Case Studies
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The CEO Who Was Running Everything - Including His Team Into the Ground
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The CEO of a major retail organisation came to me with a familiar frustration: his management team wasn't stepping up. Every decision landed back on his desk. What he hadn't yet seen was that he was the reason why.
His leadership style was deeply directive, and his presence - raised voices, doors slammed - had made his team cautious and compliant rather than confident and proactive. The talent was there. The culture wasn't.
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I worked with the team to rebuild their confidence and develop a more collaborative, self-directed way of working. In parallel, I worked with the CEO on the harder question: not how to get more from his people, but how to create the conditions in which they could give it freely. A key part of this was bringing both sides into the same conversation, allowing them to express what they needed from each other, perhaps for the first time.
The shift took time, but it was real. Today the team operates with maturity and mutual respect, balancing a focus on results with genuine care for relationships. The CEO still leads, but now he leads in a way that makes others want to follow.
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The Marketing Director Building a Team from Nine Nationalities
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When a Marketing Director at a world-renowned brewery relocated from the US to Europe, he wasn't just changing jobs, he was starting from scratch, bringing together nine nationalities around a single shared mission. He knew that what had made him successful as an individual performer wouldn't be enough. He needed to become a leader his people would choose to follow.
We worked on something deceptively simple: his story. Where he had come from, what he believed in, and where he wanted to take the team. By articulating what he expected from his people, and what he genuinely committed to offering them in return, he made a shift that many high performers find surprisingly difficult: from being the person who gets things done, to becoming the person who helps others get things done better.
When he stepped in front of his new team for the first time, he didn't arrive with a strategy deck. He arrived with a narrative. That made all the difference.
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The SVP Everyone Found Difficult - Including, Eventually, Himself
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The HR Senior Vice-President of a US-based company was brilliant, experienced, and almost universally difficult to work with. His abrasive manner had worn thin across the organisation. The CEO knew something had to change, but the SVP's expertise and track record kept him in the role. The question was whether he could change.
When we first met, I didn't ease into it. I told him directly that many people found him hard to deal with, and I asked him why he seemed comfortable with that. His answer, once we got to it, was revealing: he had spent a career being the smartest person in the room, and he had little patience for those who didn't meet his standard. His frustration with others was real, but it was his to own.
The work we did together was less about behaviour and more about identity. What legacy did he actually want to leave? Could his expertise become a gift to others rather than a weapon held over them? Could he measure his own success not by what he knew, but by what he helped others become?
Gradually, something shifted. He became more supportive, less combative, occasionally even warm. Because change of this kind takes time to trust, I involved his peers and team members in the process, giving them a voice in the transition rather than simply asking them to accept it. A year on, the transformation was genuine, and the goodwill he had earned was real. The hard work was entirely his. I was there to support him, and to give him a nudge when he needed one.
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The CFO Facing Something No Business Framework Could Fix
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A CFO I had previously coached came back to me, not with a leadership challenge this time, but with something far more significant. He had received a potentially life-threatening diagnosis. It was affecting every part of his life, and he asked whether coaching could help him navigate it. Most coaches might have referred him elsewhere. I didn't.
This became some of the most meaningful work I have done in twenty + years of practice. Drawing on Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's framework for processing grief and mortality, we worked through each stage honestly and without rushing. We explored the legacy he wanted to leave, professionally and personally. We sat with the difficult questions rather than sidestepping them.
In doing so, he found something he hadn't expected: a sense of peace that allowed him to show up fully for the people who mattered most to him. Not despite facing what he was facing, but because he had faced it directly.
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A Few Thoughts
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No two coaching engagements look alike, and outcomes are rarely predictable at the outset. But after almost three decades of this work, one thing I know with certainty: after three sessions, all coaching, whether executive, business, or life, becomes personal. It always comes back to you: who you are, where you are, and what matters most right now.
The leaders I work with are often used to having the answers. Coaching asks a different thing of them; the willingness to sit with better questions.
My role is to walk alongside you for a while. To help you find the clarity, purpose, and direction to continue your journey on your own terms. And occasionally, when it's needed, to give you a nudge.