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David Wilkinson (ambiguity expert)


David John Wilkinson (born 24 April 1959) is considered to be one of the foremost experts and authors on how people deal with Ambiguity and Emotional Resilience / Psychological resilience. He is the originator of the Modes of Leadership concept which correlates ambiguity tolerance, risk aversion, emotional resilience (Psychological resilience) and thinking systems and in 2009 The Metus Model and strategy for developing emotional resilience in organizations.

Wilkinson was born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire in the UK to Mary Doreen and David Wilkinson. He failed at school but travelled widely especially in Africa with his parents and younger sister Liz. His mother died in 2010 and his sister died a year later in June 2011 of unrelated conditions. Until University he was largely self-taught with periods in schools both in Africa and the UK.

After school, due to his lack of school qualifications he joined the Army and served mainly in Northern Ireland during the late 1970s as an NCO.

In 1980 Wilkinson joined the UK police. He was involved in the civil unrest and riots in Liverpool 8 or Toxteth in 1981 and the miners strike of 1984. 1n 1990 he was chosen as Director of Studies at the then Police Central Planning Unit and later was promoted to Head of Quality Assurance in National Police Training. During this time he was responsible for Command Level Public Order Training and was part of the Gold, Silver and Bronze command development team. Much of this work was focussed on preparing senior police leaders (gold and silver) to deal with serious civil disturbances and other such ongoing and fluid major incidents.

His first degree was in Psychology, obtained from the Open University. During this time he became known for a series of experiments he devised on aggression and video games. He then won a place at the University of Oxford where he conducted Masters and Doctoral Studies on the acculturation of police officers which involved the creation of a new research process-time lapse reparatory grids. Additionally he has an executive coaching qualification from the University of Cambridge.

Wilkinson started his academic career at the University of Oxford as a part-time lecturer. He quickly became a senior lecturer at Oxford Brookes University in 1996. In 2001 he was made Head of Professional Development at Cranfield University where he conducted his initial research into leaders' reactions to ambiguity and published his first book in which he first postulated the idea of the Modes of Leadership. During this time he was heavily involved in developing and delivering training for disaster management and post-terrorist event leadership around the world through the Cranfield University Resilience Centre. David Wilkinson's unique facilitative teaching style at University has won him many plaudits, to the extent that he is often found teaching lecturing skills to fellow lecturers around the world. He currently lectures at a number of UK Universities including: Oxford (Medical Sciences Division), Oxford Brookes (Business School), Cardiff, York, Southampton, Reading, Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores. He is a lead facilitator and exercise director at The National Crisis Leadership Centre in Kent, in the UK.


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