Coaching
A leading coach to CEO’s, executive teams and individual leaders I am known for enabling big shifts in a short time.
After 19 years leading companies I know it’s rarely plain sailing and can be lonely at the top and also that accelerating a company requires a sustained focus and support enabling CEO, executive team, and key leaders to thrive and perform. This is why my coaching and facilitation practice is focussed to work with growth companies in each of these three areas.
My credentials to coach include:
- 19 years running, growing and leading companies in founder, managing director and divisional manager roles
- Studying and researching Coaching and Behaviour Change at Master's degree level at Henley Business School
- Spending 1000 hours a year working directly with CEOs, leadership teams and key leaders in successful growth businesses
Individual Coaching
Supporting CEOs and leaders at all levels during periods of growth, transformation and high challenge
Team Coaching
Enabling senior teams to escape dysfunction, achieve high performance and become transformational
Team Coaching
High performing teams are extremely rare. Groups do not become teams because we call them teams and many teams in business are actually dysfunctional groups. My programme for teams quickly and measurably takes the team to become 1) Cohesive, 2) Impactful and able to lead its own sustained and increasingly high performance, 3) A catalyst linking real teams and producing an incredibly powerful ‘team of teams’ performance.
Senior teams that choose me want to be the #1 team of their type. Often, they’re experiencing uncomfortable, limiting conflict which, with team coaching, can be harnessed into cohesive, creative productivity and performance. Or they have failed to take the step from management group (coordinating discrete functions) to becoming a leadership team able to lead growth and scalability across functions, transformation and accelerating performance enabling the organisation thrive.
Often a dysfunctional team is:
- Trapped in artificial harmony. The team is polite and does not say what needs be said. Real issues are not put on the table. Poor ideas and approaches are agreed without challenge. Mediocre performance perpetuates.
- Caught up with personality issues. There are personal or professional conflicts and team
members feel obliged to call out one another’s deficiencies in meetings. - Defensive and reaction-driven. They are unwilling to be held to account and hide their
mistakes and weaknesses from others. - Focused purely on short-term endeavours. Team members have no intent on achieving
longer-term objectives or finding strategies to contribute to the collective good. Their
attention is on quick wins and acting individually. - Lacking creative, exploratory discussion. Team meetings are often dull, unproductive
affairs and people are unwilling to alter their approach or consider new possibilities. - Setting the wrong example. Team members are backstabbing, political and unaware of
the effect this has on others in the business.
I enable teams to quickly and measurably become, in turn:
- Cohesive. A healthy level of performance emerges and the team is conscious of how its stretching purpose, approach and cohesivity work together to enable performance.
- Impactful. The team gains the capacity to focus and progress towards long-term objectives as well as short-term performance. This is essential in growth companies in which teams constantly deliver record results as well as making changes in readiness for further growth.
- Catalytic. Now high performing the team links the teams that feed into it, inspires cohesivity and performance in those teams, and leads an exceptionally powerful ‘team of teams’ performance.
“High performance teams are extremely rare.”
Individual Coaching
Individual coaching remains at the heart of my practice. I coach leaders at points of personal change such as a new senior role, during periods of growth or transformation demanding change of them and their teams, and during periods of high challenge. I am often sought out by leaders who enjoy constant stretch, want to enable their teams in the best possible way, and who are mindful of the line between burning brightly and burning out.
Coaching conversations are private and confidential, focused on your objectives and agenda, and the goal of developing sustained effectiveness, leadership, progress, happiness and success for you, your team and your organisation.
Here is what my clients say about the value of coaching with me:
Ben is good at asking poignant questions and introducing alternate ways of looking at things, which helps me reflect and think about how I approach situations. Ben never rushes; we take as long as we need on a discussion, either talking about long standing goals or digesting individual events. He always offers analytical and constructive insight and I always look forward to unpacking life with him – I wholeheartedly recommend Ben as a coach.
Peter Tooke, Head of Technical Services, ramsac
I’ve worked with Ben for several years now – initially as a facilitator where he ran brilliant workshops for our Leadership Team, and more recently for 121 coaching sessions. Ben is extremely insightful and has really helped me develop as a manager and leader. Working with Ben, as someone outside of our company, has proven to be really valuable in terms of providing fresh, independent thought and challenges to the topics we discuss. I always leave our sessions feeling motivated and with new ideas.
Matt Longman, Head of Client Relations, ramsac
Ben has widened my view so that instead of being dragged down into the operational day to day problems, I am able to spend an increasing amount of time focusing my thoughts and energy into strategic and long term opportunities, both at the professional and personal level. Instead of living in the moment I live increasingly six months out, a year out, five years out. This has huge benefits to me as a leader, and also benefits my personal well-being.
Gareth Burrows, CTO, BreatheHR
Ben is an exceptional coach whom I hired when faced with one of the biggest business decisions of my life. I knew Ben's reputation: he is insightful, incredibly bright and equipped with a brilliant toolkit and an ability to get quickly to the crux of the matter and so help his client to get there and find their own, workable solutions. The results were incredible for me. With his coaching I was able to find the right direction in a difficult and confusing time and also purpose, calm and renewed focus - which felt quite a challenge before we began!
Helen Martin, Entrepreneur
Each assignment is unique and commonly I’ll spend up to two hours with you monthly to surface the biggest challenges, create a framework for accountability, dig deep and enable progress.
Coaching begins with:
- A 20 minute call for introductions.
- An in person or video meeting to determine fit and coachability. I’ll work to understand who you are, where you want to go and what holds you back.
- After making a mutual decision to work together an early focus of will be painting a clear picture of success and identifing the obstacles in the way. Sessions are up to 120 minutes.
