MKE About Me – Allan Smith

Right, edited highlights of Allan Smith to date.

I was born in Somerset in the Southwest of England, the older of two brothers. Had an idyllic childhood growing up in a village, knowing everyone. Well, Dad having seven siblings and Mum being one of eleven helped. Certainly, had no shortage of cousins while we were growing up. Interestingly, apart from one cousin (Angela) everybody else still lives within twelve miles of my village.

I went away to school so never really felt the connection to the place that my brother, Graham, still has. Going to my new school was the first major shock I can remember. I had always been no1 or no2 in my primary school, swoping places with Philip Greenway. At the end of the first term at Huish’s I was no 16 in the class. Number 16! I can still recall how mortified I was.

Anyhow, I went to University at Nottingham and left with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I worked in the Nuclear Industry for several years. My best three years was being responsible for the largest (then) uranium enrichment factory in Europe. Great teams of people, tricky problems to solve, I loved it. During this period, I gained an MBA from Lancaster University.

Like most people, I was promoted (beginning to realise now, that wasn’t my idea but there you go) and promoted again so we got to live in North Wales, Cumbria, North Wales, Cumbria and then Oxfordshire. That’s where I live now.

I ended my corporate career being responsible for commercial education at Sellafield (you may know it as Windscale) and then left to join an NLP training organisation. Part of my role at Sellafield was to open and close one of our graduate programmes where our guys undertook two weeks of NLP. At a lovely hotel in the Lakes, I remember. Boy did those guys change! So, I spent more and more time with the trainers and decided that was the way to go.

After training NLP, I was asked to join a sales training company, so I did (again, not really my idea). After that, I formed my own company and we did sales training and teambuilding in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy, Bratislava, Switzerland, Singapore and mostly San Francisco.

My partner then wanted to go into developing houses so I did that for a while (you might notice a theme emerging here) until we split up.

For the past several years, I’ve focused on coaching individuals in companies to support them in improving their performance. I use a variety of approaches, still NLP, 3Principles, humour, all the stuff I’ve picked up the way.

I have two grown up sons (Elliott and Cameron) who currently live with their Mum, about 5 miles away so I see them often. I’ve been married around 30 years but to three different women-long story for another time. Currently single.

MKE is making a load of sense to me, bringing together everything I’ve studied in the past but in a much more tangible way. Really looking forward to incorporating this stuff into my coaching.