I have been coaching executives formally since 1998 having already undertaken a significant degree of professional and personal development specifically focused on becoming an executive coach, which development I have continued on an ongoing basis since. I have trained with such organizations as the Tavistock and very highly regarded coaches such as Tim Galwey and Marshal Goldsmith. I focus on developing my clients’ ability to coach both themselves and the people they lead and on building the self confidence and awareness of my clients so that in the long-term they are significantly more self-sufficient in both their development and in their performance and relationships.
I restrict my one-to-one coaching time to about 25% of my working time, balancing it with team coaching and facilitation and other forms of leadership development. At any one time I am usually coaching about 20 senior executives or high flyers, most ofwhom lead in blue chip organisations. The identities of my clients remain confidential and some of them are in the public eye – they are in a variety of industries and some are in professional services. I also run coaching and facilitation mastery programmesand act as a supervisor for other professional coaches. Furthermore, I founded and run a not-for-profit organisation which brings people together to focus on their long term professional development and their thought leadership – Sadler Heath– which includes amongst its members such people as gestalt specialist/EMCC President John Leary-Joyce who runs the Academy for Executive Coaching, of which I have recently become a non-executive director.
I am very serious about continually developing my coaching skills and approach. I use a psycho-dynamic, enquiry model which focuses on building my clients’ expertise and works to my client’s agenda. If you work with me, anything you work with me on will be absolutely and unambigiously confidential. Expect me to work with the whole of you, enquiring into all aspects of your life, particularly your values, your skills and attributes, your preferences and your habitual thinking and patterns of behaviour. Also please expect me to challenge you, to give you robust feedback about the impact you have on me and what I notice to be your assumptions and judgements and to challenge (but not judge) how your personal agenda and development might enhance both your performance and the performance of the organisation. Also expect me to be really for you, and for enhancing your energy, your real understanding of your strengths and preferences, your clarity of your own need, your key relationships, your courage and your real enjoyment of your work. Please expect me to actively look to reduce the frequency of our interactions over time and to hand over your development to you as soon as makes sense – I have no interest in working with you longer than is genuinely useful.
I hope that you will be able to work and lead more confidently as a result of the learning you do through coaching. I look for deeper self-awareness, better decision-making, stronger relationships and enhanced influencing skills. I will ask you to pay attention to the impact you have on the environment around you at work – with your clients, subordinates, peers, leaders and stakeholders – and to enhance that impact thereby improving the quality of that environment. I hope you will see happier and more effective teams around you and that you will be able to influence things quicker and for the better in the systems you are part of - thereby, improving the productivity, effectiveness and bottom line of the organisation.
Most of my coaching is face to face although some of it is done over the telephone. I usually meet my clients once every two months or so (the precise frequency depends upon the client needs) for something between 1 ½ hours and 2 hours. The location is based on what suits the client best in terms of personal safety, confidentiality and minimal distraction.
I have developed a framework to help clients ensure and assess the value that coaching adds to their organisation which you are welcome to draw on.