Maxime Fern & Michael Johnstone, Executive Directors of Vantage Point Consulting
Maxime Fern and Michael Johnstone are life and working partners, based in Canberra, Australia, where they started their consulting practice (Vantage Point Consulting Pty Ltd.) in 1988. For the past forty years, they have worked together around the globe as leadership consultants, facilitators, and coaches with clients in the public and private sectors, not for profits, and professional service firms. They are known for their different but complementary approaches which have assisted many hundreds of executives expand their skills and mindsets to lead change and adaptation. They were visiting faculty at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University for fifteen years, are on the Faculty Advisory Board of the global Adaptive Leadership Network (Washington, D.C.),are Adjunct Associate Professors at the University of New South Wales, and are members of the Inaugural Faculty for the Australian Adaptive Leadership Institute. Both authors are Members of the Australian Psychological Society, Chartered Management Consultants and Members of the Australian Institute of Management Consultants.
They have three children and eight grandchildren, and they live in both Sydney and at their home in Lazio, Italy, north of Rome.
Prior to starting Vantage Point, Maxime worked as a development officer for the Australian Public Service, a social heath visitor in a low-income neighborhood, and as a counseling psychologist for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. She is a graduate of the Australian National University (Psychology and Politics) and holds a Master of Educational Counselling from the University of Canberra. In her spare time, Maxime can be found in her gardens and practicing her Italian on Duolingo.
Michael has training and prior experience in psychology, youth work, family therapy, local government, tertiary teaching and research and community development and urban planning. He has previously held a variety of professional roles; has been an executive level manager; a freelance researcher and therapist in private practice. He has a BA from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, an M. Soc. Sci. (cum laude) from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and a PhD from the Australian National University. Dr. Johnstone is a member of the Australian Psychological Society and is a Chartered Management Consultant (MIMC, CMC). He has lived and worked in several countries including New Zealand (where he was born), Israel, Malaysia and England and now calls Australia and Italy home.
Event Details
The world's challenges are growing more rapidly than most of us can comprehend, let alone know how to respond. Many of us are experiencing increased complexity and interconnection of issues and seeing deepening division between people and communities. By its nature, our work as leadership and change practitioners has become more demanding and at times confusing.
What is our work in this environment?
What is our own inner work, so we can hold steady and work at our most potent and productive edge?
How do we know our limitations and how they constrain our capacity to be useful to others?
How can each of us make a more vital contribution? Is there value in us as a group of alumni colleagues committing to some kind of collective work?
This 2 1/2-day workshop will orient around these questions and will do so in an experiential manner, drawing on the Adaptive Leadership framework to work at the learning edge of the knowledge, skills and interactions of the participant group. The goal is to help each of us reflect on and deepen our practice as a consultant, facilitator, coach or change agent, through exploration, discovery and reflection while fostering a sense of community. We're in this together. There will be regular 'pause and practice' opportunities to ensure practical takeaways.
