Episode 30 – Inclusion: Interview with Derek Bruce

Derek has a great background in leadership and people development, consultancy, and business communication. Which he gets from working with market-leading global organizations in the Financial Services, Media, Retail, and Engineering industries. He knows the business culture and well as world culture. Born in the UK, and living between Amsterdam and Milan right now he also hosts large scale digital and physical events for industry-leading organisations as well as speaking at global seminars and conferences. He also prides himself on building trust and long-term relationships to help people to accomplish their goals. These are also the principles of his own organisation, Derek Bruce Associates.

You Can Read the Transcript of Our Interview Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to Sticky Interviews. I'm Nathan Simmonds, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, Making Business Matter, the home of Sticky Learning. We are the provider of leadership development and soft skills training to the grocery and manufacturing industry. The idea of these interviews is to share great ideas, great concepts, and great ways these skills are being used to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do. Welcome to the show.

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to this Sticky Interview with me, Nathan Simmonds, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, Making Business Matter. I've got the great pleasure of interviewing and having a conversation with Derek Bruce. We've already had one connection conversation and I got to dig into a little bit about his history, his experience. A phenomenal buy and I love reading some of this stuff.

Nathan Simmonds:

Background in leadership and people development, consultancy and business communication, which he gets from working with market leading global organizations in the financial services, media, retail, engineering industries. But not only that, he knows business culture as well as world culture. Born originally in the UK, in Brixton, he's living between Amsterdam and Milan right now, hosting large scale digital and physical events for industry leading organizations, as well as speaking at global seminars and conferences. That in itself, Derek, is pretty phenomenal. It's, I guess, some of the life that we all wish and aspire to get to, being able to do some of that stuff.

Focuses on leadership and people development, consultancy, and business communication

 

Nathan Simmonds:

The best bit about him is this bit, I love it, and I know this because I feel this in the conversation we have, he prides himself on building trust and long-term relationships to help people accomplish their goals. We're going to dig into some more of that later on in this conversation, because there's some really critical, vital pieces of work that you're bringing your attention to, which I definitely want you to put the lens on today. And it says, these are also the principles of his own organization, Derek Bruce Associates. Absolutely 100%, Derek, welcome to here, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for being here.

Derek Bruce:

Cheers for the invite.

Nathan Simmonds:

Always. First question for me, for anyone that I'm interviewing, why do you do what you do?

Derek Bruce:

It's kind of a funny story. I kind of fell into it. So years and years and years ago I was working for Prudential, and applied for many jobs, got into there and started working, believe it or not, on an IT help desk. I was helping people do computer thing, turn it off, turn it on again, worked wonders.

Derek Bruce:

But I kind of then fell into learning and development because we as a team were helping people with IT systems, and through my career at Prudential, and they gave some awesome development, it's a great environment to work in, they really supported their staff. In my almost 13 years there I kind of moved from IT, presenting IT, into presenting solutions for sales,