Bristol leadership coach Joe Constant has set up his own consultancy after developing a business model based around understanding the impact of a leader’s life experiences on a company’s culture.
The son of a 1950s Windrush migrant from Dominica, Joe, pictured, has spent more than 20 years working with a variety of organisations.
During that time he has launched three successful training, property and education businesses, including his Kick Start Enterprise social programme, which helped more than 800 Bristol schoolchildren.
Now he has set up Joe Constant Coach, offering his newly developed business model to focus on the clarity, alignment and impact of a company’s values on growth and development.
Joe draws on his varied life experiences in his approach, including working as a dancer and backing singer in Germany with the likes of pop outfit Boney M in the 1980s and, later, as a taxi driver in North London.
He said: “I’ve had a colourful life and I’ve learned a lot about people and, professionally in particular, how businesses take on the characters of their founders and leaders.
“I believe that businesses are a reflection of the individuals who lead them – the good, the bad and everything in between – so it’s essential for company owners and directors to understand the impact that their experiences have their teams’ culture and performance.
“For me personally, I faced challenges growing up as someone of Caribbean heritage in an all-white community in the 1960s and 70s.
“Those foundational experiences have led me to champion the idea that every individual, irrespective of their background, deserves recognition and respect.”
Joe has also worked in a variety of industries, including police forces and in education, and has seen the same issues across the piece.
“Leaders need help to understand themselves to be able to effect meaningful change within and outside of their organisations,” he added.
Joe was born and raised in the Bristol’s Knowle West, a predominately white area, after his father decided the family needed to be immersed in the established culture of England, rather than being segregated in an immigrant community.
However, the family faced regular abuse and intolerance – a challenging experience not helped by Joe’s dyslexia and a tendency for bullying by his peers.
“It was tough,” he said. “We lived in a prefab but my father insisted that if you wanted to succeed in another person’s country you had to understand their culture.
“So we learned how to conduct and present ourselves, how to form a career in a foreign environment.
“Today I recognise that our ability to rise to a challenge depends on our understanding of our own experiences that have prepared us for our journey.
“Looking back, I’m extremely grateful to my father for what he did and I have enormous respect for the sacrifices both he and my mother made on our behalf and the challenges I and my siblings encountered.”
Joe’s life experiences are crystallised into a business model he has developed over several years as his coaching methodology.
The model is aimed at helping business owners understand exactly what they are looking to achieve, then discover how to drive that vision throughout an organisation and evaluate the change which has been implemented.
It’s a different method to traditional coaching, says Joe, and one designed specifically with growth-hungry SMEs and open-minded CEOs in mind.
“Following the pandemic, many businesses are looking at how they do things, and why they do it, in new ways,” he said.
“These often involve change, which in turn needs clarity and alignment before it is put into practice.
“Yet most SMEs won’t want to invest in a coaching programme unless they can see and measure the return on their investment.
“So I’ve put 25 years of coaching experience into a model which will help businesses on any stage of their journey, ideally those who are established and looking to move to a new level.
“My programme will help companies create clear milestones for change, to check in and evaluate impact, so they can be sure they’re money’s being well spent.”
Joe is offering a free 30-minute consultation to Bristol Business News readers who complete a two-minute questionnaire, which can be found here https://constant-coach.scoreapp.com/
