My Story

On Saturday, 3 January 2015 - my birthday - I made a decision that would change my career.

I was working as a Sales Engineer at an industrial pump company. On paper, it was a good job. In reality, I was miserable.

What I experienced
In team meetings, my manager would publicly humiliate colleagues for their mistakes. I watched a colleague share that he'd lost a major sale due to an error. Instead of exploring what happened and how to prevent it, our manager tore him apart in front of everyone.

The message was clear: don't admit mistakes. Hide them.

So people did. Information stopped flowing. Colleagues protected themselves instead of helping each other. The culture became one of fear, not growth.

I also experienced casual racism. During the same meeting, my manager made offensive jokes about Muslims. When she walked in, he stopped. He knew it was wrong. He just didn't care enough to change.

As someone with a foreign background myself, I felt unsafe. Unseen. Unwelcome.

When I joined, I'd been promised training from an experienced colleague. That's not what happened. My colleague had no interest in developing me. During client visits, he dominated every conversation. There was no space for me to learn.

Later, I discovered he was falsifying his expense reports. When I reported this to my manager, nothing happened to him.

My contract wasn't renewed. His was.

The question I couldn't shake
That birthday, sitting with my disappointment, I asked myself: Why do organisations work this way? Why do managers behave like this? And what would it take to create workplaces where people actually thrive?

I didn't have answers. But I knew I needed to find them.

So I enrolled in a Master's programme in Human Resource Studies. Not for career advancement, but for understanding. I had found my calling.

What I researched
My thesis focused on three concepts that directly addressed what I'd experienced:

Servant leadership: The opposite of the self-serving, fear-based management I'd witnessed. Leaders who put their team's development first.

Mastery climate: Environments where growth and effort are celebrated, not just results. Where mistakes are learning opportunities, not ammunition.

Knowledge hiding: Why employees withhold information from each other. What I'd seen when self-protection replaced collaboration.

The research confirmed what I'd felt: leadership shapes everything. Culture isn't accidental. It's created by leaders, every day, through their choices. Read my Master’s thesis here.

I also experienced good leadership

Not every job was difficult. At ASML, early in my career, I experienced what good leadership feels like.

My manager was an Irishman who was helpful and respectful, I still remember his full name. The atmosphere was collegial. People genuinely helped each other.

When I made a mistake in handling a colleague relationship, he didn't shame me. He simply said: "Don't throw your colleagues under the bus." He pointed out a better way, without making me feel small.

That's what good leadership looks like. And it became my benchmark for everything that followed.

Why manufacturing?

After my Master's, I continued working across different environments. I saw patterns repeat.

But I kept coming back to manufacturing and industrial settings. It's where I started, with my Industrial Engineering diploma. It's where I've spent the most time. And it's where I've seen the biggest gap between potential and reality.

Manufacturing promotes technical experts into leadership roles. Engineers become supervisors. Specialists become managers. But rarely does anyone teach them how to lead people.

The result? Overwhelmed managers. Disengaged teams. High turnover. Tension between office and shop floor.

Sound familiar?

What I do now

Today, I help manufacturing and industrial SMEs develop servant leaders among their technical managers.

Through diagnostics, workshops, and coaching, I help organisations create what I was looking for all those years ago: workplaces where people wake up wanting to go to work, feel safe while they're there, and go home fulfilled at the end of the day.

This isn't idealism. It's practical. And it's good business.

I became a servant leadership consultant not because I read about it in a textbook. I became one because I experienced its absence, studied why it matters, and decided to help others build what I wished I'd had.

My Philosophy

Servant leadership is not about being soft or nice, it's about caring. About putting your team's development and success at the center of how you lead.
When leaders serve their teams, by removing obstacles, developing skills, giving clear direction, and genuinely caring, those teams perform better. They stay longer. They take more ownership.
This approach works especially well in manufacturing environments, where technical credibility matters and leaders can't rely on position power alone.
I combine this philosophy with practical tools: clear frameworks, honest feedback, and accountability. The result is leadership that's both people-centred and results-driven.