About
John King spent over two decades teaching psychology across further and higher education, including fifteen years at Carmel Sixth Form College - one of the highest-ranking sixth form colleges in England - where he taught A-level Psychology and worked as a pastoral tutor to hundreds of students. Alongside that teaching career, he pursued postgraduate study in psychology, education, and management, culminating in a Doctorate in Education from Liverpool Hope University. His doctoral research examined how sixth-form students experience the transition into a new stage of education, viewed through a communities of practice lens - the same framing that now sits at the centre of The Guild.
That research unsettled something deeper than its own subject. Trained for years in quantitative psychology, the qualitative work at the heart of his doctorate pulled him toward different ground entirely - the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, and the concept of situated learning and communities of practice developed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Looking at psychology and identity through that lens for the first time, he spent the following years reading and thinking critically about the causes of passivity, procrastination, and anxiety in men, testing what genuinely held up across both the academic and popular literature on behaviour change.
It was out of that work that the idea driving The Guild properly took shape: that real change starts with identity, not effort. A man doesn't change his life by trying harder at the same self-image - he changes it by seeing himself differently first. Everything The Guild does is built on that.
In 2025, reading the Lost Boys report confirmed what he already suspected - that the need for a programme built on that idea was real and immediate - and Building Better Men followed.
Qualifications: Doctor of Education, Liverpool Hope University · MRes (Psychology), University of Bolton · MSc (Applied Psychology), University of Salford · PGCE, University of Bolton · BA (Hons) Psychology, University of Central Lancashire
"I built The Guild after fifty years of watching men - including myself - slowly drifting further and further from being the man they once wanted to be. There was no sudden crisis, no dramatic collapse. Just a slow, passive acceptance of lower and lower standards that went unnoticed for years or even decades. The Guild exists because that isn't a clinical problem - there's nothing wrong with you if you're drifting through life. It's a problem in living, and it responds to structure: to having a direction, self-discipline, and a community of men willing to hold you to your word." - John King, founder