Chris Nute

Chris Nute is a Senior Partner and the Managing Partner with Action Learning Associates (ALA). As a consultant and educator, Chris’s particular expertise is in the facilitation of creating heightened personal cognizance through action-oriented methods, assessments, and developmental feedback. All of this is synthesized into fostering high performance teaming and accelerating one’s leadership capabilities.

While Chris has been working in the field of experiential education for over 20 years, he began working with Action Learning Associates in 2003 while developing, coordinating, and lead facilitating The Search and Rescue Challenge, a powerful and visceral simulation that requires teams to be disciplined, yet flexible and agile; to remain calm and to communicate clearly in the face of interference, stress, and emergent conditions; and finally, to surmise that multi-dimensional leadership and teamwork are paramount to operational excellence. PricewaterhouseCoopers, Royal Dutch Shell, Pillsbury, Pfizer, Mattel and Conoco-Phillips are among the organizations that have utilized The Search and Rescue Challenge effectively. Other examples of Chris’s consulting engagements would include:

PricewaterhouseCoopers—New Partner Experience: Becoming a new Partner for PwC involves understanding the power of the partnership and the purpose, responsibilities and behaviors of the firm. ALA, in partnership with PwC’s Learning and Development team, has designed an outdoor adventure experience that is a “rite of passage” within PwC. Since 2005, Chris has guided New Partner teams through an experience that is bold and stimulating, fun and spirited, heartfelt and memorable.

Anglo American—Leaders in Anglo (LiA): Chris works with high-potentials to create individual development plans through a pre-program meeting that focuses on their expectations and one-on-one coaching sessions that focus on debriefing their 360° feedback, their MBTI report and observations gathered during team exercises. During a highly influential time in their careers, Chris helps each delegate craft their own “Leadership Point of View”.

Recently, Chris has also worked throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East with Ericsson, Thomson Reuters, McAfee, Tyco Electronics, HSBC, Weyerhaeuser, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Dow Chemical Company, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, McDonald’s, Hasbro, BNP Paribas and numerous global business schools’ executive education offerings. Additionally, Chris is a Certified Practitioner of the MBTI Step I and Step II Instruments.

Chris is an avid high-altitude mountaineer and has led climbing teams on extended expeditions around the globe. Typically, these expeditions have included a service-learning component that immerses participants in the local culture. He draws on these high risk and adventure experiences to provide examples of teamwork and leadership in action that help to facilitate and motivate individuals and teams.

He has a personal interest in the psychology of risk and survival and the drive and ‘flow’ that is inherent among endurance athletes. Chris is intrigued in the relationships and applications that can be made in the business paradigm.

Immediately prior to working with Action Learning Associates on a full-time basis, Chris directed a nationally-recognized, experiential based, outdoor leadership program at a liberal arts college. There, he developed and led unique co-curricular learning opportunities in a diversity of environments designed to further student development and leadership. Also of note, at one time, Chris was the Mayor of a small town in Colorado. Additionally, Chris enjoys whitewater rafting, ice climbing, telemark skiing and trail/ultra running. He is married and the proud father of two teen-aged backcountry enthusiasts. The Nute family resides in Crested Butte, Colorado.