AGL was founded over ten years ago by a remarkable man: Anthony Gordon Lennox, known to many as Ant.
Before AGL, he had worked in television – on Question Time with David Dimbleby – and in politics with the likes of William Hague and David Cameron. It was Ant who came up with the best-remembered line in David Cameron’s famous speech-without-notes at the 2007 Conservative Party conference: …it might be a bit messy; but it will be me.
It was during his period in television, that Ant came to realise how difficult business leaders found it to communicate authentically. He saw time and time again what happened when high profile individuals appeared in front of the camera or behind a lectern.
Too often, the engaging, spontaneous, unique individual he had met in the green room would disappear with the intro music, to be replaced by a masked version of themselves – safer and reliably ‘on message’, but no longer ringing true, or connecting on a simple, human level.
He set up AGL to help them: to help them work out who they really were and what they really stood for; to help them personalise, humanise and dramatise their communication; and to help them become better, more thoughtful and more inspirational leaders.
In the course of his career in television and politics, Ant worked with many master communicators; but it was actually his work with business people and other non-professional communicators that he found the most rewarding. And in the process, he evolved a way of helping people communicate as themselves, with impact, founding the business we are today.
Everything we do remains rooted in the same philosophy – that the best way to help people is through developing confident, authentic self-expression rather than giving them spin or tricks of the trade.
On 7 October 2017, Anthony died after a short illness. We miss him greatly, and always will.
The team at AGL believes in the power of authenticity just as he did; and with the same degree of conviction. We know he would feel proud of how we have continued to grow as a business driven by his vision and his values.
Anthony Gordon Lennox
1969-2017