Starting with CEOs
As you might have guessed by now, I love working with Chief Executives and other Directors on a one-to-one basis. In situations where a leader feels for some reason trapped, and disempowered, it is incredibly worthwhile being able to support them in freeing themselves from whatever it is that is holding them back.
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Once I have worked with a CEO, it can work very well to provide some coaching for individual Executive Directors who might have developed some particular behaviours that are having a negative impact on team performance. Informal troubleshooting of this sort really can help individuals to step out of an unhelpful dynamic with one or two colleagues that has gone on for too long.
Over the years, I have taken on this support role for some Board Chairs as well as CEOs, working alongside Board members and supporting them in rethinking what they most want from their role. Sometimes a few hours spent thoughtfully working with key individuals can help to redirect some of their energies that have become tied up in unhelpful rivalries before they cause lasting damage.
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I am constantly struck by the way in which behaviour changes on the part of one or two Directors/ Chief Officers can reverberate around an organisation. Many people forget that when two Directors are involved in some sort of negative rivalry, members of their respective teams will take this on as well and make it their own as a sign of their loyalty to their Director.
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Team coaching
Team coaching is an area of my work that I have found incredibly rewarding. In some ways it's much more challenging than one-to-one coaching, because the process can so easily be undermined if just one member of the team resists what the coach is trying to achieve.
From 2016 to 2020 I was Director of the leadership programme of St. George's House, Windsor Castle, designing and leading an intensive series of 50 development sessions for our cohort of 250 Leadership Fellows. We usually worked with groups of 20 to 25 leaders at any one time, for events lasting from one to three days.
To make this work as well as we wanted, I accepted that sometimes I would need to invest 80% of my energies in one difficult member of a group to make sure that they signed up to what we were about. I knew that if I could win them over the group would be able to go on and achieve some amazing outcomes.
If you ask me to work with your team, I would draw on all of my experiences to develop a customised team development programme for you, with the option of one-to-one work in-between key team meetings to help individuals let go of unhelpful mindsets that are sometimes best tackled without too many witnesses around!
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Experience of working with teams has taught me that 9 times out of 10 it is better to take really tricky inter-personal issues out of the whole team, and work on them with the two or three people involved. Then once they have an agreed way forward they take it back to the team and share it with them.
Coaching fees
Most of my one-to-one working is now online, via Teams or Zoom. I have actually found that for some CEOs one-to-work can be more effective online than in-person, which is something that I never really expected
Whenever I take on a new client, I first offer a 30-minute exploratory discussion online to make sure that we feel we would be a good match. If we decide to go ahead, I ask you to commit to a series of five one-hour sessions, and always ask for at least 24 hours notice if you need to cancel or postpone a session.
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Once we have agreed on what should suit you best, I invoice you up-front. If for any reason you feel that the coaching isn't giving you the support you need, you have the assurance of a full money-back guarantee for any sessions we haven't yet had.
No-one has yet triggered this, but to me it's an important principle. If you want to exit at any time, I give you an immediate refund for any time we haven't yet used, with no questions asked.
We need exceptionally high levels of trust between us if I am to be as useful to you as I hope to be. If we are to achieve this, I think it's really important that you know you're keeping control. I only work with CEOs and other leaders to support you as change-makers. Unless I'm helping you make a greater IMPACT as a leader, I'm not worth the money!
For face-to-face coaching, sometimes a client will come to my home in Goring-on-Thames in South Oxfordshire and sometimes I will travel to see them at their office or home.
When I travel to them, I charge for my travel time and costs at one-third of my hourly coaching fee. ​