I have nearly 20 years experience coaching and being a strategic talent advisor to C-suite and high-potential leaders navigating complex roles and organisations. I do this through a blend of executive coaching and designing leadership experiences for teams and cohorts.

A link to a more traditional summary of my career can be found via Linked In here. I have also outlined eight insights that I have had over the course of my career that have shaped my approach to coaching:

1. The best leaders struggle

My career began at Deloitte Consulting, where I spent nine years working on leadership, culture, organisation design and transformation projects with clients including Apple, IHG, Liberty Global and Unilever. I also supported executive transition programmes for senior leaders moving into C-Suite roles.

From early on in my career I had a front-row seat to the pressure, rewards and trade-offs that come with senior leadership. Watching leaders up close taught me that the most successful among them also experience self-doubt, anxiety and setbacks.

2. Context beats best practice

Working across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the US taught me that leadership does not travel as neatly as PowerPoint suggests. Culture, history, regulation and relationships all matter.

What works brilliantly in one organisation, team or country can fall flat somewhere else. Good coaching starts with good questions to understand context, not a theoretical model.

3. Careers rarely go to plan, even if it looks that way to others

I left a consulting career focused largely on the technology, media and telco sector as I wanted to see what life was like in industry. However, I couldn’t seem to find the time, or even know where to look, in order to find a new role.

On reflection I was far too hard on myself, given I was travelling to Atlanta every other week, leading a large change programme and close to burn out. These are not the conditions to make great forward looking choices around ambiguous subjects like careers. Yet often it takes quite extreme conditions to motivate people to truly start looking for something different.

I ended up in Insurance as QBE’s People Director for Talent across Europe and Asia, leading talent, recruitment, leadership and learning teams. I took the role due to a hunch based on the people I met in the process. I enjoyed this role immensely, with collecting the 2022 Insurance Insider “Employer of the Year” award on behalf of the company being a highlight.

Working in Insurance was not part of the “career plan”, so this experience has become a reference point for me in terms of ensuring I am being open minded and not shutting down opportunities before they have been properly considered.

4. Smart leaders make poor decisions

Keith J Cunningham said it best when he said “I don’t need to do more smart things, I need to do less dumb things”

I became a senior HR director at the age of 32. I did a lot of things I am proud of, but made a lot of mistakes along the way as I was discovering a new role, team and industry. In setting up The Latitude Practice the same is true.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can’t imagine there would be anyone that would be comfortable making every decision they have ever made in the same way again. Whether it was the volume of other things on their mind, a blind spot in their capability or knowledge that they were not yet aware of, or simply just an off day, very smart people do make bad decisions. The famous example of the board at Yahoo passing up the chance to buy Google in the late 1990’s / early 2000’s, twice, is relevant here. The board at Yahoo were smart people who achieved more in their careers than most people could dream of, but made by most measures a couple of pretty bad calls.

This is why it’s critical that in coaching you don’t judge, or assume you might know better than the person you are coaching. It’s about helping smart people take a chance to pause and reflect, find their blind spots, or approach something in a new way in order to get to a different outcome.

5. Being right is not the same as being effective

For two years I led People Business Partnering for QBE across Europe and Asia, working with the executive team and board on people strategy, transformation and talent challenges in a heavily regulated environment.

The most effective leaders I have worked with do not try to control everything. They understand the system they are operating in and focus their energy where it will have the greatest impact.

This might mean tough prioritisation decisions, some projects not being delivered to a gold standard and not always pleasing everyone. Leaders who spend time trying to get everything perfect to prove how good they are, sometimes end up creating the opposite impression.

6. Simple is hard

I have worked across a broad number of disciplines and had the good fortune of working with a range of deep technical experts who offer immense value. However, where I have often been able to add value is translating expert’s outputs into pragmatic actions time poor leaders can use, quickly.

That might mean helping a CEO explore the required decisions following a set of psychometric results, working with a leader to design and facilitate their offsite so it helps align their team behind their strategy, or navigating board support during large scale transformation. There is a real benefit in remaining grounded and direct without using jargon or complicated models.

7. You can have everything, just not all at once

I am a husband and proud father of two boys. I recognise that careers need to sit alongside family, health and everything else life throws at us.

Striving to get a perfect balance across all facets of life can create immense pressure. There is value in recognising that priorities need and can change over time, and that projected expectations might not equal reality, as it can help reframe tough decisions and tradeoffs.

So whether its balancing dual careers with a partner, managing carer responsibilities, maintaining good health, meeting financial needs or even just being able to undertake hobbies that support your wellbeing, decision making processes are unique to each individual.

It is critical to take the time to explore all these elements when thinking about careers and performance.

8. The importance of humour and joy

I don’t know who said this originally, but I love the phrase “humour slips under the door while other approaches are left outside rattling the handle”.

Leadership is demanding enough without making it heavier than it needs to be. Humour (when used well) builds trust, eases pressure and helps people connect with your message more clearly.

Joy deserves a place in leadership conversations too. It helps reveal what matters, where energy is being spent well, and what success might look like beyond the next objective.

These two elements of humour and joy combined can create a powerful, if a little unconventional way of looking at challenges and tough decisions.

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