OUR TEAM
Who we are
With nearly a hundred years collective professional experience we came together with a shared vision and deep desire to restore human and humane connection in the workplace. We had all witnessed and been party to ‘us and them’ leadership - disenfranchising rather than building healthy workforces. We have also all experienced leadership that invites collaboration, connection and values relationship, and witnessed how this type of leadership improves effectiveness and wellbeing. David and Liz trained experientially in Conversational Leadership over a two year period in the U.S. with David Whyte and Invitas which they found transformational - they felt it imperative to bring this way of working to the U.K., hence the seeds of RESTORATION were sewn.
Between us our experience includes business owner, project management, clinical leadership, strategic and operational management, provision of clinical and therapeutic support, marketing, training, film censorship, actor, parent. Our varied roles have given us the opportunity to blend our skills, passion and artistry to create unique and bespoke programmes of work.
In forming RESTORATION we dived deep into our individual and collective values - the values that we actually embody not just espouse, the ones that have built and shaped our behaviour, the compass points we follow. We walk the walk we talk. We will not ask you to do anything we haven’t already done or aren’t prepared to do ourselves.
If you are interested in finding out more please contact us on
info@restorationgrp.com
DAVID COTSON
Co Founder
david@restorationgrp.com
David is a UK Health and Care Professionals Council (HCPC) registered Consultant Clinical Psychologist with a wealth of clinical, managerial, supervision and leadership experience in mental health, social care and business environments. David worked in the NHS for over 30 years in roles ranging from Clinical Psychologist, Head of Psychology and Lead Clinician. David moved into private practice in 2017 and works as a clinician, supervisor and leadership consultant across a range of public, charitable and private sector organisations.
David is proud to take a truly integrative approach in all of his work, combining various psychological models as appropriate, together with the recognition that best work occurs when we attend to all aspects of self (emotional, physical, intellectual, spiritual). He sees professional and personal development as deeply linked, and considers his ongoing self-work as vital to his professional as well as personal ‘self’.
Authenticity and humility are foundational in the work that David does. He is highly skilled at enabling collaboration and belonging between individuals, teams and organisations, where seemingly divergent views or positions may exist. David creates and holds a space that allows both the impact and value of lived experience to be explored and uses this to enable real and sustained change. By engaging people at multiple levels within an organisation, he facilitates the opportunity for people to 'walk in the shoes of others’ so that a new bigger picture can be co-created, common goals and aspirations worked towards with new energy, and workable solutions to both complex and high-risk situations found.
DR LIZ GREENAWAY
Co Founder
liz@restorationgrp.comLiz is an HCPC registered Chartered Clinical Psychologist. During her 11 years working within NHS and Social Services settings, Liz honed her therapeutic skills supporting people with wide ranging and challenging difficulties; she helped create a new service for carers of people with psychosis, and designed and implemented a workable pathway for parents of children with learning disabilities transitioning from child to adult services. These experiences have enabled Liz to develop a robust, insightful understanding of complex and intractable systems, and the ability to navigate them.
Alongside being a clinical psychologist, Liz worked for a number of years within different industries ranging from acting to research, and as a business owner in property development. She has worked both in the UK and abroad. This wide-ranging background means that Liz is able draw on her many nuanced and lived experiences to meaningfully adapt her leadership consultation expertise with the individuals and organisations she works with.
Using the framework of Conversational Leadership, Liz has the ability to authentically engage and connect with others. With compassion and skill, she holds spaces that allow people to be honest and fully present in conversations without judgement. Liz brings curiosity to her work, which invites others to view themselves and the organisations then work within from a different vantage point. Care and integrity are guiding principles in all that she does.
DR Gina Johnson
Co Founder
gina@restorationgrp.comGina is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist (HCPC registered) with a breadth and depth of consultative, leadership and clinical experience. Whilst Gina has the broad range of experience that comes with being a clinical psychologist, she has developed particular skills and expertise in working with, and consulting to, complex systems where difficulties don’t have a single obvious cause. She balances working with whole systems (from small teams to whole organisations) and with key individuals in those systems. Gina intrinsically understands the importance of individual roles in contributing to the work of the whole system and that often “the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. Gina’s extensive NHS and social services experience extends over 20 years, ranging from various administration roles through to Lead Clinical Psychologist of a service.
Gina’s expertise in systems work extends to work between organisations- eg where a service or company needs to work with other organisations to best further the work of all concerned.
Gina believes systemic consultation is a wonderful opportunity to facilitate change in systems that have become stuck in unhelpful patterns of behaviour and communication. She brings a passion for working with difference and diversity in the workplace, understanding that different cultural and background experiences enrich working teams, bringing important and different perspectives into the work.
Gina’s work experience has ranged from psychological therapy to supervision, from individual staff management to whole department management and from service development leadership to whole service leadership.
PAUL KELLY
Co Founder
paul@restorationgrp.comPaul has over 15 years’ experience in leading strategic change and service development initiatives, working with central and local government as well as frontline community organisations. Paul’s roles include Head of Strategy, Partnerships & Performance in an inner London local authority and Director of Operations at a CIC. He is analytical using data and user insight to generate creative discussion, to persuade and then embed sustainable change.
Listening, reflecting and communicating with clarity characterises his approach to leadership. Paul ensures a diversity of voices are heard and all those impacted are engaged. He then work’s creatively alongside people to do whatever it takes to get things done.
What has driven his career choices has been his belief in the power of people to find their own solutions and the potential for genuine partnership in finding new ways to improve outcomes for people impacted by social disadvantage and exclusion.
Collaboration and empathy are the core values he draws on when working across disciplines, organisational hierarchies and with communities. Building relationships with and between decision makers, funders, partners, end users and front-line staff, Paul seeks to bring diverse stakeholders together to co-design and co-produce, collaborating with purpose and providing constructive challenge.
Paul’s personal approach to working with others is based on a genuine commitment to finding what works for people. This is underpinned by a genuine partnership of equals, looking to identify shared values and outcomes to support activity that delivers mutual benefit.