Meet Toby
Toby Newman is the founder of CTRL, a learning and development consultant, and a passionate advocate for self-awareness, curiosity, and lifelong learning. Based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, he has spent more than twenty years helping individuals and organisations create environments where people can learn, grow, and contribute with confidence.
Throughout his career, Toby has worked across leadership development, learning technology, onboarding, employee wellbeing, and organisational culture. While his experience spans many areas of workplace development, one belief has remained constant: meaningful learning begins with understanding ourselves. Today, through CTRL, he helps coaches, organisations, and individuals recognise the behavioural patterns that shape their decisions, relationships, and growth, creating practical starting points for lasting development.
The Small Moments That Shape a Career
Life-changing moments rarely feel extraordinary when they happen.
More often, they arrive disguised as everyday opportunities—a conversation, a new responsibility, or a simple request that seems insignificant at the time. Only in hindsight do they reveal how profoundly they changed our direction.
For Toby Newman, that moment came while working in a Blockbuster store.
As an assistant manager, he was asked to train two new colleagues. It was a routine task, yet the experience left an unexpected impression. Watching someone gain confidence through learning sparked something he had never anticipated. It wasn’t about standing at the front of a room or being seen as an expert. It was about helping another person discover what they were capable of.
That experience planted a question that would guide the next two decades of his career:
What truly helps people grow?
The answer, he would eventually discover, extends far beyond courses, workshops, or training programmes. Growth is shaped by confidence, trust, relationships, curiosity, and the environments people experience every day. Learning is not simply about gaining knowledge. It is about becoming a better version of ourselves.
Following Curiosity Instead of a Blueprint
Unlike many professionals who map out their careers years in advance, Toby’s journey unfolded through curiosity.
Each opportunity introduced him to another aspect of learning and development. He explored operational training, instructional design, facilitation, onboarding, digital learning platforms, leadership development, and global learning strategy. Although his responsibilities evolved, his motivation remained remarkably consistent.
He wanted to understand people.
Why do some individuals embrace challenges while others hesitate?
Why do some teams openly share knowledge while others protect it?
Why do people remain silent even when they have valuable ideas to contribute?
These questions gradually became more important than the mechanics of training itself.
Working across different organisations also revealed something that transformed his perspective. Even the best-designed learning programme could fall short if people didn’t feel psychologically safe, supported, or encouraged to ask questions. Information alone was never enough.
Real learning required trust.
That insight fundamentally changed how Toby approached his work. Instead of focusing solely on delivering knowledge, he became increasingly interested in creating environments where people felt confident enough to discover answers for themselves.
Seeing Learning as an Ecosystem
As his career progressed, Toby moved into learning technology and large-scale learning ecosystems, working with global organisations to design digital platforms and collaborative learning experiences.
The shift broadened his understanding of how development happens.
Learning was no longer something that occurred during scheduled workshops. It became an ongoing process supported by conversations, reflection, experimentation, feedback, and shared experiences.
People do not become more capable simply because they complete a course.
They develop through practice, through making mistakes, through asking questions, and through continuing conversations long after formal learning has ended.
This realisation shaped a philosophy that continues to guide Toby’s work today.
Rather than focusing on delivering more training, he believes organisations should create the conditions where people naturally take ownership of their own development.
Ownership cannot be imposed.
Curiosity cannot be mandated.
Lasting growth happens when people genuinely want to learn.
Creating those conditions requires something technology alone cannot provide.
It requires humanity.
Creating Cultures Where Learning Thrives
Over the years, Toby has helped organisations strengthen onboarding, improve leadership development, introduce digital learning strategies, and enhance employee wellbeing. Yet despite working with measurable business outcomes such as engagement, retention, and performance, he has never believed that statistics tell the whole story.
Behind every metric is a person.
Someone who found the confidence to contribute an idea.
Someone who discovered a new way of communicating.
Someone who began seeing themselves differently.
For Toby, those individual transformations represent the true value of learning.
His approach encourages organisations to move beyond seeing development as isolated training events. Instead, learning becomes woven into everyday work through collaboration, reflection, coaching, and open dialogue.
When curiosity becomes part of organisational culture, knowledge flows more freely, people support one another more naturally, and development continues long after formal programmes have ended.
That is where lasting change begins.
CTRL and Taking Ownership of Growth
Years of working across industries led Toby to recognise a common pattern.
Many people know they need to develop but are unsure where to begin.
Employees wait for opportunities.
Leaders wait for solutions.
Organisations wait for the next programme.
Toby wanted to challenge that way of thinking.
That ambition became CTRL.
Rather than simply offering another learning programme, CTRL is built around a practical belief: understanding ourselves is the starting point for every other form of development.
By becoming more aware of our behaviours, habits, values, and responses, we become better equipped to make thoughtful decisions, strengthen relationships, communicate more effectively, and continue learning throughout life.
The name itself reflects this philosophy.
Although we cannot control every circumstance we encounter, we can become more intentional about how we respond, how we learn, and how we grow.
Technology also plays an important role in Toby’s work, particularly as artificial intelligence continues transforming workplace learning. Yet he believes technology should always remain a means rather than an end.
Digital tools can personalise learning, increase accessibility, and connect people across the world.
They cannot replace empathy.
They cannot replace trust.
They cannot replace meaningful conversations.
As Toby explains,
“My focus is always human first, technology second. The purpose is not to add more content, but to help people develop in ways that feel relevant and useful.”
For him, successful innovation begins by asking what people genuinely need before deciding which technology should support that journey.
Where CTRL Can Make a Difference
As Toby continued shaping CTRL, he became increasingly interested in a question that extends beyond individual growth.
How can people begin developing greater self-awareness when they are not even sure where to start?
That question sits at the heart of CTRL’s purpose.
While the framework supports individuals seeking deeper personal understanding, Toby believes its greatest impact lies in helping coaches and organisations create meaningful starting points for development.
For coaches, CTRL provides a practical structure for conversations that go beyond surface-level goals. It encourages clients to explore the patterns influencing their behaviour, communication, relationships, and decision-making, helping them build greater awareness and take ownership of meaningful change.
Within organisations, the challenge often looks different.
Many recognise that development is necessary but struggle to identify where genuine progress should begin. Others have capable, confident leaders whose certainty can sometimes make it difficult to recognise blind spots, seek honest feedback, or fully appreciate the impact of their behaviour on others.
For Toby, confidence is not the problem.
Confidence is valuable.
The challenge arises when it is no longer balanced by curiosity, reflection, and self-awareness.
Without those qualities, even experienced professionals can unintentionally limit both their own growth and the growth of the people around them.
CTRL is designed to provide a practical foundation for these conversations. Rather than introducing another theoretical model, it encourages people to pause, recognise recurring patterns, improve how they communicate and respond, and take greater ownership of their development.
Ultimately, Toby wants CTRL to become a practical framework that coaches and organisations can use to build stronger relationships, encourage honest dialogue, and support lasting behavioural change.
Looking Ahead
Although Toby has already spent more than two decades working in learning and development, he speaks about the future with the same curiosity that first inspired him years ago.
Growing CTRL remains his central focus.
He hopes to expand it into practical tools, conversations, and learning experiences that people can apply throughout different stages of their personal and professional lives.
He is equally passionate about supporting the next generation of learning and development professionals. Having witnessed the profession evolve significantly over the years, he understands both its opportunities and its challenges. By sharing his own experiences, he hopes to encourage others to develop their own perspectives rather than simply following established approaches.
Outside work, family continues to provide balance and perspective.
It serves as a reminder that meaningful success is measured not only by professional achievements but also by the relationships we invest in and the lives we help shape along the way.
Learning That Lasts
Toby Newman’s story is not defined by dramatic reinvention or overnight success.
Instead, it is a story of paying attention to the moments that quietly reveal what matters most.
A simple opportunity to train two colleagues became the beginning of a career dedicated to helping others realise their potential. Along the way, his understanding of learning evolved from delivering information to cultivating confidence, curiosity, self-awareness, and environments where people feel safe enough to grow.
Through CTRL, Toby continues to champion a simple but powerful idea: lasting development begins with understanding ourselves. When people become more aware of the patterns that influence their choices, they gain the ability to communicate more effectively, build stronger relationships, and approach both work and life with greater intention.
Perhaps that is the most important lesson his journey offers.
Growth is not something another person can hand to us.
It begins when we become curious enough to understand ourselves—and intentional enough to take ownership of where we go next.
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