Executive Coaching

• I deliberately work with a maximum of twelve executive coaching clients each year.

The Next Step Requires Something

What got you here won’t necessarily get you there.

A promotion. A bigger business. A new leadership role. Greater responsibility.

Each brings a moment when the capability that created your success is no longer enough for what comes next.

Executive Coaching helps you make that shift.

Build the capability for what comes next.

“I would personally pay £50,000 to know what Neil knows.”
Gary S. – ex Dep. CEO – ICAP

Success Stops Being About You

Early in your career, success is largely determined by what you can do.

Leadership changes that.

Increasingly, your success depends upon your ability to communicate, influence, make judgements, develop people and create capability in others.

That’s a very different challenge.

You may have been promoted because you’re good at what you do.

Nobody necessarily taught you how to lead.

Coaching Built Around You

There is no standard executive.

So there is no standard coaching programme.

The process begins by understanding where you are, what you’re trying to achieve and what may be getting in the way.

Together we identify the shift required and build a programme around it.

That might involve:

Leadership. Communication. Confidence. Judgement. Strategy. Relationships. Presentation. Influence. Personal effectiveness. Business growth.

Or something neither of us has identified yet.

That’s why the conversation comes first.

Clarity Before Action

Good coaching doesn’t begin with advice.

It begins with understanding.

Where are you now?

Where are you trying to get to?

What’s changed?

What’s holding you back?

What capability does the next stage require?

Only then can we decide what needs to happen.

Clarity changes what you see.
Capability changes what you can do.

From Knowing to Doing

This is where I’d retain the useful principle buried inside all the old material about staged learning.

Knowing something isn’t the same as being capable of doing it.

That’s why executive coaching takes place over time.

We explore an issue.

You apply what you’ve learned.

We review what happened.

We adjust.

You apply it again.

Insight becomes experience.

Experience becomes judgement.

Judgement becomes capability.

You can’t download capability.

It has to be built.

A Framework Built Over Forty Years

The coaching draws upon more than forty years of working with leaders, entrepreneurs and organisations.

It isn’t built around a single coaching methodology.

Depending upon the challenge, we may draw upon frameworks including:

The Three Spaces
Understanding where you are and the shift required to move forward.

Perfect Teams®
Understanding character, communication and the people around you.

The Freedom Tree
Understanding responsibility, independence and personal growth.

Scale-As-A-System™
Understanding what changes when a business grows beyond the capability of one individual.

And a wider body of practical intellectual property developed from working with thousands of people across hundreds of organisations.

The framework serves the problem. Not the other way around.

For People at a Point of Transition

Executive Coaching is particularly valuable when:

• you’ve recently been promoted;
• you’re stepping into leadership for the first time;
• your responsibilities have grown faster than your confidence;
• you’re leading people who were previously your peers;
• you’re preparing for an important presentation, negotiation or decision;
• your business is beginning to outgrow you;
• you’re successful but know the next stage requires something different;
• or you’ve reached a point where working harder is no longer the answer.

These are often not problems.

They’re transitions.

And transitions require new capability.

A Deliberately Personal Practice

I predominantly work one-to-one.

The first conversation is a fact-find: understanding you, the situation and what you’re trying to achieve.

If I believe I can help, I’ll propose a tailored approach, including the likely timescale and investment.

I deliberately work with a limited number of coaching clients so the relationship remains personal and the work genuinely bespoke.

“With Neil’s help I was able to put together a compelling presentation for the Minister who was deciding whether to let us become a self-funding foundation or shut us down. Our independence and very existence were at threat. Thankfully, my presentation did the job, and today we go from strength to strength.”
— Aubrey S.

What Does Your Next Step Require From You?

Sometimes the challenge isn’t knowing more.

It’s becoming more capable of using what you already know.

Start the conversation