October 21, 2026

My clients are not only willing, but also keen, to enquire deeply, to explore widely, to reflect, and to go on learning adventures.  They really want to develop, and they realise that that development...

September 24, 2026

Part of what distinguishes us as human beings from other living beings (and indeed from AI) is our capacity to not only to reflect (a cognitive process), but also to be reflexive (using our cognitive,...

August 31, 2026

An exhibition of work by Anish Kapoor at the Hayward Gallery in London features works in Vantablack – the blackest known substance in the world, a super-black nanomaterial that absorbs over 99.96% of ...

July 31, 2026

Sometimes, as much as people want to change – and are sometimes desperate for change – they remain stuck in their existing patterns. They may not even see themselves as stuck: it just feels fam...

June 30, 2026

Surgeons spend decades mastering extraordinary expertise, skill and knowledge. But emphasis on simply the acquisition and implementation of technical knowledge limits understanding of the patient expe...

May 29, 2026

You don’t hear much about joy in leadership.  My own moments of joy include witnessing a client discovering and internalising an insight which opens a door for them to the possibility of change. Being...

April 30, 2026

Focusing only on accomplishing is not enough on its own to help ensure that our conscious and unconscious decisions and judgments go beyond knee-jerk reactions or habits.  Like building a house, the k...

March 26, 2026

Thank you for this quotation, Daniel Stane and Nicola Shearer, and the Compassionate Leadership Certification Training that you’re leading with such insight. Communication goes beyond words Greenspan ...

February 28, 2026

We live in a world in which polarisation is increasingly present and increasingly encouraged.  In leadership, it’s particularly dangerous, partly because it can lead to decisions which exclude importa...

January 31, 2026

The exhibition Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies features – amongst other exhibits – dancers from Company Wayne McGregor rehearsing, performing, and experimenting in an interactive three-dimension...

December 31, 2025

For Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter, wisdom and compassion need to be combined if optimal leadership is to be possible.  Compassionate leadership boosts employee engagement, satisfaction, and we...

November 30, 2025

The leader who appears to be absolutely right, and certain about their rightness, may be revered and celebrated. This view removes responsibility, space for initiative, and power from others in the t...

October 31, 2025

An individual who’s unhappy at work may may well experience stress.  They may feel humiliated and may create strategies to preserve their dignity.  Those strategies may preserve or damage key relation...

September 30, 2025

‘Wounding, healing and wholeness’ feels especially relevant to a world that I experience as increasingly fractured and polarised, and presented so often as black and white, characterised by schisms. ...

August 29, 2025

I’m conscious of the benefits of going slowly enough in a coaching relationship to allow the coaching client the time and space to be able to surface what’s actually going on for them – to begin to pe...

July 31, 2025

I’ve recently co-facilitated with Jeremy Keeley a workshop for Sadler Heath on love in leadership.  When organisations focus on interconnection and interdependence, -characteristics of an organisation...

June 30, 2025

My client came to coaching in some distress. She worked very hard, and loved her work, but wanted to have more discipline in the organisation of her non-clinical time and to work on her habitual patt...

May 27, 2025

Uncertainty is a major feature of complexity – and neither expertise, efficiency nor control alone will allow us to adequately engage with it. If an attempt at orderly, predictable efficiency is all ...

April 21, 2025

The exhibition ‘Soil: The World at Our Feet’ displayed the hidden depths of soil. Soil is the great interconnector’. The fungus network explores the labyrinth of the soil, transporting nutrients to p...

March 31, 2025

On a group residential weekend of experiential learning the contextual theme was ‘edge’ – learning on the edge, right on the edge between sea and land. A cacao ceremony offered me a step towards a pro...

February 24, 2025

She was an entrepreneur, passionate about, but exhausted by, the demands of building her business. She felt like the business was running her rather than vice versa. She knew that something had to c...

January 31, 2025

A fascinating new research report on spaciousness has just been published: ‘Permission to Pause: Rediscovering ‘spaciousness’ at work’, by Professor Megan Reitz and John Higgins. The researchers high...

December 28, 2024

I find myself curious about not only the somatic nature of memory and memories, but also about the memories that exist in organisations because of, for example, individuals’ relationships with previou...

November 30, 2024

I’m remembering moments when clients have articulated a sense of shame in not being able to sort all their challenges out themselves. However, these challenges – and many others – are a normal ...

November 13, 2024

Every November 13th, the world celebrates World Kindness Day – a global reminder of how small acts of kindness can create a ripple effect that strengthens our connections to one another. Kindne...

October 31, 2024

Three of my coaching clients have decided to leave their jobs and their employers. In all three cases their reasons related to the way they were treated at work. One felt diminished, shut down and r...

September 24, 2024

Earlier this year I had the opportunity of participating in a mindfulness meditation retreat themed ‘Finding the Way Home’ (I mentioned it briefly in my blog on ‘Home: what does it mean for the leader...

August 30, 2024

What does ‘home’ actually mean? What will we tolerate or sacrifice in order to find home? What isolation, loneliness or lack of rootedness is acceptable? What might we cling on to from any previous s...

July 31, 2024

Two topics relevant to leadership have arisen for me: on the one hand, some leaders’ effort (and expectation) to control, and, on the other, the reality that all organisations and teams operate in a c...

June 28, 2024

For some time I’ve been in conversation with Julian Burton, change consultant, creative artist, facilitator and leadership coach. Julian has created a number of pictures that have reflected scenarios ...

May 31, 2024

A polarised position is characterised by a certainty. Boundaries are created which become increasingly strong, rigid and immovable with the passage of time and the reinforcement of the conviction of ...

April 30, 2024

Feeling psychologically unsafe evokes a range of emotions and behaviours: anxiety, lack of trust, loss of motivation, indecisiveness, reticence, withdrawal and loss of engagement, to name but a few. ...

March 30, 2024

It’s so easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole of ‘doing’ in order just to get through every day, forgetting engagement with the bigger picture – what it’s about, where we’re really going, what...

February 29, 2024

We are living in times of unprecedented, and growing, complexity, which it is the leader’s role to manage, negotiate and enable their people to flourish in.   Vertical development recognises that adul...

January 26, 2024

There’s a common perception that the effective leader is the leader with an imposing presence. It can be easy to assume that the expressive, obvious character in the room is also the most obvious lead...

December 28, 2023

Conflict is usually costly, painful and damaging.  What are the alternatives?  Some might say compassion.  Others might say community, cohesion, or connection.  Others might opt for peace or safety or...

November 29, 2023

The author of ‘Time Shelter’, Georgi Gospodinov, treats time as a gift to the sufferer of memory loss, rather than the enemy it so often seems to be as a factor in our working lives. This perception o...

October 31, 2023

Imbalance in the way responsibility is used (and not used) in systems of all sorts, including organisations, is large-scale and widespread. Too much responsibility may be assumed (albeit unconsciously...

October 30, 2023

Amy Edmondson’s new book ‘Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive’ explains how we get failure (a potentially invaluable learning opportunity) wrong, and how...

September 28, 2023

I recently had the opportunity to visit the stunning David Hockney exhibition in London (‘David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away)’. It prompted reflection for me both on...

August 31, 2023

I often hear leaders characterising themselves and their styles by reference to a set of behaviours, or a set of beliefs or values, or a combination of behaviours and beliefs.  It’s in this terr...

July 31, 2023

Objective-orientated – directional – coaching will be appropriate for certain clients with certain types of coaching need. However, such coaching isn’t developmental coaching, or indeed tr...

June 30, 2023

I’ve been working with a number of clients challenged by managing upwards or managing relationships with peers. In a variety of ways, I invited these clients to become aware of the bodily sensations ...

May 31, 2023

Positivity of thinking, behaviour, communication, leadership, and the way we relate to each other as human beings brings benefits.  And yet, positivity without a foundation of reality and connection w...

April 28, 2023

Following his arrival in a new role, a leader had been struggling with what he experienced as his line manager’s micromanagement and feeling like he had no voice. His line manager seemed to constantl...

March 31, 2023

She was a senior manager in a male-dominated environment. Did she really need power in order to establish and maintain her position?  Did she have power by virtue of her position, and if so, only bec...

February 28, 2023

What is reflection? First of all, reflection after a coaching session, or after a learning experience between sessions, is space for enquiry, to build on the content of the coaching session or the exp...

January 30, 2023

The key benefits of executive coaching are learning, development and change. Not only a coach enables those benefits, but a leader does too if they’re to get the most from their people and to enable,...

December 31, 2022

It’s so easy to get tangled up as we race through our lives, as a crisis, or even simply the demands of the moment, grasp our attention.  In the process the plot – our purpose and our place – of...

November 30, 2022

Coaching through COVID was born out of a compassionate response to what NHS and care workers were going through when COVID hit the UK in March 2020, and intended most of all to serve, rather than help...

October 31, 2022

He was a C-suite leader in a multinational company, fulfilling a demanding, multi-faceted role. His CEO wanted staff in the office four days a week, and he was beginning to feel peripheral to his fam...

August 31, 2022

An emergency admission to hospital….. Until the surgery had been completed and pronounced successful, and the biopsy showed there was no ongoing problem, the nature of what my life was to be wa...

June 22, 2022

A potential client, ‘a man in a hurry’, was looking for answers.  Now.   Another prospective client slowed down long enough to engage with the notion of the challenge – and the benefits – to him of th...

May 29, 2022

I’m with a group of colleagues, learning about experiential leadership with executive coach and developer of leaders and teams, Jude Jennison, and her herd of horses.  With a horse it’s critical to be...

April 28, 2022

Client A is close to burnout.  He constantly over-stretches himself to meet other people’s requests for help and for task fulfilment.  As a child, he felt neither loved nor lovable: the only way he ev...

March 31, 2022

The primary emotions that arise from losing a sense of belonging need to be attended to, just as much as organisations need to acknowledge the contributions made by those who have left. Endings (and t...

February 28, 2022

Voice matters because it is a channel for the self-expression that people need in order to feel acknowledged and seen, and – more broadly – because it can have a significant impact for a team or organ...

January 31, 2022

Family therapist Barry Mason characterises solutions as ‘only dilemmas that are less of a dilemma than the dilemma one had’. There’s no such thing as right or wrong in the coaching encounter: no pred...

December 15, 2021

Are you an NHS/care sector worker struggling to manage stress, get your mojo back or work out next steps? If so, we can help! Coaching through Covid and Beyond offers FREE confidential independent sup...

November 30, 2021

Pro bono coaching programme Coaching through COVID and Beyond (of which I’m a co-founder and a member of the core team) has won the Coaching at Work magazine award of External Coaching Champion ...

October 31, 2021

Trauma is a living expression of a life-changing experience that often can’t be expressed in words but is a fundamental – and literally visceral – part of an individual’s identity. The range of manif...

September 30, 2021

You might recognise a situation where an organisation’s strategy is unclear, poorly-defined, poorly communicated or in constant flux.  In this context, the role and place of any individual in the orga...

August 26, 2021

Fear and courage are intertwined when it comes to leadership of self and others. Fear is inevitable and – if unchecked – inhibits and erodes performance, versatility and the creativity tha...

July 30, 2021

The news emerged that Dame Clare Marx, Chair of the General Medical Council, was stepping down from her post, having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She reflects on her career that ‘in my happi...

June 30, 2021

One of the most striking features of power is, it seems to me, how multi-faceted the topic is – and how richly the facets interrelate and intersect and interdepend. There are many and varied implicati...

May 28, 2021

The client’s terms of engagement transgressed my own deepest values, including integrity. This kind of behaviour on the part of consultancies seems widespread. Further, the attendant disservice to t...

April 30, 2021

I accept that it may make no sense to juxtapose a street sweeper’s relatively simple situation with my clients’ complex roles and environments.  On the other hand, I’m very curious about how lea...

March 31, 2021

I’ve just done something I’ve never done before: I’ve handed back a 4-year contract. At the heart of my decision was an inability to tolerate a client’s terms of engagement – both the formal, explici...

February 27, 2021

What happens when a leader or a nation sees the future not through a lens of relationship, action and impact, but through a lens of isolation, cutting off supply routes of collaboration and support?  ...

January 29, 2021

I’m privileged to have had a blog published in BMJ Leader, published in BMJ Leader, one of the publications in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) stable. The blog focuses on the very particular ...

December 31, 2020

They say the toughest experiences are also the richest sources of learning. As 2020 closes, I look back indeed on the richest and most intense year of learning I can remember. As the hidden has erup...

December 3, 2020

Free support – psychological PPE coaching – is available at Coaching through COVID for key workers impacted by COVID

November 30, 2020

If we ever wondered what it would be like to be inside the drum of a washing machine, turned upside down, and over and over, multiple times, spun, and tangled in ways we’ve never before experienced, t...

October 30, 2020

Silence can denote a holding back from what needs to be pointed out or challenged, a reluctance to speak about one’s own or others’ mental health challenges, or not enquiring into experience of racial...

September 30, 2020

Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, has been researching psychological safety for 20 years, and defines it as is a shared belief that you will no...

August 31, 2020

Uncertainty has always been a constant in organisational life, but COVID adds something new to the mix. The effects of uncertainty on individual members of the workforce include anxiety, and concomit...

July 31, 2020

Rather than it being the leader’s role to know all the answers, it’s their role to recognise that uncertainty and complexity demand a new approach to leadership:  an approach which means the leader ca...

June 30, 2020

I’ve been working with two leaders who are preoccupied with doing a very high-quality job at a time of significant external pressure and uncertainty – and both are experiencing extremes of stres...

May 31, 2020

The isolation that has been a feature of life worldwide ever since the known beginning of COVID-19 in Wuhan is fundamentally at odds with the fact that human beings need to connect with each other in ...

May 31, 2020

Coaching through COVID is a pro bono coaching programme which offers a listening ear by psychologically-minded coaches to any NHS or care worker during and beyond COVID-19

April 30, 2020

While it’s still early days, this programme is without question delivering value at a time of considerable stress, anxiety and exhaustion for NHS staff dealing with COVID-19. High-quality coaches at a...

March 31, 2020

In COVID-19, NHS medical staff are facing an encounter with an illness whose scale and rate of transmission is nothing like anything they’ve ever encountered before.  They are frightened, stressed, an...

February 28, 2020

The underpinnings of clients’ ‘too little time’ often turn out to be something from a completely different source, such as patterns related to taking responsibility, unclear prioriti...

January 31, 2020

For momentum to build and sustain, whether for growth, cutting costs or increasing profit or benefit, organisations need their people to be aligned in their purpose and focus, and they need their lead...

December 31, 2019

Leadership is at least as much about being as about doing – so a leader’s presence and gravitas help resource them to motivate and inspire others. Personal presence is most obviously about auth...

November 29, 2019

When most of us see or hear – or indeed experience – behaviour by our leaders at work that lacks integrity, justice or humanity, our usual response is to keep our heads down and carry on, ...

November 15, 2019

My article ‘Saying goodbye to the glitter’ has been published in the November 2019 issue of Coaching at Work. When a very high achiever is obliged, or has chosen, to move on from the peak ...

October 24, 2019

Leaders who are at the peak of their careers, while anticipating or indeed experiencing the fulfilment of achievement, are frequently lonely, isolated and lacking the safety of honest conversations. ...

September 30, 2019

The need for the leader and the manager to influence effectively has always been important. Now, however, their contexts are becoming more uncertain and more challenging. I’m coming across more inst...

September 28, 2019

My article ‘Trust and safety in coaching’ has been published in the September edition of Coaching at Work. When a client trusts their coach they can feel safe enough to engage with their ...

August 30, 2019

Albert Einstein wrote: “A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as somethi...

July 31, 2019

The remit of leaders is to develop and drive strategy, and to inspire its implementation. However, those in leadership roles can find themselves trapped in the detail of the operational. If they’re ...

June 30, 2019

Confidence is the result of resolving or settling issues which may be related to identity, belonging, self-esteem, self-acceptance, resilience, the culture of the client’s organisation, or indeed coun...

May 29, 2019

My article ‘Parallel or converging?’, published in the May/June 2019 edition of Coaching at Work, takes a geometrical look at how I interpret my own experience, the client’s wellbein...

April 30, 2019

I’m coaching two individuals who are on the verge of burning out. Both are hugely committed to their jobs and their organisations, both are talented, and both are high achievers. And no-one in their...

March 28, 2019

Talented people may feel a sense of isolation – lonely (nearly) at the top of their organisations – either because their perceived currency has diminished, or because it has been inconvenient to...

March 27, 2019

My article ‘The end and the beginning’ – Coaching at Work’s reflection column in the March/April issue – takes as its context the Buddhist wisdom that what the caterpilla...

February 28, 2019

Uncertainty is an inevitable part of both our personal lives and our organisational lives. Self-awareness, self-understanding, and awareness of the systems we’re part of give us a foundation of ‘the ...

January 31, 2019

Humility is the capacity to recognise that you – how ever junior to me – offer something (a talent, a skill, an insight) that I don’t have, and that in that sense you are important to my success as a ...

January 24, 2019

My latest article, in Coaching at Work magazine’s reflection column (Jan/Feb 2019 edition), looks at our reluctance as human beings to face uncomfortable facts, and the implications for organisa...

December 28, 2018

There’s an interconnection between a leader stepping appropriately into their authority, on the one hand, and their courage, on the other. An effective leader understands their team and their c...

November 21, 2018

My latest article has been published in Coaching at Work magazine’s reflection column. In it I explore the question that leaders sometimes put to themselves (and to their coaches): ‘Who am I if...

October 29, 2018

Trust is a fragile commodity, and is damaged when the psychological contract (even more than the formal contract) is not respected and/or there is abuse of goodwill, when people feel exploited, disres...

September 28, 2018

The task of leadership in our time is increasingly often described as complex – and leaders are often challenged as to how to deal with it. Leaders whom I work with arrive sooner or later at the real...

September 27, 2018

In the Coaching at Work conference session I ran in July 2018, we set out to explore differences and connections between generations. Generation Z guests wanted to be recognised as individuals and to...

August 31, 2018

Leaders are constantly required to deliver more with less. But their resilience can’t be taken for granted. Resources that are particularly valuable for building resilience include: Self-compassion ...

July 26, 2018

Leaders often start their careers by excelling technically. However, as their careers progress, they require an increasingly nuanced approach – particularly in relation to communication. Leadership ...

June 30, 2018

Organisations which buy coaching can, knowingly or unknowingly, prevent the embedding of the learning it enables: organisational cultures can pull in the opposite direction from the messages from such...

May 30, 2018

Some senior people I coach are being stretched to a point where their wellbeing has reached dangerously low levels. At the heart of their recovering their health and balance is the realisation that, ...

April 27, 2018

Women talk as much as ever about not being acknowledged or included – and worse – by male colleagues. The way forward in terms of organisations is for leaders to change the culture: this takes c...

March 30, 2018

Leaders may give away their authority by prioritising other people’s agendas and interests over their own – often indiscriminately and usually unconsciously. This blind loyalty to an assumption that q...

February 28, 2018

Paul Gilbert, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Derby, defines compassion as “a sensitivity to suffering in self and others with a commitment to try to alleviate and prevent ...

February 26, 2018

My article on ‘Our pale blue dot’ was published in Coaching at Work, March/April 2018 edition. Carl Sagan coined the concept of the ‘pale blue dot’, which for me summarises both our insign...

January 31, 2018

We all – and particularly leaders – seem to be experiencing more and more pressure in our modern world. The need to build and maintain resilience seems more pressing than ever. By ‘resili...

January 9, 2018

January 5, 2018

Transactional coaching objectives are irrelevant to some of my clients. ‘Doing’ keeps them out of trouble but offers no fulfilment or satisfaction, whereas – ironically – ‘bein...

December 28, 2017

December 28, 2017

On a workshop for the RCN’s internal coaches on coaching for wellbeing, delivered with colleague Valerie Stevenson:   Lindsay and Val delivered a one day workshop for the RCN’s internal coa...

December 28, 2017

December 28, 2017

December 28, 2017

December 28, 2017

Mental ill-health in organisations may be a taboo subject and may carry a stigma. Sufferers may suffer in silence until their condition worsens to the point of crisis. When crisis does strike, in add...

November 30, 2017

My article ‘Under the Influence’ has been published in the Nov/Dec 2017 issue of ‘Coaching at Work’. When line managers attempt to use coaching as a tool for performance manag...

October 31, 2017

The deepest human need is to belong. A strong sense of belonging and connectedness is positively associated with wellbeing, happiness and mental health. Feelings of belonging are understood to influe...

September 30, 2017

Several of the senior leaders I work with are frightened. Not only is the fear corrosive at a personal level in terms of wellbeing, stress, confidence and shame, but it also inhibits performance and ...

August 30, 2017

Confidence that is depleted – which often results from an individual interpreting an external event or behaviour, and believing (albeit unconsciously) the message that they construct from it – leads v...

July 12, 2017

Some of my coaching clients have difficulty staying upright in the stream of their organisational cultures, especially when they aren’t aligned with the values or behaviours in those cultures: t...

June 30, 2017

Line managers can unwittingly create damaging stress in the relationships they have with their reports. This can come from their modelling themselves against others whose values they don’t shar...

May 31, 2017

Leadership is particularly complex and demanding in professional service firms such as law and accountancy. In such firms not only is profit generated through each fee-earner’s billable hours, ...

May 4, 2017

When is coaching actually performance management? My reflection column in the May issue of Coaching at Work explores my experience that there’s no clear, constant, easily-definable line between the t...

April 28, 2017

Relationships – between people, and between people and events, behaviours, beliefs, cultures and outputs – are the key to organisational health. Sometimes skilled, capable and experienced...

March 31, 2017

When a new broom comes in to a senior role with high expectations, but is inexplicably unable to occupy their authority, the situation can benefit from a systemic constellations perspective. This mea...

March 27, 2017

Clients and potential clients respond with more energy to their experience of how I am than to what I know – and equally, who I am, and how my ‘being’ shows up, have a significantly greater impa...

February 27, 2017

Compassion at work increases our willingness to trust: our brains respond more positively to bosses who have shown us empathy – and compassion increases the health and wellbeing not only of employees ...

January 30, 2017

My article ‘Nourish Your Practice’ has been published in Coaching at Work January 2017. My reflection before and after every coaching session is an intrinsic part of any coaching that I d...

January 30, 2017

I’ve achieved the Practitioner Certificate in Systemic Coaching and Facilitation. My use of constellations – which are a key part of this work – facilitates clients’ growth th...

December 15, 2016

In a recent article in ‘Coaching at Work’ I distil learning from a workshop on the Neuroscience of Gender and Performance. Nurture rather than nature accounts for many of the gender diffe...

December 5, 2016

Attending the cremation of a previous client, and being surrounded by dozens of people who had been part of his life, made me realise that in a coaching relationship I hear and see only a tiny window ...

November 30, 2016

Unless we know how to lead ourselves, we can’t expect to be effective leaders of others – and self-coaching engenders a capacity for self-leadership as a pre-condition for leading others. High-...

October 31, 2016

Creating an impact that is authentic – and therefore compelling and lasting – means going beyond the tools and techniques for managing body language, creating rapport and getting ‘in...

September 23, 2016

We are witnessing the rise of post-truth politics: a culture in which statements are framed largely by appeals to emotion, completely disconnected from the political facts, and in which factual rebut...

September 2, 2016

My latest article explores what leadership needs to be in the light of the shock Brexit referendum result – and what will now change about my coaching during this period of uncertainty

August 31, 2016

Wilful blindness – the blinding of oneself to uncomfortable facts – comes from fear of conflict and fear of change. A powerful, unconscious impulse to obey, conform, and preserve our sense...

August 10, 2016

Knowledge and experience alone may have little or nothing to do with what makes for an excellent coach – and yet until now many of the principles underlying coach assessment have been about competenci...

July 29, 2016

Consultant geriatrician Kate Granger, who set up, and became the force behind, the campaign #hellomynameis, has died of terminal cancer aged 34. Passionate about person-centred, compassionate care, s...

July 14, 2016

My latest article to be published in Coaching at Work magazine looks at how a coaching client’s lack of clarity in the contracting process may be problematic at the beginning of a coaching progr...

July 13, 2016

Following a sell-out we are repeating our workshop on ‘Neuroscience, Gender and Performance’ in London on Thursday 24 November 2016 14.00 to 17.00. If you would like further details or to attend, ple...

June 30, 2016

Leaders need not only to fully understand the issue they’re dealing with, especially if it challenges groupthink, but they also need to be able to communicate it in a way that is accessible and compel...

May 27, 2016

Organisational culture shows up in literally hundreds of different ways in which people behave and live out attitudes and beliefs. Changing a culture needs to be addressed both at the level of the l...

May 25, 2016

My article ‘Ruptures in rapport’ has been published in Coaching at Work. It explores where the responsibility lies for wellbeing at work, particularly since in some organisations the ment...

April 29, 2016

In cross-cultural environments the coach needs be cautious about challenging the assumptions that they might otherwise challenge: if the client’s attitude or belief comes from their culture of o...

March 28, 2016

What a caterpillar calls death a wise man calls a butterfly. The coaching client travels from their current identity, via transition, to their new identity, and the coach travels with them from their...

March 21, 2016

The next workshop in our series is entitled ‘The Neuroscience of Gender’. It will cover: the difference in structure between female and male brains; male and female brains might function differently...

March 7, 2016

My article ‘Lean back and learn’, just published in Coaching at Work, looks at the use of constellations in coaching. This approach demands both high-quality presence by the coach and the ...

February 29, 2016

Doctoral research reveals that the experiences and aspirations of ‘the talent’ are often different from their organisations’ expectations of them and aspirations for them. What’s th...

January 6, 2016

My new article on ‘The vulnerable coach’ appears in the January/February 2016 edition of Coaching at Work. if I’m vulnerable I have a greater capacity to be non-judgmental and to compass...

January 4, 2016

What kind of leader are you? And what kind of leader do you want to be? What’s the style that gets you best results and feels right to you? When you return to work after a break you may have a more...

January 4, 2016

January 4, 2016

January 4, 2016

January 4, 2016

December 24, 2015

When leaders are promoted – and have focused great effort on actually getting the job – there’s a risk of not putting enough effort, or not early enough, into making a success of the...

November 30, 2015

Senior women at work, especially those working part-time, may not be as safe as they would like. They need to develop career resilience: a flexibility in being prepared for – and handling – the...

November 12, 2015

Leaders can become so embroiled in their work that they lose their identity: they have so totally dedicated themselves to achieving outstanding results that they’ve lost touch with the boundary betwee...

October 29, 2015

For some people change appears unsafe because they fear they’ll no longer be who they are. However, it’s not behaviour or thinking patterns that define who we are. What inherently and un...

September 28, 2015

The relevance of resilience to what can be the challenging process of transition is striking. Leaders have change imposed upon them through, for example, merger or acquisition, or they may be moving i...

September 25, 2015

My article on my role as coach when I’m working with clients who have a very different concept of leadership from mine, or who are in organisations where the quality of leadership leaves somethi...

August 28, 2015

A meaningful approach to organisational wellbeing will go significantly beyond tactics and process. Building and nurturing wellbeing has to be a way of being (albeit complemented by a set of actions) ...

August 26, 2015

Mark McMordie, Director of Coaching at coaching company Coachmatch, reviews Lindsay’s e-book ‘Become the Leader You Are: Self-Leadership through Executive Coaching’

July 8, 2015

My article on my own influence (and what happened when I found myself having an opinion rather than staying dispassionate) in coaching sessions has been published in the July/August 2015 issue of Coac...

July 2, 2015

At Coaching at Work magazine’s annual conference on 1st July 2015 Lindsay was awarded Highly Commended for Coaching at Work’s award 2015 in the category Best Thought Leadership Article/Ser...

May 31, 2015

The recent Sadler Heath event ‘What’s Needed Now?’ – focused on an ‘exploration of listening for the right thing to do’ – highlighted big themes for me in rel...

May 28, 2015

In this review of the e-book by Lindsay Wittenberg – ‘Become the leader You Are’ – Dr Carole Pemberton, Visiting Professor at the University of Ulster Business School, comments...

April 29, 2015

A client who had lost her role as a high-potential in dramatic circumstances may have needed counselling – but her coach realised that even more than this she needed some straightforward, practi...

April 27, 2015

Organisations with high levels of wellbeing retain their people and in many other ways too, profitability, efficiency and effectiveness increase as wellbeing increases. Positivity breeds positivity. ...

March 18, 2015

‘Become the Leader You Are: Self-Leadership through Executive Coaching’ – the e-book written by Lindsay Wittenberg – is now published and available for download.

March 13, 2015

‘Power Games’ – Lindsay’s article in the March/April 2015 issue of ‘Coaching at Work’ explores the use of power in the coaching relationship – and particular...

January 28, 2015

Our workshop for coaches, consultants, and trainers ‘The Neuroscience of Individual and Group Decision Making and Risk’ with neuroscientist Dr Geoff Bird will take place in London on Thurs 30th...

January 5, 2015

As an executive coach I believe that I need to take some risk if I’m to offer my coaching clients the opportunity to stretch and grow – and that such risks offer me too the opportunity to grow and exp...

December 25, 2014

Hazel has 25 years’ experience in HR and Change Leadership with British Gas and GlaxoSmithKline, reaching the role of VP HR for the Global Vaccines Supply Chain, and has worked for over 4 years in pro...

December 18, 2014

To work effectively with difference, the starting point is to understand and be aware of oneself: behaviours, emotions, interpretations, assumptions, and the impact of assumptions. It means taking a h...

November 7, 2014

Executives who have taken their careers in hand in a holistic sense, thinking ‘whole-life’ rather than simply in terms of the next apparently logical step on the ladder, are more likely to enjoy caree...

November 3, 2014

Coaching clients who can’t see the bigger picture of their challenge can look their problem in the eye by externalising the issue: working with the systemic factors of their environment can brin...

October 27, 2014

Your personal brand conveys what makes you compelling, memorable and interesting, and becomes increasingly important the more senior the roles you take on. Expressing your personal brand relates to y...

September 22, 2014

Leaders who embrace the process of learning and raising their levels of self-awareness, self-understanding, understanding of others and understanding of the systems and contexts they operate within st...

September 9, 2014

‘You’re uneblievable’ – the latest article in my regular reflection column – has been published in ‘Coaching at Work’. I’m inspired by Dr Kate Granger,...

August 15, 2014

The leader who builds on, and develops, their self-awareness in such a way that they can step back emotionally from situations to put their own thinking on hold, and empathise with the players in thos...

July 28, 2014

In order to work effectively with difference, the first two steps for the leader are, first, to understand and be aware of their own thinking, emotional processes and place in their systems, and, seco...

July 10, 2014

My latest article in my reflection column has been published in ‘Coaching at Work’. It explores the opportunities and traps inherent in the first coaching session with a new client. ...

June 26, 2014

Leadership development means embracing the challenges and being courageous enough to be open to learning, whether that learning is unpalatable or affirming. It means being curious, vulnerable and inv...

June 9, 2014

In contexts ranging from multinational corporations to social networking, leaders and their teams interact, communicate and influence others in multiple different cultural settings simultaneously. Cu...

May 12, 2014

Although we’re all independent human beings, we’re also interdependent, functioning within several systems simultaneously that provide the framework for our relationships to people and organisations,...

May 6, 2014

Lindsay’s article ‘Gold from Dust’ appears in Coaching at Work magazine May 2014. The client often gives pointers to their most significant issues in their first coaching session &#...

April 30, 2014

Tickets are sold out for the WittenbergEvans workshop on The Neuroscience of Wellbeing, Stress and Mindfulness in London on Thurs 19th June 2014

April 21, 2014

Amongst all learning interventions, the developmental and transformational style of the best executive coaching can equip the leader to deliver leadership that creates a better organisation – and, som...

April 10, 2014

A workshop on ‘The Neuroscience of Wellbeing, Stress and Mindfulness’ will take place on Thursday, 19 June 2014 from 13:30 to 17:00 at the Gestalt Centre in London. It will interest coaches, trainers...

April 2, 2014

Leaders who know how to optimise the conditions for their own and their people’s learning are going to maximise their chances of success for themselves and their organisations. Senior people – indeed...

March 10, 2014

The pressure on senior people to work at speed risks disempowerment and threatens high-quality outcomes. Slowing down and reflecting, thus developing insight, can help enable them to create outcomes t...

February 20, 2014

Our next neuroscience event, with academic researcher and qualified coach Dr Geoff Bird,will take place on Thursday 19th June 2014 13.30-17.00, and will explore the neuroscience of wellbeing, stress a...

February 6, 2014

New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has pinpointed meaning at work as a fundamental goal because that’s ‘what makes the best work happen’. In my career development coaching with executives and senior man...

January 27, 2014

Lindsay’s article on what really goes on in contracting has been published in Coaching at Work magazine, January-February 2014 issue. The article explores the fact that, especially for coaching clien...

January 23, 2014

In most organisations baby-boomers (and older) work alongside Generations X and Y. Their attitudes to pace can divide them: Xers and Yers often resist the idea of slowing down long enough to reflect ...

December 9, 2013

Leaders are sometimes solitary and lonely figures, disconnected from their team . Leaders who who listen to their teams see in return greater engagement, better retention rates and bigger, more long-...

November 29, 2013

Lindsay’s article on extremes of uncertainty in coaching has been published in Coaching at Work magazine, November-December 2013 issue. The article explores what works when clients find themsel...

November 11, 2013

Humans tend to overestimate the likelihood of positive events, and underestimate the likelihood of negative events. Optimists work harder and longer hours than pessimists, which may account for their...

November 6, 2013

Sheridans, a leading media law firm. Its expanding Employment Group has a wealth of experience across a number of industries, particularly in the media sector.  The Group have a direct but personable ...

November 6, 2013

Ferri Montana Ltd, a niche consulting practice focusing on organisational development, and offering services including: assessment of organisational effectiveness; organisational performance improveme...

November 6, 2013

Paul Siegenthaler: a specialist in M&A business integration, with a focus on pan-European mergers and acquisitions, providing leadership and delivery of complex international cross-functional prog...

November 6, 2013

Executive coaches Katharine St John Brooks and Jo Bostock on the Coaching Matrix, which connects people who are experiencing coaching into a Matrix. This integrated approach drives improved performanc...

November 6, 2013

Executive coach Carole Pemberton for group events and programmes on the development of resilience in self and others, and coaching for resilience. Our approach is based on experiential learning, aware...

November 5, 2013

A trained management consultant and coach, Katharine specialises in performance and leadership coaching. Her coaching clients refer to her energy, empathy, clarity of thinking and enthusiasm. She has ...

November 4, 2013

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October 31, 2013

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When you are facing change.  When times are tough.  When your career is no longer working. When confidence has taken a knock.  Those are the times when clients recognise the skills which Carole brings...

October 31, 2013

Barbara helps people to turn their thinking on its head.  She enables them to see their situations from completely new and unexpected perspectives, and to let go of their old baggage and beliefs, like...

October 31, 2013

Rachel has 16 years’ experience working in the broadcast and telecommunications industry. She created and led award winning teams in competitive global markets and broadcast to radio and television au...

October 31, 2013

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September 30, 2013

Research has shown that engaged organisations experienced 11.74% quarterly revenue growth compared to a 6.30% decline in revenue at organisations with less engagement – and resilience helps buil...

September 26, 2013

When I’ve been truly present, when I’m delivering a deep level of listening, when I’m in a relationship of ‘connected separateness’ with my executive coaching clients – without an attachment to ...

September 9, 2013

My belief is that leadership is about creating momentum for a better world by inspiring and engaging other people: in other words, enabling human flourishing. If leaders are to get things done throug...

August 19, 2013

In the chaos and confusion that sometimes is the hallmark of life at work, while their organisations are demanding big results, what leaders really need is the simplicity and peace to know who they ar...

July 29, 2013

David Bowie, pop artist and visual artist, was a creative and innovative pioneer. The leaders we need in our turbulent and fast-changing climate likewise value experimentation, creativity and innovati...

July 8, 2013

Several of my executive coaching clients feel like they’re on a treadmill, stressed and under pressure. And yet it’s exceptional for any of them to choose to get off the treadmill. Instead...

June 24, 2013

Development is the release of more of an individual’s potential and transformation is a fundamental shift in thinking, feeling or behaving. In my experience the shift is often around a previous...

June 10, 2013

Mindfulness training and practice enable sustained attention, an improved capacity to regulate emotions and to manage that chatter in the mind that can so inhibit constructive thinking, reduced stress...

June 3, 2013

Mindful awareness is about learning to pay attention, in the present moment, and without judgement. It’s like training a muscle – training attention to be where you want it to be. It’...

May 24, 2013

Leaders who treat their people as autonomous adults are likely to get the best out of them: an autocratic style gets quick, short-term results but anything less than an empowering style doesn’t adequa...

May 10, 2013

Through healthy relationships individuals flourish, they become balanced and resilient, and they contribute to the world around them with energy and commitment. In such circumstances it’s relatively ...

May 3, 2013

Leaders are sometimes tempted to focus on the task and the process for fulfilling that task. Such an approach may bring short-term results, but the real differences are made when the leader focuses on...

April 26, 2013

We all have not one but several selves, and several self-esteems, and it is in part the job of the coach to enable the coaching client to raise their awareness of their range of selves rather than of ...

April 22, 2013

An authentic leader is true to himself or herself, who therefore engenders trust, who leverages the potential of diversity, and who is able to manage with integrity the tensions between their own agen...

April 15, 2013

We all deliver our best by being who we are – and for most of us that means learning how to become who we are. Leaders who accept and embrace their authenticity often find both personal peace and an...

April 11, 2013

LWL is partnering with Ferri Montana Ltd, a niche consulting practice focusing on organisational development.

April 9, 2013

I’m privileged to be coaching UNICEF leaders again. They need a challenging blend of mastery of people skills, diplomatic skills, technical skills, knowledge, vision, initiative, adaptability, resilie...

April 4, 2013

Trust is a key enabler to getting the results that organisations need. Leaders need to nurture relationships at work and need to be able to trust their teams. And their teams need to be able to trus...

April 1, 2013

Twitter has announced today, 1st April, that they are shifting to a two-tiered service: Everyone can use the basic service, Twttr, but they will only get consonants. For five dollars a month, you can ...

March 29, 2013

On 10th May in London, our partner ANKLe (A New Kind of Leadership) is running a workshop entitled ‘Making Culture Change Stick’. Participants will explore what they mean by culture chang...

March 29, 2013

The 30 Day Challenge draws to a close. I’ve been challenged, supported, and held accountable, and I’ve gained some insights. I’m learning about blogging – and about topics I&#...

March 28, 2013

My core message is ‘Connect’ – make relationships and nurture them. When people connect, they care enough to hear what’s going on for the other person without judging it, pre-empting, advising or inte...

March 23, 2013

A humorous short video on the perils implicit in development professionals ‘knowing what’s good for their clients’.

March 22, 2013

The S curve, developed by Dr Peter Robertson, is a model of organisational development. To survive in the long-term, organisations need to jump from the stage of squeezing out efficiencies and closin...

March 21, 2013

Higher GDP doesn’t make people happy. Does being happy enable higher GDP? Does it enable more productivity, creativity and engagement in your organisation? And does being unhappy or stressed di...

March 17, 2013

“The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

March 16, 2013

Leaders who trust their people, and who are trusted, tend to be rewarded with engagement, motivation, discretionary effort, creativity, retention, integrity and better decision-making. Look to the N...

March 13, 2013

“Visible reality is only a small crumb of what’s really out there”. ‘Light Show’ at the Hayward Gallery in London illuminates the coaching relationship as enabling the coachin...

March 11, 2013

Obvious to You, Amazing to Others‘ is an engaging little 98-second cartoon about the value of not underestimating your creative talents: to you they’re normal and everyday, but to others they may be e...

March 8, 2013

Simply by being there, in the room with the client, as coach or therapist or consultant, we impose our ego – whether by directing the conversation via the next question we ask, offering an interpretat...

March 5, 2013

One of the foundation stones of executive coaching is the need for the coach (and the coaching) to be ‘ego-free’ (or at least ‘ego-minimised’). If the coaching client is going to achieve meaningful a...

January 31, 2013

LWL’s stand at the HR Directors Business Summit in Birmingham on 22-23 Jan 2013 was informally awarded Best Stand by other exhibitors at the event.  They told us they valued its freshness, its c...

January 11, 2013

As workforces become more and more diverse by the week, the quality of leadership will have to step up to match.  Leaders need to be able to develop the talent pool and plan for succession by engaging...

January 8, 2013

Download Thought Papers on Lindsay Wittenberg’s approach to Coaching for Leadership, Coaching for Career Development and Cross-Cultural Coaching which explain what makes her coaching effective a...

November 23, 2012

One of our clients is clear that her success as a leader will relate to team members who are flourishing and to how many leaders she’s creating along the way: she’s realised that in order ...

September 21, 2012

This is the third year in which we’ve been helping to nurture young marketing talent to become the leaders of tomorrow through the very exciting initiative that’s the Marketing Academy, fe...

September 12, 2012

Peter Hunter, of Cranfield, writing in Training Zone, comments that “a strange thing appeared to be happening in these [Olympic] games, the most successful for team GB for a long time. Not all t...

August 22, 2012

As the sparkle of London 2012 fades into memory, millions of people nevertheless continue to feel uplifted and inspired.  This is what happens when we have the privilege of witnessing excellence in ac...

May 28, 2012

Over each of the last two years I’ve had the privilege of coaching a Scholar going through the Marketing Academy‘s programme for nurturing young marketing talent.  Each year 30 young peopl...