David Robertson

David is a Learning and Development Consultant with nearly 20 years’ experience of designing and delivering leadership and team development programmes, facilitating change processes and coaching teams and individuals in the corporate, third and public sectors. He is passionate about unlocking human potential and helping people to work together to achieve great things.

He graduated with an MA from Edinburgh University and began his professional career working in marketing agencies. Having had responsibility for major campaigns for brands including Tennents Lager and Laphroaig in the UK, he moved to Hong Kong to work with the US advertising group FCB. There he was the General Manager of a business unit, running campaigns for major brands including the Hong Kong Tourist Board. The role was focused on business across the far east and gave him the opportunity to work in Japan, Taiwan and other markets. He then moved to Jakarta to run Ogilvy One in Indonesia – part of the worldwide Ogilvy and Mather advertising group. Here he ran accounts for Nestle, American Express and IBM.

Having had hands on experience of running business units with up to 50 staff for several years, he had a powerful development experience in 2003 when he took part in a ground-breaking learning and development programme focused on developing a coaching management style. This experience inspired him to change career path and in 2004 he returned to the UK and started work as a Learning and Development consultant. He became a director of the consultancy People=Positive, which gave him the opportunity to get involved in the design and facilitation of team development programmes for major energy sector clients including Shell and BP. Much of this work was focused on continuous improvement and safety leadership.

Building on his experience in the energy sector, he began to design and deliver major culture and performance development programmes for energy companies involved in the decommissioning of some of the older North Sea oil platforms. The challenge at the heart of this was helping the workforce to embrace change as they transitioned from production in to decommissioning in a mature sector.  The work involved working with the full spectrum of staff from leadership team coaching through to working offshore with platform crews.