooms.

Bob’s long career in public service ranges from organizing school boards from scratch in isolated First Nations reserves to engaging Deputy Ministers and their management teams in building their first Team Charter. He worked a great deal with emerging leaders and youth through his executive leadership instruction at Royal Roads University and the many communities of practice he instituted in all four levels of public service.  His work in organizational and community engagement was recognized with the Head of The Public Service Award in 2000.

A Few Highlights of Bob’s Career

  • Working with the management team of the BC Forest Service to build a large engagement based community of practice (250 front line leaders) as that organization strived to build an engagement based learning organization.
  • Working with the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre to build an organization that at it’s core, is fully committed to systems thinking and dedicated to full workplace and citizen engagement strategies.
  • Working with the RCMP to train engagement practitioners and apply everyday system thinking tools in the organization.
  • Working with the City of Calgary Roads department to apply engagement tools in daily planning as well as their application to post catastrophic after action reviews.
  • Working with the BC Health Ministry to design and deliver a province wide tool based citizen engagement effort called the “Conversation on Health.”
  • Working with Paul and Liz Brandt on their initiative to fight sexual exploitation with their new “Not in My City” initiative.

Some other organizations he has worked with include Canadian Forces, Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, St John NB Crime Prevention Task Force, Aboriginal Human Resource Council, Alberta Justice, City of Victoria, BC Ministry of Agriculture, Vancouver School Board, Alberta Family Community Support Services Ontario Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities, City of Calgary, City of Red Deer, Town of Olds and most of the federal departments.

His most recent enagement project was to turn three Calgary inner city neighborhoods into a full-blown music destination district (like the New Orleans French Quarter) by using an old school citizen engagement approach … musicmile.ca

 

Bob is a non-motivational Keynote Speaker

He much prefers to speak, teach and facilitate from a practical tools-based approach. He believes we must reach far beyond the “motivational speech” and rather motivate people more effectively with real time “Monday Morning” tools.  His practical blue-collar tools approach will leave the audience with at least six new tools to engage staff or stakeholders.

He does well at keynote speeches, seminars and facilitating large and small group sessions with the new tools, humour and storytelling.