In Your Shoes - Julie Geyer

Julie is the Head of Partnerships and Community at Ceannas, a global leadership development company. Based in Edinburgh, Ceannas helps leaders shape culture, influence behavior, and drive high performance. Julie’s role is all about building relationships - connecting with people, fostering collaborations, and growing the Ceannas community.

Though the company operates globally, Julie enjoys the best of both worlds, living on a farm near Newtyle with her husband and two young sons.

Julie Geyer - Head of Partnerships at Ceannas

My name is Julie, I am the Head of Partnerships at Ceannas

Ceannas is a global leadership development company dedicated to enabling leaders to shape culture, influence organisational behaviour, and unlock high-performance.

Monday - a day with Archie!

This is a non-working day for me. I have two small boys aged 2 and 4 and I’m conscious that I want to spend as much time as possible with them while they are little. Monday’s are a day for Archie, the littlest one and we tend to spend the day catching up with little friends and going on adventures! Luckily the team at Ceannas are very flexible, and being a family run company they understand the importance of a work-life balance. I do tend to spend a little bit of time on Monday’s checking in with my inbox and getting ahead of myself for Tuesday.

Tuesday - office day in Edinburgh

One of my favourite days of the week, I head into Edinburgh to catch up with the team and take part in our weekly team meeting – I love the blend of home working and office working and miss the team if I skip a week in the city. I have my journey down to a fine art, leaving home just after 8 allows me to avoid the worst of the traffic and arrive at the office for a good “city” coffee around 9.30. This week we were using some of our own tools to refocus around our most pressing goals. I tend to be a bit of an ideas generator, which is great a lot of the time, but not always needed so I have refocused my Ceannas lenses on being a “gardener, builder and villager”, taking time to lay the plans out for the future, building out some of my many ideas and ramping up my networking!

We had a special colleague in the office today - Callie - Head of Treats and Tummy rubs!

Wednesday - work from home

Working from home today, it’s a great chance to catch up on the administrative side of things and take some client calls. Today I had a few great introductory calls with clients looking to improve their workplace culture and level up their leadership behaviour, some are on the back of structural changes to their teams and others have taken on ambitious new strategies and need a partner to help them see this through. I think what is striking is how many businesses feel alone in the challenges they are facing yet don’t realise that many others are in the same boat. I love being able to talk through an organisations challenges, go away, mull it over with the team, and provide them with a step by step programme for behavioural change and high performance success!

Thursday - back over the bridge!

A break from the norm saw me cross the bridge twice in one week! I headed over to North Berwick to support our founder Don with a workshop we delivered to our charity partner, Leuchie House. Leuchie are a respite charity for individuals and families with neurological conditions such as MS, MND and Parkinsons. We have embarked on a charity partnership programme with them that see’s us supporting them with their “Leuchie Leaders Club”, a fundraising arm of the charity providing a networking and development space for business leaders, as well as supporting their own leadership team to hone their leadership behaviours to support the charity. We’re also planning some exciting fundraising activities – watch this space!

Friday - at home with two rascals!

At home again, with both boys this time! While I’ll have a quick check of the emails when I get a minute, Fridays are mainly a chance to catch up on house admin, attempt to tire out two wild children and ferrying them back and forth to swimming lessons. It’s been a fun week of travelling about but it’s always nice to sit down at home, even if I do miss the city coffee options being out in the countryside!