Coaching

Transformational relationships

At the heart of our coaching is a simple belief: the quality of the relationship drives the quality of the outcome. We pay close attention to what is happening in the room, using the coaching relationship itself as a source of insight, challenge and change.

Our coaches combine deep business experience with high levels of self-awareness, empathy and attention, and the courage to ask the questions others avoid. This allows us to work at both a human and a commercial level, helping clients navigate real challenges, not abstract ones.

We work across executive coaching for senior leaders, individual coaching within development programmes, coaching surgeries to broaden access, and team coaching to strengthen collective effectiveness. Alongside this, we support firms in building their own coaching capability, from shaping coaching strategy through to embedding a sustainable coaching culture.

Recent coaching examples include:

• Forging a powerful new executive team

A leading global insurance company was facing the challenge of a new business unit being formed by merging previously separate country organisations.  The new leadership team was struggling to work together effectively, with a lack of clarity about their role and mutual suspicions about intentions.

Our role was to work with them to create a truly unified team with a core purpose, clear roles, effective processes and, most importantly, high levels of trust, mutual support and challenge.  Initial success came from enabling the team members to connect at a deeper personal level at an offsite workshop, hearing about each others’ challenges, fears, aspirations and purpose.  Over the last two and a half years, we have supported them through the challenges of the pandemic – operating virtually but still focusing on supporting staff in a caring way – and through a CEO transition.  Team members remark that this is by far the best team they have ever been part of.

• Building transformational leadership skills

A partner at a consulting firm aspired to create a new, more inclusive culture in his office and challenge himself to develop as a transformational leader.

Over the course of two years, a PSFI coach supported him on his journey, providing appropriate challenge where needed and empathy and motivation when times were tough. Starting with an in-depth 360 review and psychometrics, we helped the partner create an inspirational vision for the culture of his office – and the leadership role he would play in helping to create this.  This required leaving behind aspects of what had previously made him successful, and courageously embracing new ways of thinking, behaving and being which would catalyse the desired shift in his organisation. He is now head of the office, which has become a role model in the broader global organisation for its culture that skilfully balances commercial performance with honest and heartfelt humanity.

• Creating a powerful internal coaching capability

A global universal bank had the vision of ‘democratising coaching’, through the development of a coaching culture and a cadre of committed internal coaches.

The internal coaches – who coach in addition to their ‘day job’ – are required to take a formal coaching qualification and participate in ongoing professional development activities.  Our role has been to shape and implement the supervision element for these coaches, providing individual and group supervision on a regular basis.  Supervision involves assuring quality standards in the coaching provided, learning from best practice and in community, and providing practical and empathetic support for what can be quite an emotionally demanding activity. The cadre of coaches is growing quickly, as employees who have experienced the power of coaching decide to train as coaches themselves. The coaching culture goes from strength to strength.