Nik Kinley is a business psychologist and successful author with over 30 years’ experience specialising in assessing leaders, changing people’s behaviour and evolving organisational cultures. In an engaging discussion with Rob Feltham, Nik talks about his latest book, co-authored with Shlomo Ben-Hur, entitled Re-writing your Leadership Code: How your childhood made you the leader you are, and what you can do about it.  Nik shows how our past experiences create instincts and tendencies that we are often unaware of, but that tend to come out when we’re under pressure and can fundamentally affect how we operate as leaders, both in a good way and in a bad way. Leaders who understand their instinctive responses to pressurised situations have the opportunity to manage those situations better. In the discussion Nik also touches on the relevance of this type of analysis in the leadership assessment context. He also talks about the interaction of personality and power, and describes how positions of power amplify what people ‘bring with them’.  

Nik’s varied career background includes commercial roles, senior corporate HR positions (with BP and with Barclays) and consulting roles - with YSC and with Accenture - as well as over a decade working in prisons as a forensic psychotherapist. He has thus worked with royalty, CEOs, murderers, politicians and children. During his time as a consultant, he has assessed over 1,000 senior executives from across the world. And as a coach, he has worked with Boards, CEOs and executive teams across industries and regions. He has written a series of books on leadership, change and talent management, published award-winning papers in academic journals, and is a regular lecturer at some of the world’s most prestigious business schools.  

Rob Feltham is Podcast Editor of The ABP.