About Me
Cheryl Gush
Business Consultant
Transformational Coach
Team Developer
Art Explorer
Perpetual Student
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My undergraduate career started in health care with a qualification in Nursing and culminated in over 25 years in Sales and Marketing. I have both a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) and a Masters in Advanced Leadership Practice (MALP) from Massey University here in Auckland. My research during my MBA culminated in a consulting document that included a comprehensive international marketing plan for a local manufacturer. My research as part of the MALP resulted in a deep reflection of how art might be used as a portal to emotional expression in leadership during times of grief.
I have a a keen interest in how good leadership, and great business results, are deeply connected to empathy, which can be learned and cultivated through creative engagement in the arts. This philosophical approach to seeing and being filters through how I engage with clients.
You can learn about my Artful Leadership series here
And follow my Ph.D journey here.
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Memberships Include
Institute of Directors
International Federation of Coaches
Art, Empathy and Leadership
Creating a new perspective in a curated world
Over the last 3 years, I have used both curated and created art to specifically explore organizational topics such as empathy and perspective-taking. More recently I embarked on 18 weeks of formalized art training to learn the technical aspects of drawing and painting a portrait. This experience was transformative. It exposed the biases of how I see and the importance of being able to suspend judgement in order to know both ourselves and others. As we shifted from copying faces on paper to drawing live models, the prolonged gaze created space for a deepening intimacy and a sense of knowing I could not ignore. My ongoing artistic reflection of what I learned in this class had evolved my seeing and thinking, and as a result, evolving and self-observed empathy for both me and others. This personal journey has elevated this intuitive sense of knowing that art, empathy, and leadership all start in our brains and so, therefore, can intersect in a meaningful way.
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Street artist JR, who has helped to make visible those who are sometime invisible in society, is a great example of how art can impact on our view of others.
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Street art by JR and Liu Bolin
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