Andrew McNeill spent over 20 years in senior leadership, most recently as a Director in the UK Civil Service leading and assuring major projects and programmes. Andrew has come to the belief that leadership techniques must change to match today’s world of mindfulness, compassion and empathy.
He is also an accredited mindfulness teacher and brought these two worlds together in his book Organisational Mindfulness: a How-To Guide in 2019 which has sold in four continents. By integrating his experience in leadership and his teachings in mindfulness, Andrew has developed a method to help leaders and their teams embed mindfulness techniques in their organisation.
Currently, Andrew McNeill offers leadership training to a wide range of small and large organisations, helping individuals and teams improve their performance and their wellbeing.
Andrew McNeill has enjoyed a long and varied career in leadership, during which he has held a number of high-pressure and prestigious roles including being the Workplace and Policy Lead and Projects Advisor for the Mindfulness Initiative, a charity which emerged from the work of the UK Parliament’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness, is Co-Director of BAMBA, the UK’s mindfulness accreditation body, helped establish the Building Safety programme after the Grenfell Fire tragedy, was Change Director for the Ministry of Justice and was Lead for the UK Government for the Olympic and Paralympic Torches in 2012.
Andrew McNeill is the co-founder of LXLeaders (www.lxleaders.com) which offers a range of bespoke personal and professional development services, in addition to the LX Leaders Core Programme. The latter introduces a practical application of mindfulness and other proven techniques to enhance core leadership capabilities by increasing presence, clarity of thought, compassion, and emotional intelligence. Their pragmatic approach has had a proven impact both at a human and organisational level.
Andrew’s most important message is that leadership needs to change and adapt. With multiple pressures teams face, from the rise of living cost to emerging from the COVID-19 Pandemic, he sees that organisations will only thrive if their leaders can guide with inclusion, compassion and awareness.
Andrew specialises in working with teams to help them connect, hear each other and develop their empathy. His techniques have helped individuals and teams navigate very real challenges and communicate with honesty and kindness.
As part of our ‘Chat with…’ series at Great British Speakers, our director Jane Farnham, sat down with Andrew to discuss his work, from mindfulness to leadership, stress, wellbeing and more… watch the full interview HERE.
If you’d like to book Andrew McNeill to speak about his personal experience with burnout, and to share some of his techniques to enhance performance and wellbeing in the workplace, please get in touch at +44 1753 439 289 or email Great British Speakers now.
Practice Workplace Mindfulness
Andrew talks about the practical application of mindfulness for people in today’s workplace. He explains how this down-to-earth toolkit of techniques can help you manage stress, improve your communication skills and support your decision making.
Andrew was never interested in mindfulness until he needed something that would help him cope with the effects of working in an extremely high pressure environment. He approached it with deep scepticism but found these well established evidence based methods worked in the modern workplace. It vastly improved his wellbeing and delivered a change in his performance which is why he studied to become a mindfulness teacher. Andrew now introduces teams and individuals to these life changing, team transforming skills, in practical, down-to-earth ways.
From this talk you will takeaway:
– Techniques to help you perform in high stress moments
– Ideas to help you communicate more effectively
– Ways to give you more choice in your decision making
Ethical Leadership
Andrew believes in the need for leadership to be more human, compassionate and uninhibited. In this inspiring talk, you will discover what ethical leadership is, why it is needed particularly in these times when change is the only constant, and why attitudes like non-judgment and kindness are so essential in modern day leadership.
Psychological Safety – Why It Matters To You and Your Team
Organisations are more likely to innovate quickly, unlock the benefits of diversity and adapt well to change when their employees feel comfortable asking for help, sharing suggestions informally and not being afraid to challenge the status-quo. During this engaging talk, Andrew uses evidence based examples which will give your leaders plenty of reasons to want adopt this transformative team mindset. He will also share powerful examples of how psychological safety can avert risks to your business and enable opportunities to be grabbed. Andrew will discuss the impact it has on team culture, how it can enable teams to thrive under pressure and will give practical tips on how to achieve psychological safety.
Organisational Mindfulness
When he was a Civil Service Director, Andrew McNeill was frustrated by a lack of guidance for those trying to embed mindfulness at a leadership level. So, drawing on his own experience and understanding of mindfulness, he wrote his own successful guidebook. In this talk, Andrew explores how mindfulness can be introduced to processes, products and people.
How to Lead Under Pressure
In his many years of service, Andrew McNeill has faced a number of high-intensity leadership situations, from heading up the UK Government’s assurance of the Olympic/Paralympic torches for London 2012, to working on building safety immediately after the Grenfell Fire. In this talk, Andrew talks about his own experience of pressure when leading, what has worked and what hasn’t. Andrew is honest about his successes and his failings, and he shares numerous suggestions that could make a significant improvement to the way you lead and the way you can thrive under pressure.
What’s Kindness Got to do With It?
In this talk, Andrew compares some traditional standards of leadership with the evidence base of what is needed in today’s organisations. He refers to studies about the value of kindness in the workplace and how it can help your company succeed.
Finding Your Phoenix – Preventing and Recovering From Burnout
Eleven years ago Andrew McNeill realised he was burnt out. He had to step back from work to find techniques that enabled him to move from being overwhelmed, to being able to thrive in high pressure environments. In this talk, Andrew shares his experience of being introduced to mindfulness and other strategies, why he was very sceptical in the beginning and how they have helped transform his life, his leadership and his career.
– Andrew believes that leadership needs to become more human
– Andrew is a man full of experience
– Andrew’s keynotes are grounded in research and evidence
“Andrew McNeill had been highly recommended to me at Liberty HR Recruitment as a potential guest-speaker for our monthly HR Leaders’ Forums. After chatting to Andrew and hearing what he had to say, it became apparent that our HR Leaders network really needed to hear from him! He spoke on the subject of ‘Compassion in Leadership’ and he really didn’t disappoint. Andrew delivered his session with an easy style and it was full of engaging subject material. Kindness and compassion are always relevant, perhaps never more so than in our current situation whilst emerging from the Covid pandemic. Andrew ably demonstrated that there is nothing ‘soft’ about kindness.
Our appreciative audience made comments such as;
Just wanted to say thank you for inviting me to the forum today and for all the hard work that you and your team put into making the forum run so smoothly. Andrew was so engaging and the topic is very close to my heart so I thoroughly enjoyed the session.
Loved hearing from the inspirational Andrew McNeill and exploring the power of compassion in leadership. I am so looking forward to reading his book!
Andrew certainly provided us with a timely reminder that being alive to the suffering of others, should be part of workplace culture. This is especially important as we emerge from our ‘Covid Bunkers’ as Andrew calls them, and emerge blinking into the Sun of our new normal. I would heartily recommend Andrew as a speaker and hope, one day, that he will return to speak for our network once again!“
Liberty HR
“Andrew McNeill gave a powerful and inspiring keynote address alongside a panel of business leaders at the launch of the MWC at HSBC’s Canary Wharf headquarters in February 2020. This launched the creation of a paid member community. Andrew’s keynote left the audience wanting to hear and learn more with many of them signing up to join the Community.
Since this launch, Andrew has been at the helm of hosting and facilitating our speaker events which have driven the success of the MWC to date. As well as speaking himself, Andrew has chaired the majority of our panel sessions with insight across all content areas, managing the flow of the conversations and Q&A elements with charisma, in-depth knowledge, compassion and diplomacy.
The Mindful Workplace Community