Executive Coaching in Yorkshire – From a Leader Who's Actually Led

I work with senior leaders across Yorkshire, including:

I do this because I love business. The cut and thrust, the challenge, the opportunity to get stuck in with good people trying to do something difficult, I can’t live without it. But beyond that, I understand what drives most leaders at this level – you’re not just building a business, you’re securing a future. For your family, your people, the things that matter most. That responsibility adds weight to every decision, and it deserves support from someone who gets what’s really at stake.

And this is why I believe all serious business leaders should have a coach. Your goal is too important not to. Do you know any serious professional athlete or a growing number of serious amateurs who don’t have a coach? Yet in business, where the stakes are often higher, we somehow think we should figure it all out alone.

I’ve worked with coaches throughout my career and I got something from each of them, but one of the frustrating things is that most in the profession tend to come from HR, L&D, financial, or psychological backgrounds. All good people, but they didn’t truly get what it’s like to carry the full weight of leadership, people’s jobs, and operational responsibility.

I have. I’ve been the one making the call when redundancies are unavoidable, when strategy pivots risk everything, when the buck genuinely stops with you. That’s not a criticism of other approaches—it’s simply a different foundation.

When you’re building something that matters, securing futures for your people and family, you need someone who understands what that weight actually feels like. Someone who’s been there, not just studied it.

Eventually, I had the benefit of being coached by John Webster, a senior and highly respected advisor. Like me, he believed in coaching. He brought real gravitas, and I got a lot from it. He’s retired now. Such experience is extremely rare in a coach.

I spent a decade learning professional leadership in the Royal Marines, then thirty years applying those principles in business. That combination – formal leadership training followed by decades of commercial experience – shapes how I work with senior leaders today.

That’s why I do this now. To be the advisor I always needed, someone who brings commercial judgement and lived leadership experience, not just frameworks or financial insight from the sidelines.