Coaching

Business can be a force for good in the world – and it takes powerful, self-aware and grounded people to realise this potential. Coaching is the best tool I know to achieve this.

“Working with Toby has been transformational for our business”

Will Church, ITG Group

1:1 Coaching

Intimate 1:1 coaching for CEOs, business owners and senior leaders looking to work out what needs to change and to make that happen.

Pair Coaching for Co-Founders

Pair coaching to help co-founders or directors get their relationships back on track.

  • Working with Toby has been transformational for our business.... His inquisitive, patient, supportive yet robust approach helped me escape the day to day noise and focus on the vital things

    Will Church, Founder & CEO, International Tutor Group

  • I got huge clarity working with Toby. We unpacked what I wanted from my business, and from life, over the next 5 years, and then what this meant for the company's strategy and plan. Toby held me to my personal vision the whole way through - I really felt he wanted the best for me, as well as the business. This is huge.

    Joanna Maiden, Founder and CEO, SOKO Kenya

  • Toby is a clear strategic thinker with in depth practical knowledge of running an SME business who is also a hugely empathetic people-person with a nurturing approach to coaching... He worked with great care and sensitivity with us three directors individually to get our perspectives on work, life and the universe, before bringing us all together as a management team to explore what direction we want to take the business

    Hannah McGavin, Co-Founder, Bakehouse Factory

  • Everyone loves to give their opinion but what sets Toby apart is his ability really to listen and then to come back with the simplest of synopses, bringing clarity and calm to a scrambled and tired mind.

    Athene Macrae, Founder, LaBom

What is coaching?

It is a partnership. The coach acts as a co-pilot on a journey during which you’ll unearth who you really are, what values you hold, what impact you want in the world, where your greatest gifts lie, how to overcome the obstacles ahead and what strategies you can employ to be the most powerful, alive and effective version of your self.

My own experience has brought home in a unequivocal way just how profound and positive an experience it can be to have a relationship with a coach: a relationship that demands a focus on three critical areas: who you are (your values, motivations, purpose in life etc), how you want to be, and where you want to go (the impact you want to have, the goals you want to achieve).

Coaching then unearths – through techniques and practices – strategies to enable this all to come to life, and supports you as you navigate the inevitable obstacles, challenges, highs and lows that are part of any such journey. It can be transformative, powerful work for those who choose it.

What will I get from coaching?

Coaching has four key things that make it really work:

  • A unique, confidential relationship with someone who’s completely unbiased, neutral and interested only in your success – a role that can’t be played by partner, husband, board member or friend;

  • Clarification of thinking – you know more about yourself than anyone else could, so you don’t need direction from others. Coaching helps you to clarify your thinking to make the best possible decisions, for yourself;

  • Clear goals, aligned to your values and the vision of the life you want to lead – which coaching helps you to uncover;

  • Action that moves you determinedly forwards, and the accountability – from your coach – to take those steps and stick to your guns.

If it’s seen as vital for athletes to have support when fine tuning their craft, why should this not be true, too, for us in life and in work?

My interest in coaching

Leading anything can be a challenging endeavour. My interest in coaching comes from deep personal experience of running an organisation going through profound and challenging change, and the toll this – at times – could take on me, in my personal life too.

As a result I want people to feel a sense of agency, strength, aliveness, confidence and connection in their work and in their lives, and know that coaching can be a powerful enabler of all of this.

Understanding oneself, being clear about what one wants to ‘be’ and ‘do’ with the one wild and precious life we have, and making continual moves in that direction feels like important work, perhaps the most important work there is.

My training

I’ve been trained and certified by the Co-Active Training Institute, the largest and longest-established coach training body in the world.

The Co-Active® coach training is considered the most rigorous accredited programme available for professional coaching development and is delivered by expert coaches and supervisors.

It is accredited by the International Coaching Federation.