Cliff Lansley was born in Manchester, UK in 1959. He is still based there with his wife of thirty-four years, with three children away from home and living in the region. He also spends blocks of time at a beachside retreat in Turkey. He is currently (2018) on sabbatical from EIA Group to complete a PhD by Research in Emotional Intelligence as part of his pro-bono work to get emotional skills and competencies into early-year education. He has worked as a school Governor for 26 years of an ‘Outstanding’ primary school that is now credited as a National Teaching School as a beacon operation and incubator to help develop other schools and their staff.
His first honours degree was in Education(Psychology) with the University of Manchester which he did post-experience whilst employed as a lecturer in leadership and management in higher education, following ten years in the industry. Seven years later he then returned to the private sector with a government research grant to develop competent-based approaches and diagnostic tools for leaders, managers and HR professionals under one of the companies he founded, named Development Processes Group plc (DPG), which is still leading its field in the UK as a multi-million-pound operation, with Cliff as Chairman, Director and a major Shareholder.
He retired as CEO of DPG in 2008 at the age of forty-nine to follow his passion in Emotional Intelligence(EI), driven to join the research community to help convince leaders, police, teachers, social workers, etc. that EI is not a ‘soft skill’, but a key differentiator between competent and excellence. He is motivated to draw on his experience as a successful business leader, an educationalist and a psychologist to leverage good scientific research and make a contribution to the excellent work being done by Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, Bar-On, Goleman, etc., possibly towards a new taxonomy and diagnostic methodology for EI that can stand up to the conflict and critiques across the existing models.
He founded the Emotional Intelligence Academy in 2008.
Also – Behaviour Consultant/Advisor to BBC. Behavioural Analysis Expert to ITVs “The Lying Game – Crimes that Fooled Britain”. ‘Face and Emotions’ on Channel 4 – UK. Deception and Industrial Espionage on HR-TV. “Faking it: Tears of a Crime” – Expert Behaviour Analyst – 15 criminals for Discovery Channel (2017). Keynote/Speaker/Consultant for ACFE, NISA, IBA, ABRESCE, SRI, AvSec(Rom), ECAO, ICF, ICC, CIPD, Euro Air Marshalls, GM Police, DSI(UK), Law Society, plus multiple corporate/agency conferences globally.
Cliff’s own research into EI has drawn him into working with a range of international security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies and businesses to help to integrate EI research into their approaches and skillsets. One facet of this followed the theme of ‘Getting to the Truth’, which has been published in peer review journals and in his most recent book under that title.
