For individual leaders:
Each assignment is unique however a common pattern amongst my assignments is to approach the coaching as six-month periods of coaching with a monthly cadence of 1½ – 2 hour coaching conversations. Working this way is practical as in six months it is realistic to make significant sustainable change and concrete progress towards your goals or objectives.

For company founders, Managing Directors and CEOs:
Some founders and CEO’s prefer the above pattern, particularly when they’ve a particular challenge or objective or know they are entering into a demanding period.  Equally, as an experienced CEO I know the role is sufficiently demanding, complex and varied that a 2 hour coaching conversation often is not enough.  For this reason I offer a CEO peer group programme (Vistage) which combines individual coaching (with me) and monthly meetings with a small group of CEO focused on assisting each other with both strategic choices and current challenges and regular expert speakers on a range of relevant topics.

An essential question!  During our first conversation, before we decide whether to work together, I will ask, “At the end, how will you know this coaching has been a success?”.  With this question and others we will forma clear picture of both the objective of the coaching and the concrete progress you are aiming for during the coming period of coaching.  In this way we create the conditions for the coaching to be both ambitious and realistic.

Yes.  A good time for this is once we’ve a clear picture of what you want to achieve in coaching.

I spent 19 years leading, growing and sustaining companies.  During this time I both benefited from being coached and realised that in each key moment of breakthrough success and achievement my team had surpassed all expectations: mine, the team’s own and our competition!  When I led the sale of the company I’d already begun coaching within my role and focused on strengthening my skills by joining the Master’s programme in Coaching and Behaviour Change at Henley Business School.  The sale presented me with a choice to take another MD/CEO role or do something different (I was a minority shareholder and have not made my fortune!).  Realising that my proudest achievement was seeing my team and each leader come together so powerfully I chose to explore coaching with the caveat that the real test of my worth as a coach is whether or not my practice would grow by referral and introduction.  My practice gathered pace and I became clear about my focus, approach and impact as a coach.  Today coaching is my full time focus and I stay sharp by working with ambitious clients as well as researching coaching by exploring the topic of ‘questions’ – an essential skill in both coaching and leadership and surprisingly understudied.

Coaching, therapy and counselling and interventions at different points on the help by talking spectrum.  A good coach will be both experienced an areas relevant to you and qualified in the psychological underpinnings of behaviour change.  A simple way to understand the difference between approaches is that counsellors and therapists explore your past experience (often trauma) so work retrospectively while coaching focuses on your present and future increasing your resourcefulness and progress towards your clear (or clarified) aims.  

I make sure, always, to be working with a coach that will inspire and stretch me and who challenges me both with feedback and provoking new perspectives and thinking.  If you’d like to know the coaches that have been powerful for me just ask and I will introduce you.

Arrange an exploratory first conversation with me to find out!

From my perspective I watch for my clients to become clear about what they want, increasingly be ‘on their front foot’ (confident & resourceful), strategic i.e. on top of ‘today’ and focused on their medium and long term, and making concrete progress.

Clients often experience this as gaining clarity and choice, feeling they’ve completed new and better thinking, increased confidence built upon having a clear course of action and belief in their plan, knowing they are making progress and being able to measure concrete progress they’d otherwise not have expected to make.

In terms of skills clients feel grounded, centred and confident as leaders and decision makers, more influential and well equipped to answer the challenges they anticipate (and cope with those unexpected) and comfortable rather than overstretched or in danger of burning out.

If you would like to speak to a leader I’ve worked with let me know and I will introduce you to two relevant to you and your objectives for coaching.