Susan MacDougall

My clients are people who have the desire and the capacity to sit with whatever challenges they are facing for a little while, and are comfortable with getting to know their discomfort. 

They are often people in a transition of some kind, including but not limited to changing jobs, navigating health challenges, or meeting a new life stage.

My work is in helping clients tell their stories. This can happen at an individual level, through a coaching engagement, or in group contexts, such as an action learning group, where I create opportunities for clients to tell their stories to one another. At an organisational level, it can look like an institutional ethnography, where I do in-depth observation of what is happening and describe it in a written report. It can also look like a learning history, where I interview people to construct a detailed account of past events, like a client engagement. All of these approaches are ways of telling stories and helping clients see themselves in new ways or more clearly.

I enjoy getting to know every one of my clients and find I learn something new in each engagement. I value the opportunity to form relationships with many different kinds of people, across age groups, cultural backgrounds, and organisational roles.

My toolkit includes rigorous intellectual engagement, pedagogical instruction, curiosity, somatic modes of attention, and deep, non-judgemental listening. I look out for opportunities to laugh and to have fun and consider this part of the work of leadership development. Perhaps most importantly, I try to bring patience to my work. Our busy twenty-first century lives do not leave us a lot of time and it can be hard to be patient, so I hold that on behalf of my clients.

I am a social anthropologist, an educator, and an experienced consultant. It’s this combination of unique skills that I draw on when working with clients. Simply put, this looks like seeing each individual, team, and organisation both as someone or something unique and as part of a larger social web that they mostly do not control. I both deeply listen and hold pedagogical rigour which when combined supports people to notice best where to focus their change and growth efforts. 

I am also someone who has been expatriated for much of my life and has a sustained interest in cultural difference. I am American and live now in the UK. I am also a naturalised citizen of Lebanon and have more than a decade of experience working, living, and studying in the Arabic-speaking Middle East. I deeply appreciate the wide range of ways diversity appears in our lives and support clients in navigating its pleasures and pitfalls.

I have had a long career in higher education. I have a bachelor’s degree in Social Policy from Northwestern University, an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona, and an MSc and DPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. I have taught or carried out research at New York University, the University of New Hampshire, University of Cambridge, and University of Oxford. My publications address themes like friendship, magic, and how people work on themselves.

I have been a coach, facilitator, and consultant since 2015. I am a qualified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory, a certified practitioner of the Leadership Circle Profile, and a qualified Growth Edge Coach.

When I am not working you can find me taking long walks in nature.