David Wilkinson

David John Wilkinson FAHE (born 24 April 1959) is British academic and writer on how people deal with ambiguity and psychological resilience. He is the originator of the modes of leadership concept, which correlates ambiguity tolerance, risk aversion, emotional resilience (psychological resilience) and thinking systems. He developed the Metus Model and strategy for developing emotional resilience in organizations.

Wilkinson started his academic career at the University of Oxford as a part-time lecturer. He became a senior lecturer at Oxford Brookes University in 1996. In 2001 he was made Head of Professional Development at Cranfield University, where he conducted his initial research into leaders' reactions to ambiguity and published his first book in which he first postulated the idea of the modes of leadership. During this time he was worked to develop and deliver training for disaster management and post-terrorist event leadership in several countries through the Cranfield University Resilience Centre. He has taught lecturing skills to fellow lecturers in the UK and abroad, and currently lectures at Oxford University's Medical Sciences Division, Oxford Brookes Business School, Cardiff University, University of York , University of Southampton, University of Reading, University of Liverpool, and Liverpool John Moores University. He is a lead facilitator and exercise director at The National Crisis Leadership Centre in Kent, in the UK.

Developed largely on the back of his work with Emotional Resilience, Wilkinson's Metus (fear of change) Model & Strategy (2009) explains what happens in organisations during change events, how the fear of change develops and describes a strategy for increasing emotional resilience in organisations and getting organisational populations to engage with change. This is now popularly known as the "Fear to Flow model".

He gave the keynote speech at the 2011 ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) conference at NPIA NPIA (National Police Improvement Agency) Ryton-on-Dunsmore, entitled "When in doubt, fool yourself you are getting better". He also presented sessions to the annual ACPO conference on decision making and ambiguity in 2012, 2014 and 2016. In 2016 he gave a keynote presentation at the British Academy entitled "Agile Leadership as Next Generation Management Paradigm".

He was a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). In 2015 Wilkinson founded and became Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford Review, which he set up to close the gap between academic research and practitioner knowledge in the areas of leadership, management, organisational development, change and transition, human resources and human resource management, organisational learning, decision-making and work psychology.

In 2018 Wilkinson became Epiacum Heritage Trust's CIO, and is currently Chair of the group's Board of Trustees.