When I left headship, I didn't step away from leadership.
I stepped towards it differently.
I trained formally as an executive and senior-level coach — completing an ILM Level 7 in Executive Coaching and Mentoring, the highest qualification in the field — and qualified as a workplace mediator through the London School of Mediation.
I began working with senior leaders, headteachers, and CEOs across the world.
Very quickly, I realised the conversations I was having weren't about performance alone.
They were about clarity, responsibility, confidence — the deeper layers of leadership that rarely get spoken aloud.
During my father’s illness, he would often say,
“You work too much. Too hard.”
It wasn’t criticism; it was care.
A quiet reminder to look differently at my life, my pace, and what I was carrying.
His words became a turning point, a kind of compass I still follow.
I hold a StrengthscopeMaster™ qualification — achieved by fewer than 0.001% of practitioners worldwide.
Strengthscope® give leaders a language for their energy, patterns, and blind spots.
At master level, that language goes further: into how strengths shift under pressure, operate in complexity, and either anchor a leader or quietly work against them.
It turned coaching into expansion rather than correction — a place where leaders reconnect with what's already strong, and use it with intention.
Coaching isn't about fixing what's wrong. It's about expanding what's already strong.
The most powerful thing you can do as a leader isn’t to carry more. It’s to use what’s already strong in you to turn pressure and complexity into clearer decisions and more sustainable leadership.