Robert Poynton
Robert Poynton is an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. He is the Director of the Oxford Praxis Lab. This is a new (not for profit) venture, that was created out of the Oxford Praxis Forum, an academic initiative of the college. The Oxford Praxis Lab designs and runs experiments that allows experienced practitioners to explore complex, messy real world problems and the means to address them.
Robert has been on the teaching team of the internationally renowned Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme for over twenty years, acting as Programme Director in May 2018.
Beyond Oxford, Robert has deep and varied experience of the design and facilitation of programmes, workshops and retreats. His own clients include Chanel, Natura Bissé, the BBC and PwC. He uses an embodied, experiential approach, drawing on the methodology of improvisational theatre to explore how to respond effectively, creatively and gracefully to complexity and change. His work also includes the use of narrative and story for communication and sense making.
He has been a contributor to the Skoll World Forum and Singularity University Global Summit. He has led courses on leadership, facilitation, change, creativity and complexity at IE in Madrid, Ashridge Business School and Schumacher College.
He is the author of Do Pause, Do Improvise and Do Conversation and the founder of Yellow.
He studied psychology and philosophy at New College, Oxford, is married with three sons and splits his time between Oxford and Madrid (where he has a season ticket at Real Madrid).
