Obituary – John Duncan
I do not normally publish CorporateCoach during August but it is my sad role to report the death of John Duncan last weekend.
I had worked with John for many years in several different relationships. I first met him when I was working as an internal consultant for Haden MacLellan Holdings. John was managing director of one of the loss making subsidiaries, which he was valiantly struggling to turn around. He was then recruited by David Overton as one of the intellectuals for his new management team at the MacLellan facilities management division of the Group.
After we had both left HMH I was delighted when he became one of my clients for a couple of corporate retreats. He was already showing an interest in coaching and a few years later he consulted me about making a full time move into the field. He studied with the Wolverhampton based College of Executive Coaching and developed his FLUX Model, which he reported in CorporateCoach.
John had built up an extensive network of senior managers in the engineering industry and worked with Brefi Group exploring opportunities for coaching based management development. One of his successes was to win a major project to help develop the management team at Corus Packaging Plus in Wales. John handled most of the work, applying his new coaching skills (although he got most frustated when the client insisted on referring to it as ‘mentoring’) with a combination of visits and telephone contact. Finally, in November last year, we organised a corporate retreat with Pembroke Training at Twr y Felin in St Davids. A memorable feature of the weekend was the coasteering. Although the weather was cold and we were both significantly older than the client team members, we were full particpants, as shown in this photograph of John in his wet suit.
In a much warmer situation, in February this year, John accompanied me on a trade mission to Dubai. We went in conjunction with Matthew Boulton College and were entertained by John’s local contact Trevor Arnold at K Home International. One of the outcomes could have been Brefi Group sponsoring John to spend three months in Dubai developing the local market. Although apprently fit, John had an irritating cough and was suffering back pains. Soon after our return, he contacted me to tell me that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. He had not smoked for over 30 years, he said.
I last met him in June when, at his invitation, I visited the North West Coaching Exchange to talk about scenario planning. He was then in the middle of his chemotherapy treatment, but advised us that he was keeping fit by swimming.
John was a keen mountain walker and often referred to recent days out. He talked, also, of his wife and two daughters, their careers and boyfriends.
If you have friends who knew John, I would be pleased if your would forward this special edition of CorporateCoach. If I get more news, I shall post it on the CorporateCoach blog. If you would like to add your own memories, there is a facility below.
Richard Winfield is founder of Brefi Group and specialises in transition coaching for directors.
He helps managers who think they ought to be directors and directors who still think like managers.
USEFUL LINKS
- Subscribe to the CorporateCoach RSS feed
- MyVideoTalk
- Contact us about streaming video
