George Akiki
I spent two decades becoming very good at work that did not ask me to be entirely present. I was effective. I was also somewhere else.
What changed it was not a crisis. It was quieter than that. A growing suspicion that the competence I had built was, among other things, a very reasonable place to hide.
So I know the pull and the push from the inside. That is most of what qualifies me. The rest is below.
Unique Path
The name is the whole premise. No two people are built the same way, which means no method can be handed over and expected to fit. What works for one person is precisely what fails the next.
So I don’t bring a system. I bring attention, and enough patience for a person to hear themselves over the noise.
Most of what gets sold at this point in someone’s life is addition: another qualification, another framework, another year of preparing. It rarely helps, because the problem is almost never missing capability. It is that the quieter voice has been drowned out by the one whose job is keeping you safe.
The work is learning to tell them apart. After that, people generally know what to do.
I teach this for a living
For the last six years I have been faculty with the Co-Active Training Institute, teaching the full certification curriculum across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the US.
I also supervise coaches working towards their certification, on four continents.
Which means I have watched several hundred capable people learn to do this, up close, at the point where they are still clumsy at it.
Two things became clear. The first is how much of the craft is restraint rather than technique. The second is that the moment someone stops performing the role and starts simply paying attention, the work changes completely.
The longer I teach method, the less I trust it. That is an awkward position for a teacher and I think it is the right one.
Different rules in every room
And executives, across the Gulf, Europe, the US and Asia. Clients tend to say I feel like a local wherever they are, which mostly means knowing the language and where the red lines sit. Different rules in every room, the same conversation once the door closes.
Sometimes the language is literal. Arabic is my first language, I work in English, and I am comfortable in Spanish-speaking rooms. More often it is the other kind: knowing what can be said directly, what needs a longer road, and what never needs saying at all. The red lines are not an obstacle to the work. They are part of the context a person is actually living in, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
What does not change is the thing underneath. I have worked with people of more than twenty-five nationalities across three continents, in rooms from Riyadh and Jeddah to Barcelona and New York, and I have not yet found one where it was untrue: beneath the surface people are joined in the same experience, with infinite variations.
What clients say
“I consistently left our sessions with specific ideas and experiments I could implement to move towards new ways of showing up.”
Fatima M. — Global Communications & Marketing Leader
“George helped me navigate organisational challenges and empowered me to become a more effective and authentic leader.”
Janice P. — MEA COO, IPG at HP
The particulars
Twenty-three years in leadership development and coaching.
Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation since 2020. Master Certified Coach in process.
Faculty with the Co-Active Training Institute since 2020, teaching the full certification curriculum. Supervisor to coaches working towards certification.
Certified Facilitator with the Center for Creative Leadership. Contracted through CCL, the Co-Active Training Institute, Worthrope Wright Associates and Leadership Circle.
Organisations I have worked with, directly and through partners: Mars, HP, Citibank, Aramco, Mubadala and G42, among others.
Nine years as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt coach at 3M, coaching leaders from the shop floor to the executive team across EMEA.
MSc Strategic Project Management, Heriot-Watt University.
I am certified in a number of assessment instruments: the Leadership Circle Profile, Insights Discovery, FIRO-B, the Influence Style Indicator, the Change Style Indicator, MeetYourself and BG5, among others.
I use them to sharpen my own listening rather than as something you submit to. Which one appears, if any, depends entirely on the person sitting opposite me. Often none of them does.
If any of this sounds like the conversation you have been having with yourself, the next step is small.
Thirty minutes. Nothing to prepare.