Phillip Bonser

Hi, I’m Phillip Bonser

I work with the public sector and not-for-profits as a change consultant, facilitator and coach helping them to tackle their most significant and complex opportunities and challenges.

I have a particular interest in the way people work together in complex environments and the central role of conversation (mutually responsive engagement) in creating new possibilities and practices. I am most interested in helping leaders, groups and organizations “get things done” but am increasingly aware that much current managerial thinking constrains as much as it enables. I firmly believe that being able to engage mutually and responsively without ignoring or minimizing the power dynamics and differences that inevitably arise is central to generating effective joint action in response to complex challenges.

More About Me

I grew up in Sydney, Australia and, somewhat by accident, started my working life as a secondary school teacher. I discovered, after a while, that I liked what I was doing and began my lifelong fascination with how we learn and come to know things. I was fortunate, in the course of my career, to experience a diverse range of roles: teaching; managing teachers, consulting, managing consultants, managing equity programs and organisational change interventions, leading a school and then a school district; creating and implementing new policy and reform. Needless to say I learned a great deal!

After a nearly twenty-five year, though, I decided it was time to take a new direction and, like many others, began coaching, facilitating and consulting, mostly to public sector and not-for-profit clients.

I am especially interested in how we construct, craft or compose our working lives through the everyday conversations and stories we take so much for granted. It seems to me that as I approach these conversations and stories from this different angle I am increasingly able to “let go” of my need to manage and control and more able to engage with the ongoing creation of my life, my work and the future. By working in this way I hope to help individuals and organisations transform their performance and results in the pursuit of significant goals, intentions and visions.

These days I live in a beautiful little village called Coramba that is not far from Coffs Harbour with my partner and three younger children and travel wherever my work takes me.

To learn more about me or to link up: