Executive coaching for leaders
I help conscientious professionals step fully into their leadership roles – getting recognised, getting promoted, leading with genuine impact – without overworking or sacrificing the parts of life that matter most.
You’re working harder than most of the people around you. You care about your work and your team, you take real ownership, and you hold yourself to a high standard. Possibly a little too high.
You’re doing everything the conventional wisdom says you should do, and yet you feel like you’re only just keeping your head above water. At work, and at home.
I know that feeling intimately. Because I lived it for the better part of two decades.
The podcasts. The half-finished books. The productivity apps.
Most of the people I work with arrive having tried all the usual things first, and sometimes they see a little shift. A good fortnight. Then a busy season hits, or a project lands, or a child gets sick, and everything resets straight back to overworked and overwhelmed.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you: this was never a discipline problem. You’ve been handed the wrong map. You’ve been treating what is really a leadership and identity shift as though it were a time-management problem, and no app, no planner, no 5am alarm was ever going to solve it.
I spent over 20 years in Big 4 consulting, including 7 years as a Partner at KPMG.
Early in my career, I believed success came from hard work, full stop. My teachers said it. My parents said it. Work hard, and the rewards will come. So I did. I worked long hours. I said yes to everything. I paid attention to every last detail. I made myself as helpful as I could possibly be.
And that way of working came at a cost. Time. Energy. Moments I can’t get back.
I live on the other side of the world from my family. During one particularly busy work period, my dad flew all the way over to visit, and I went into the office instead of spending the day with him. On a Sunday. The worst part? He wasn’t even angry. He’d taught me that hard work mattered, and he genuinely believed it would pay off.
Sitting at my desk one day, I realised I had lost my peripheral vision.
Then other spots started disappearing from my sight. And like the good worker I was, I stayed at my desk until the feeling passed, and then carried on working.
I mentioned it to my best friend later that day. She marched me to a doctor, where I was told I had suffered a transient ischaemic attack, a mini-stroke. In the round of tests that followed, looking for the cause, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer on a Friday afternoon. I had no idea whether it was treatable, and I couldn’t see a specialist until the following week.
That weekend, one question played over and over in my mind.
If I’m not dying … what will I do differently with my life?
I never wanted to feel like I was sacrificing my life for my job again.
That moment forced me to rethink everything. I realised the way I’d been working wasn’t really mine at all. It was built from stories (the ones other people had told me, and the ones I’d told myself) about what it meant to be valuable, successful, and “good” at my job.
So I changed the stories. I stopped organising my time around what everyone else needed, and started focusing on what actually mattered. I set real boundaries. I learned to prioritise strategically, to delegate properly, and to use my voice, to advocate for myself, and to call out what wasn’t right.
And here’s what I want you to hear, because I know the worry is there: my career didn’t suffer for it. I kept getting excellent performance reviews. I kept progressing. It turns out you don’t have to choose between doing well and having a life. That was a story too.
You just need to learn how to lead differently.
You don’t have to become the loudest person in the room. You don’t have to sacrifice your values to keep moving up. And you don’t have to burn yourself out to prove your worth.
Leading differently is a learnable skill, not a personality you were either born with or weren’t. It’s exactly what I help leaders, one-to-one, through coaching built on having actually walked the road myself. I work with professionals in Newcastle, in Sydney, across Australia and beyond, both in person and online.
The coaching I’m describing has a name: The Leadership Reset.
It’s a twelve-week programme I run one to one. We work on the beliefs sitting underneath the overwork: the ones about worth, about standards, about what a no will cost you. Change those, and leading differently holds on its own, without the white-knuckle willpower that’s let you down before.
Six private calls, fortnightly, every one with me, and a direct line in between for the things that come up in real time. Same you, same firm, same ambition. A different way of working running underneath.
What changes for the people I work with
My team love the new system we put in place. It’s changed the way we work, and they’re no longer waiting around for my review.
I don’t think I would have got my promotion this year without your guidance.
I’ve worked this way for so long I didn’t believe there was another way that would work for me and my job. I think you might have just changed my life.
Still here? A few things about me
Because a fuller life is rather the point.
- I was born in England but have lived in Australia since 2007.
- I’ve run a marathon in Antarctica. Yes, really.
- I’m trained in fire eating and fire breathing, and so is my mum.
- When I was younger, I wanted to be an actress.
- I don’t like cake or dessert, which I’m told is a character flaw.
If any of this sounds like you, let’s work out what leading differently could look like for you.
Book a free 30-minute call. No pressure, no pitch. Just a conversation about where you’re at.
Book a free 30-minute callCoaching in person across Newcastle & Sydney, and online.