Contact Dr Paul Hughes
- Email: Paul.Hughes@cranfield.ac.uk
Background
Paul is the Director of Open Programmes at Cranfield School of Management, a role he took up full time in October 2024.
He joins Cranfield for the second time, having left his role as Head of the Praxis Centre for Leadership Development in 2017, following the successful completion of his doctorate. Since leaving Cranfield, he has worked as a director for the Center for Creative Leadership, IE Business School, and latterly, Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, where he was director for custom leadership development programmes in EMEA and APAC. He has returned to Cranfield as a Visiting Fellow in 2024 to focus on his love of working directly with organisations and their leaders in addressing their leadership challenges and spend more time focussing on his research interests.
He began his career in the legal profession, but decided on a commercial career instead, taking on ever more senior leadership positions until he was leading multi-million-pound businesses. Following the switch to management consultancy, where he rose to the position of international director, he moved into leadership development and corporate education in 2010.
Research opportunities
He holds a Law degree (Aberdeen University, 1992), an MBA (University of Ulster, 2003) and a Doctorate in Business Administration focusing on the relationship between leadership and performance (Cranfield School of Management, 2017). He is a Fellow of the Centre for Evidence Based Management, a member of the British Psychological Society and holds certification in a multitude of psychometrics, profiling instruments and business simulations.
He researches strategic leadership and change.
Current activities
Despite his academic accomplishments and ‘business’ focus, Paul has a human centred, practical and often fun approach to helping leaders grow and develop. He specialises in helping leaders challenge themselves to find and close their gaps in focused and pragmatic ways; often addressing underlying themes. He has a strong track record in producing practical insights and actionable steps, often identifying wider organisational themes as he does so.