Tag Archives: Mentoring

The first year in a new leadership role

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I remember the week I became CEO for the first time. It all happened very quickly and unexpectedly. I was an “expert” and suddenly had to lead an organisation. I was as unprepared as I could have been. Actually, it was the best time of my life, although perhaps the organisation felt differently about it at the time.

The knowledge, skills and behaviours that help you to get the job don’t necessarily help you do it. If you’ve built your career on being the person who knows the answer, solves the problem and steps in when things get difficult, it can be surprisingly hard to realise that the new job requires a different approach. I see this in my own experience of CEO and Chairman roles, and in clients going through the same thing now.

I usually see three shifts: leading yourself, leading your team, and leading the organisation.

They’re not mutually exclusive. How you handle yourself shapes how your team experiences you. How your team performs shapes what you’re able to do.

I’ve often found limited value in leadership development delivered as a stack of modules, such as communication, strategy and marketing. The real work and learning happens around live and important issues that you are actually dealing with.

With this in mind, I’m offering a year-long programme for leaders stepping into a bigger role. All sessions are 1:1. It’s paid, not pro bono. It has two parts.

The first is eight structured sessions that work through the transition itself:

  1. Purpose and priorities
  2. The transition
  3. Leading yourself
  4. Leading your team
  5. Trust and influence
  6. Letting go
  7. Leading the organisation
  8. The leader I want to become

The second is six individual coaching sessions with no set agenda. Your CFO resigns. Your board pushes back on a call you thought was obvious. A high performer tells you they’re leaving. That’s what these sessions are for. You bring whatever’s live, and we work on it together, with experimentation and reflection between sessions where it helps.

If you’re stepping into a bigger role and think this might be useful, DM me to learn more.

Coaching and Mentoring

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Today was my last day as Chairman of Infinitas Learning — and the end of an important chapter for me in educational publishing, following my earlier years as CEO of Sanoma Learning.

Those who know me well know how passionate I am about learning, and about the role organisations like Infinitas and Sanoma play in supporting learner outcomes and helping teachers in their vitally important work.

Following its acquisition by NPM Capital as lead investor, we have doubled the size of the business, including expanding into Portugal and Poland. Working on that growth — alongside the company’s digital and, more recently, its AI transformations — has been especially rewarding. There are enormous opportunities ahead to better support both teachers and students.

Most of all, I’ve valued the people. My colleagues at Infinitas and NPM Capital have been outstanding, and I’m genuinely grateful to have been part of the journey. I wish them every success for the future.

Over the past 15 years leading and chairing organisations in edtech and learning, I’ve accumulated hard-won experience in leadership, transformation, and what it takes to grow — both as an organisation and as a person. And I’m still very much learning. What continues to fascinate me is how much of leadership ultimately comes down to learning.

In the next phase, I want to put that experience to work more directly through coaching and mentoring, alongside my ongoing board commitments in edtech, including as Chairman of Ovivio.

Where I’d most like to help:
> Executive transition coaching — supporting leaders stepping into C-suite or senior roles for the first time.
> Strategic leadership — working through the real complexity of leading organisations through change.
> Personal effectiveness — helping leaders perform at their best.

For mentoring, my focus will naturally remain close to education and edtech (while avoiding conflicts with Infinitas or Ovivio). For coaching, the methodology is different, and I am keen to work more broadly across sectors — including healthtech and business services.

If any of this resonates, or if you simply want to catch up, feel free to reach out here or directly at: johnmartin@contentconnected.com

Looking forward to what comes next.

#learning #education #edtech #coaching #mentoring