Many resources. links and the "Edgy Ideas" podcast are available on Simon's ANC website 

A number of Simon's publications available on Google Scholar

Simon's publications on Academia UK

The Eco-Leadership Institute is a think-tank, a developmental hub, and a change agent.

In this presentation "A Meta-Theory of Coaching" highlights and extracts from from his book "Coaching and Mentoring. A Critical Text" are summarized.

This chapter reflects on a decade of working to implement the concept of Eco-Leadership within organizations. Eco-leadership is a radical form of distributing leadership and leading organizations in a socially ethical way, shifting the idea of an organization from efficient machine to conceptualize them as ‘eco-systems within wider ecosystems’). Eco-Leadership is one of four dominant discourses of leadership theorized in Western, S. (2013). Leadership: A critical text 2nd ed Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

This chapter describes how progressive organisations are moving on from the dominant leadership discourses of the 20th century i.e. The Controller leadership discourse, drawing on the machine metaphor of organising i.e. controlling resources/people, focusing on efficiency and scientific rationalism; the Therapist Leadership discourse, drawing on the human relations movement and therapy culture (a happy worker is a more productive worker) and the Messiah Leadership discourse that emerged in the 1980s, informed by a surge in culture control via Transformational leadership who presents workers with visions and values that harness their souls. Eco-Leadership emerges to offer new leadership for an increasingly networked society that demands lateral relations rather than vertical structures with top down leaders and centralised control. Eco-leaders recognise their organisations are fluid and inter-dependent networks that require leadership at the edges as well as the centre. They also recognise that organisations are part of wider eco-systems made up of nature, technology and the social, and that they must pay attention to these wider forces to be successful.

This paper explores the social meaning of Greta Thunberg. Time magazine made her Person of the Year 2019, claiming she has become a social phenomenon a ‘global sensation’. This paper utilises psycho-social theory drawing on Freudian, Kleinian and Lacanian influences, and new social movement theory to explore the social meaning of ‘Greta’. It asks what ‘Greta’ evokes in our ‘social imaginary’ . What conscious and unconscious identifications are projected onto ‘Greta’ that have made her the unlikely famous person she is? These questions are not about exploring her individual psychological, leadership or character traits, but focus on Greta (now 17) as a social object with a vast social network following her, including over 4.2 million twitter followers, a new documentary film about her, and mainstream media coverage across the globe. Part one of this paper outlines the context and libidinal economies that Greta operates within, and the theoretical influences the paper draws upon. Part two of the paper outlines five core messages that Greta transmits, and the meanings that emerge from observing social reactions to her. The paper ends with a conclusion summarising the social meanings of Greta.

International Happiness Day is back, reflecting how the happiness imperative has reached epidemic proportions! Positive psychologists, life-coaches and self-help gurus, and now politicians and the United Nations are demanding that we strive for happiness. Trite slogans are offered, ‘Discover your true self’ ‘Love yourself more’ ‘Do what makes you happy’ ‘Happiness is contagious’ ‘Follow your dreams and achieve all you desire’. Striving for happiness may seem like a no-brainer, as of course we all want to be happy ……don’t we? This essay undoes the logic of this position claiming that the happiness imperative, creates plenty of unhappiness!

This paper outlines a new theoretical and methodology for consulting to organizations. It integrates the paternal containment and the paternal metaphor of Lacan, with the classic Tavistock consultation methodology of working with the Kleinian frames of Maternal containment. The aim is to overcome some of the challenges that arise from utilizing clinical psychoanalytic theory and methods, in organizational settings. Having described how change agents (consultants, coaches, leaders) can utilize this theory and method to work in organizations, the paper finishes with a reflection on how this framework can help model leadership dynamics in the wider social field. This is in particular relation to challenging both soft and hard authoritarian leadership approaches in the fast changing globalized-networked

An intervention designed as a radically inclusive approach to strategic planning in an organisation in the UK Education Sector. The intervention aimed to maximise participation in the strategic process and in doing so build a culture that was emancipatory: where employees had increasing agency to influence change. The whole organisation was engaged in this strategic process and as a by-product of this work, we created new 'thinking spaces' that would become internalised within the organisation 

Four discourses is a concept developed by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. He argued that there were four fundamental types of discourse. He defined four discourses, which he called Master, University, Hysteric and Analyst, and suggested that these relate dynamically to one another.

Object relations theory in psychoanalytic psychology is the process of developing a psyche in relation to others in the childhood environment. It designates theories or aspects of theories that are concerned with the exploration of relationships between real and external people as well as internal images and the relations found in them. It maintains that the infant's relationship with the mother primarily determines the formation of its personality in adult life.

The object relations theory of Melanie Klein pivoted around the importance of love and hate, concern for and destruction of others, from infancy onwards. Klein stressed the importance of inborn aggression as a reflection of the death drive and talked about the battle of love and hatred throughout the life span.

In social science, disenchantment (German: Entzauberung) is the cultural rationalization and devaluation of religion apparent in modern society. The term was borrowed from Friedrich Schiller by Max Weber to describe the character of a modernized, bureaucratic, secularized Western society.

Describes the ways in which management and leadership are split apart, with one aspect idealized and the other devalued, as a social defense against confronting the adaptive demands of contemporary operating environments. Two variants of this social defense are examined: managerialism, which looks to the magic of technique; and heroism, which focuses on the heroic leader. Responding effectively to current conditions requires linking leadership, the visionary and mission setting aspects of executive action, with management, the tools for achieving organizational purposes.

This essay challenges the (Weberian) thesis that the modern world is a ‘disenchanted’ one. I contend that enchantment has outlasted the Enlightenment; that it endures despite the demise of the ontology that allowed it paradigmatic expression in the sixteenth century writings of Paracelsus. I present two post‐medieval pictures of an enchanted world: the first appears, of all places, in Kant's Critique of Judgment, where a peculiar magic is required of nature if humans are to gain access to the ‘supersensible’ realm of freedom and rational ideas; the second focuses upon the strange beauty of late modernity's admixtures of animal and human, organism and machine, the given and made. Here I use a little Kafka and lot of Deleuze to explore these hybrids as ‘technoenchantments’ operative in a world that fascinates without being expressive of a design or a will. I spotlight contemporary sites of enchantment in order to intensify the experience of them, and thus perhaps to erode the conviction that an undesigned universe calls above all for a cold‐eyed instrumentalism.

Enchanting work is a polysemic term that can account for multiple interpretations. It can be defined as a feeling of being connected in an affirmative way to existence. In organizational terms, enchanted workplaces are places of wonder that allow people to be active agents, who can impact on their environment, find meaning in their work, and flourish. In this context, enchantment has been operationalized in organizational and managerial literature in a variety of ways, including being resourceful, happy, resilient, passionate, motivated, or healthy at work, among others. The main purpose of this special issue was to highlight those elements that may promote enchanting work environments, and the processes through which (re-)enchantment may be achieved. Also, we were interested in understanding re-enchantment as an internal process.

Re-enchantment taps well into the current zeitgeist: The rising focus on emotions and post-material values also in organizational context. Enchantment is deeply tied to socially generated emotions. Our aim is to develop the concept of copassion, referring to the process of responding to the positive emotion of a fellow human being. Concepts are crucial as they shape our understanding of the world. Our core claim is relating to our colleagues’ positive emotions not only enables and maintains but also fosters enchantment at work. In this article, by laying the ground by discussing enchantment and the theoretical framework of intersubjectivity, we will link copassion to the physiological and evolutionary basis of humans, as well as explore its conceptual neighbors. Finally, we will discuss intersubjectivity, and particularly mutual recognition, as well as the inseparability of compassion and copassion in human experience at work, and its implications to the study of enchantment.

We talked quite a lot about the decision-making of Quakers. Find a paper on Quaker Decision Making which explains and reflects the process.

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (April 13, 1901 to September 9, 1981) was a major figure in Parisian intellectual life for much of the twentieth century. Sometimes referred to as “the French Freud,” he is an important figure in the history of psychoanalysis. His teachings and writings explore the significance of Freud’s discovery of the unconscious both within the theory and practice of analysis itself as well as in connection with a wide range of other disciplines. Particularly for those interested in the philosophical dimensions of Freudian thought, Lacan’s oeuvre is invaluable. Over the course of the past fifty-plus years, Lacanian ideas have become central to the various receptions of things psychoanalytic in Continental philosophical circles especially.

Michael Puett on decsion-making and whether we should be searching for our "essence" to shape our careers (youtube)