Helping leadership teams build mutual trust.
I work with management and leadership teams to build more productive working relationships based on trust, clear communication, and a shared understanding of how each person on the team actually thinks.
Formerly Worldwide Head of Dockers · President of Levi's USA · SalesBrain · Technology Readiness Council
Four entry points, one goal
Every engagement is built around the same aim, teams and leaders working better together, approached from whichever angle fits your situation.
Leadership & Team Development
Practical, hands-on work with management and leadership teams to resolve the friction that quietly undermines performance, and steadily build trust that holds up under pressure.
Thinking Style Diversity
A Jung-inspired assessment that surfaces how differently each person on your team thinks, decides and communicates: the starting point for real mutual understanding.
Culture & Leadership Mapping
Using the Competing Values Framework, I map your company culture across two axes, showing where leadership styles clash and where the team might agree too easily.
Individual Coaching
One-to-one coaching on the same foundations (self-awareness, trust and communication) for leaders who want to work on this personally, not just as a team.
Facts and feelings, together
Most friction on a team is emotional, not factual, so real communication has to work on three levels, not the two most people default to.
The Three-Brain Approach
It keeps the familiar fact-versus-feeling split, then adds a third layer: the older parts of the brain that override rational thinking once a team feels under pressure.
- Facts
- The rational layer: logical, defensible, easy to write down.
- Feelings
- The emotional layer, where most team friction actually forms.
- Instinct
- The oldest layer: amygdala and brain stem, overriding reason under threat.
Major inspiration is drawn from:
- Lencioni
- The behavioural foundations of a functional team: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, results.
- Frances Frei
- How trust is actually built and rebuilt between leaders and their teams.
- Peter Senge
- Systems thinking: the team and organisation as a whole, not a set of isolated problems.
- Quinn & Cameron
- The Competing Values Framework, used to map culture, leadership style and where a team is too comfortable.
Grounded in practice, not theory
Years running global brands, not just studying them, keep this practical. The frameworks give structure; the experience makes them usable in a real management meeting, not just a workshop.
Twenty years running global brands
Lazy Horses is led by James Capon. His approach is shaped by a corporate career leading global brands, not by consulting theory alone. He was worldwide head of Dockers Clothing, President of Levi's USA, a European partner at neuromarketing firm SalesBrain, and more recently a Director of the Technology Readiness Council, bringing leadership skills to educational technologists.
That background makes the work practical: frameworks are only useful if they hold up in a real leadership meeting, under real pressure, with real personalities in the room.
- Former Worldwide Head, Dockers Clothing
- Former President, Levi's USA
- European Partner, SalesBrain (neuromarketing)
- Director, The Technology Readiness Council
- MBA, Solvay Business School, Brussels
- Master in Public Health, Edinburgh University
Why “Lazy Horses”?
The name nods to the knight on a chessboard, still called “the horse” in German and Scandinavian languages. It can't move as far as the glamorous bishops and rooks, and it's not flashy. Easily undervalued, sometimes dismissed as lazy. But it's the piece most likely to catch you by surprise, valued for unpredictability, not raw power.
“It is not a move, even the best move, that you must seek, but a realizable plan.”
— Eugene Znosko-Borovsky, 1923
Or in plain English: a plan is only as good as the suitability, motivation and professionalism of the people carrying it out.
Let's talk about your team
If you're leading a team that needs more mutual trust or clearer communication, get in touch.
james@lazyhorses.comOpens your email app. You can also copy the address above.