Who I Am

I’m Joe Redston, and Raise is my company. It exists to help individuals and organisations define their culture, rather than it defining them.

While I often collaborate with other experts to deliver the content you need, it’s mainly me you’ll be talking to.

For that reason, it’s probably worth knowing a bit about who I am and what I’ve done.

My early career was eclectic … I started my first successful business at age 17, played drums for legendary songwriter Ray Davies [The Kinks], and ran the England beach soccer team before burning out and taking a two year sabbatical.

For the last fifteen years, I have worked in leadership development and team dynamics. I have delivered content for huge multinationals including Coca-Cola, Shell and Accenture – although more recently I have chosen to focus on SMEs and start-ups.

I have written two books. ‘The Self Help Summary’ is a short guide to the key ideas and thinkers from the world of personal development, and ‘#30questions’ contains thoughtful prompts to aid self-awareness [and pictures of seagulls]. I also contribute to 1% for the Planet each year, and am a member of the Regenerative Leadership community.

Both personally and professionally, my core values are balance and integrity. Integrity is simple for me – as CS Lewis said, it’s doing the right thing, even when no one else is looking. Balance is more complex. It’s about understanding and accepting the tensions that exist in the different areas of our lives – between the different parts of our identity – and realising that context matters. As we learn to see the overlapping complexity in our lives, we realise the answer to almost every question is – “It depends.”