Among the organisations with whose executives I have worked are Marsh, Zurich, Sodexho, QinetiQ, Mowlem, GenRE, News International, Maersk, BT, Cable & Wireless, many medium-sized manufacturing and service companies, and a number of Government departments and agencies, including the HMRC.

TESTIMONIALS

"I don't think you really know what an impact you have!" JS, HRD

"Profound. Almost taught me too much!" TY, MD

"I would gladly give you a reference any time. Our 'chats' were on the mark every time. Your observations astute. And, even when I put you on the spot, I knew I could trust you." DF, CE

"You're a one, you really are! A real challenge at times - and it was tough, but what an outcome. And I'm sure we've not stopped yet." MS, CE

"Your way of looking at things, and way of feeding them back, baffles me. You manage to make me aware of home truths, but I feel encouraged at the same time." PW, MD

"At the time, we did some really good work together. You brought vision and insight, and helped me challenge myself. But the real impact is happening now. Quite simply my life and relationships are totally different." RM, CEO

"I was ready to give up. Frankly, I had. I never expected to look back after five years and see how much more I could achieve and how my life has unfolded." JT, TD

"A friend. But one who doesn't get angry when things don't go the way you know they could, but instead is there to keep things gently moving forwards." BS, S

When you get to know me, you will realise that I prefer to work behind the scenes.  However, I also realise that the first step to working together is for you to have confidence in the relevance of my experience.  Hence, these notes...

Having received my PhD in behavioural science, from the University of Bristol, I spent 15yrs working in mainstream management consultancy specialising in organisation development - primarily focused on corporate "Excellence" and creating exceptional places to work. 

Training as a psychotherapist, a little over ten years ago I began to grow my one-to-one leadership development practice.

Along the way, I have authored 8 books, was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in Industry and Education, and regularly travel internationally giving keynote presentations, chairing conferences, and compering events, on various aspects of leadership, emotional and spiritual intelligence (EQ and SQ), governance, climate adaptation, corporate responsibility, futures, and strategy.

I write many articles and short essays, am on the editorial panel of one business journal, and judge some of the awards of the World Council for Corporate Governance.

What does leadership coaching embrace?

Most management effort revolves around the normal daily themes that businesses have to cope with. Yet, leadership is about achieving more than the norm and coaching should reflect this.

Relationships, emotions, agendas, intrigues, politics, cultures, and power... If leading was easy, everyone would do it. Sometimes the answers lie deeper than we are used to digging. Leadership qualities (including emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, authenticity, and engagement) are hard to define and difficult to develop, yet they are often cited as reasons why one person achieves their best and another gets left behind.

The world needs people who dream, and it needs leaders to transform those dreams into reality. Leaders draw on their coach, turning their vision into plans, and finding ways to implement and accelerate them. While goals, processes and procedures, techniques and financial incentives may have their place, between 50% and 88% of sports performance is determined by psychological factors. Business is the same.

Every top class athlete has a coach. So does every top class leader, although you may not be aware of us because we work behind the scenes.

MAKE AN APPOINTMENT

My conversations with leaders involve meeting monthly, for a one-to-one conversation, typically lasting 1¼ to 1¾hrs, held in complete confidence. My clients are leaders (actual, aspiring or potential) from a wide range of different organizations and industries.

Together, we look at your role, yourself, your drivers and attitudes, your impact on those around you, constraints you impose on your success, and the potential you could aspire to.

We deconstruct situations and use a variety of tools to help you understand yourself and evolve alternative strategies for the future. Working in this way for over a decade, most of my clients see our conversations as a significant part of their ongoing personal and professional development.

Naturally this depends on creating the right sense of trust and confidence if we are to work together effectively. To help this begin to develop, I always offer the first session together at no cost. It is an opportunity for you to assess whether I am going to be able to offer you anything.

Once we begin working together, I expect my clients to commit to a minimum of six further monthly sessions. While I am happy to be flexible, and understand the real-world constraints that we all work under, my clients are sufficiently senior to have enough control over their own diaries to prevent regular intrusions on our work together.

You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain; complete the form above or give me a call NOW.

The following abstract illustrates typical situations that arise in the course of my work with leaders - it should go without saying that permission to quote has been given, names have been changed, and a few details tweaked to preserve confidentiality.

Having graduated in psychology, Deidre joined a blue chip company as a graduate trainee subsequently specialising in marketing. Becoming frustrated at the sluggish pace with which her career was taking off, she joined another organisation and soon found herself travelling all over Europe, the Middle East and Africa, acting as a brand advisor for a number of subsidiaries. With the appointment of a new Marketing Director, she soon became their trusted assistant, and the pressure began to build up even more. On one of her trips, she found herself sitting next to a clinical psychologist, they talked at length, and that was how she was referred to me.

Deidre's career had taken over her life completely, all balance was excluded, and she'd fallen into the trap that so many people discover where it appears as though they are rewarded for the quantity of work they do rather than the quality. Ironically, the more time they commit, the less time they have for quality thinking, and soon their work begins to suffer. We set about a number of changes - aimed at helping Deidre to focus her effort more on quality and to pace herself rather than being in a constant reactive rush all the time. At first, the focus was on internal efforts - developing the calibre of work that she was engaged on and finding ways of contributing more strategically to the long-term growth of the firm. She increased her delegation skills so that, while she continued to travel as much and as far afield, she was empowering her local agents more and bringing home fewer substantial follow-up tasks.

Her boss saw the more strategic approach emerging, and passed a number of industry-wide speaking engagements to her. We worked on the style of these presentations and fairly soon she was invited to sit on a couple of Government panels. It was through one of these that she met her partner and a new dimension to her life has begun to unfold.

Deidre (added 22/12/09)