Directing
Non-Corporate
I was still acting professionally when I made the move into directing. So having written the pilot of an interactive, online soap - Yourso@p - I thought I'd stretch myself by both directing and acting in it. We shot the 10-minute episode all in one day at a single location. Fortunately, I was blessed with an incredible cast and crew.
The part I'd given myself consisted of a two page monologue, culminating in a fatal cardiac arrest. Since then I've learned my lesson and only ever appear in front of the lens if the frame needs filling.
Corporate
Working in corporate has taught me three lessons that I think are key to everything I do: 1) Expect problems, starting with the material itself. 2) Move fast but make it count. 3) Keep everyone involved as happy as you possibly can.
I've directed more than 100 shorts for the corporate sector, including an online series of films used as part of TfL's Blended Learning Programme which won Gold at the UK's E-Learning Awards in 2015.
You can see a small selection of my work here:
The Director as Coach
My professional journey has been shaped in many ways by the Directors I worked for as an actor - those I loved working for, and those I didn't - and what factors made the difference.
Understanding the challenges directors face - and how they respond to those challenges - informed my understanding of what good leadership looked and felt like, long before I began the process of taking on those challenges, and making all the classic mistakes myself.
Directors live in a VUCA world - Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous - so directing continues to be a rich environment for me to explore my own leadership style. And (inevitably) identify my own development areas.