About me

My name is Ben. I am a Leadership Coach. I have worked in the tech industry in the UK and the US for nearly thirty years. My undergraduate degree is in Computer Science (and I have a master's degree in Linguistics), and for the first few years of my career I was a software engineer. Since then, I have spent most of my career managing and leading teams of software engineers and research scientists. In my most recent role I was an Engineering Director at Google DeepMind. I joined DeepMind when it was a fifteen person startup in early 2012 and left after 13 years in July 2025.

I live in Ely, near Cambridge in the United Kingdom. I am married with two grown-up children. I published an academic textbook on artificial intelligence in 2004 and have had a number of short stories (mostly science fiction) published since then.

My coaching style is heavily influenced by my core values, which are:

Kindness
Integrity
Mastery
Control
Happiness
Independence

You can read more about my approach to coaching elsewhere on this site. You can find out more about my career on LinkedIn, and you can get to know me better by subscribing to my YouTube channel.

But why Scruffy Leadership? What does it mean?

Scruffy leadership is my style of leadership. It’s not a philosophy which can be expressed simply in five or six words. It’s complicated and it’s messy and in some ways, it’s contradictory. And that’s the point: scruffy leadership is accepting of its own flaws. To be a good leader, you need to be accepting of your own flaws too.

If you take me on as a coach, I will do my best to help you become the best leader you can be. It won’t be easy: I don’t have a magic wand to wave that will make all your problems go away, and neither does anyone else, no matter what they may claim. On the other hand, you’ll probably find yourself thinking, at the end of our sessions, “well, that was obvious”. So it’s not easy, but neither is it hard. It just takes work. And if you’re up for that work, and you are part of an organisation that supports you and other leaders around you, then you can become not just a good leader, but a great one.

The most important ideas that underlie Scruffy Leadership are:

Psychological Safety. This underlies everything else. Without good psychological safety, nothing else matters. Psychological safety is one of those things you’ll know when you see it, but you’ll also know when you’re not seeing it.
Clarity. Another foundational idea. Everything is easier if you’re clear about things. That means being clear with yourself (about what you want out of your career, for example) but also being clear with everyone around you.
Asking Why. If you’re anything like me, you probably tend to jump to “what” and even “how” when faced with a new project or a problem to solve. But in many situations, it’s important to start by asking why.
Empowerment. Being a leader is not about telling people what to do. It’s about empowering them so that they can get on and do the right things. This is the opposite of micro-management.
Feedback. It’s scary and hard, but giving feedback well is one of the most important jobs a leader does. Without feedback, we can’t grow. By delivering feedback at the right times and in the right way, you can help your team to go from strength to strength.
Disagree and Commit. Another hard one. Unfortunately, humans don’t always agree with each other. And that’s as true at work as it is anywhere else. "Disagree and commit" is a simple recipe for dealing with those situations in which you just can’t reach agreement.
Learning from Your Mistakes. Just as your team will grow when they are given feedback, you will grow when you receive feedback, particularly when it relates to mistakes that you’ve made. You can also learn without feedback from others, by carefully examining your own mistakes.
Situational Awareness. One of the things that software engineers often find hardest when moving into leadership is understanding how differently the people around them will perceive them once they take on new responsibilities. Situational awareness is about this but it’s also about understanding where you are, who you’re talking to and what’s going on around you, and considering what you say and how you say it accordingly.
Stakeholder Management. We all have stakeholders. Unfortunately. But while wishing all your stakeholders away might seem appealing, it’s much practical to develop ways to build healthy and effective relationships with your stakeholders
Natural Consequences. Sometimes, we have to put our hand in the fire to learn that it’s hot. That’s a natural consequence. It’s not an idea to be used lightly, but in some situations it can be a very helpful technique.
Mental Health. We don’t talk enough about mental health at work. And yet, burnout is rampant, particularly in the tech industry. As leaders, it’s important not just that we understand mental health and how it affects us and the people we look after, but also what we can do to best help the people around us that struggle with their mental health.