The Team

How I work with senior leaders and
leadership teams

Most leaders do not come looking for support or help. They come because senior team meetings no longer feel as straightforward as they once did, even though the people around the table are capable and experienced.

They leave meetings with decisions agreed, but with a sense that not everyone is aligned, or that important points were left unsaid and will return later.

This page sets out the main ways I work with senior leaders, boards, and executive teams in those situations. The work is always tailored, confidential, and grounded in the real context you are working in.

How I work with senior leadership teams

Senior teams often appear aligned, but they struggle to deal with the issues that matter most.

They make decisions, but not everyone fully owns them. The same topics come back without real resolution. Meetings stay polite, but they stop being properly challenging. People handle disagreement carefully, or avoid it altogether.

I work with senior leadership teams to help them bring these issues into the open and deal with them directly, without damaging trust or authority.

This usually means creating the conditions in which senior people can think together honestly and speak more freely. It involves helping the team understand the emotional and relational patterns that shape how they work, supporting more open and productive challenge, and helping the team reach clearer decisions that people actually stand behind. As this shifts, the unspoken tension that slows progress and wears down trust tends to reduce.

This work is particularly helpful after organisational change, during periods of uncertainty, or when a capable team senses that it is drifting, even though nothing obvious appears to be wrong.

Executive coaching for senior leaders

Senior leaders often have concerns they do not feel able to share openly with their team or with peers.

They feel responsible for keeping things on track, but they hesitate to say what they are really thinking, worried it might create conflict, damage relationships, or make matters worse.

My executive coaching gives leaders a confidential space to think these things through properly.

The work does not focus on performance techniques. It helps leaders put words to what they are already noticing, understand how their own behaviour affects the wider team, think more clearly under pressure and uncertainty, and act with greater confidence in difficult situations.

This work is particularly useful when a leader faces a hard decision, a strained relationship, or the ongoing pressure of holding a senior team together.

Facilitated offsites and leadership sessions

Some issues are hard to deal with in the normal flow of meetings, especially when agendas are full and time is tight.

Facilitated offsites and focused leadership sessions give senior teams the time and space to step back, think properly, and address what is getting in the way of working well together and making clear decisions.

These sessions are not motivational events or generic team building exercises. I design them to help leadership teams talk honestly about the real issues they are facing right now.

Teams typically come away with more open and constructive conversations, clearer ownership of decisions and next steps, a better understanding of the tensions shaping how they work, and renewed confidence in how they operate together.

Advisory support for boards and organisations

Boards and organisations sometimes need psychological insight to help them deal with complex leadership situations.

This can include thinking through leadership dynamics, cultural tension, decision making under pressure, or difficult relationships between senior stakeholders.

In these situations, I work as a trusted thinking partner, helping leaders and boards understand what is really going on and decide how best to respond.

How I approach this work

All of my work combines practical organisational experience with psychological insight.

I draw on more than twenty years’ experience as a leadership coach and clinical psychologist. This includes working with executive teams in financial services, professional services, technology, media, and the public sector, as well as teaching on leadership programmes at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.

The work is always: