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Executive coaching

Leadership development
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Executive coaching at Tavistock Consulting is for senior leaders carrying significant organisational responsibility, directors, board members, and those navigating authority, transition or sustained uncertainty. These roles often bring a unique combination of responsibility, scrutiny and isolation. Our systems-psychodynamic approach provides a confidential thinking space to step back from day-to-day demands, reflect on the wider organisation, and lead with greater clarity, confidence and effectiveness.

What is systems-psychodynamic executive coaching?

Systems-psychodynamic executive coaching looks at leadership as something shaped not only by skill and intention, and also by the unconscious dynamics of the organisation a leader works within. It draws on the Tavistock tradition of understanding how groups, roles and authority operate beneath the surface. Rather than focusing on behaviour alone, it helps a leader see the forces acting on them and through them, so they can take up their role with more clarity and less strain.

Looking to train in this approach rather than be coached yourself? See our Executive Coaching Programme.

Our approach

We see executive coaching as part of organisational consultancy, not something separate from it. The challenges leaders bring to coaching often feel personal: a difficult relationship, a decision that remains unresolved, or a recurring pattern you seem unable to shift. Yet these issues are usually connected to the role you hold and the wider organisational system around you.

Our work pays attention to both. We help you explore your own experience while also making sense of the organisational dynamics at play. Looking at challenges in this way often creates new perspectives and opens up different choices for action.

A central part of the work is helping you explore and refine your role, not just as described in a job description, but as it is actually experienced within the organisation. Together, we examine how organisational culture, group expectations and your own history shape the way you take up your role. This creates the conditions for meaningful and lasting change, strengthening your leadership impact, resilience, judgement and capacity to make effective decisions.

The coaching created time for reflection and strategic thinking which was invaluable in the middle of a particularly busy workload. The sessions gave me the space to reflect on my relationships with my team and peers across the department and helped me to develop a more confident, more proactive and more effective style of leadership

Director, Central government

Who this is for?

This coaching is for people leading at a senior level: chief executives and directors, board members, and senior leaders stepping into greater authority or facing significant change. It suits leaders who want more than tools and techniques, and who are ready to look at the deeper patterns shaping how they and their organisations work.

Looking to develop your leadership team as a whole rather than coach individual leaders? See our Executive team coaching.

How it works?

Coaching usually begins with an initial conversation to understand what you are facing and what you want from the work. From there we agree a focus and a rhythm of sessions, held online or in person. The work is confidential unless it is agreed in advance that there would be benefit in offering thematic
feedback to the organisation. The shape of the coaching is set around you rather than following a fixed programme.

Built around the PRO (Person, Role, Organisation) model, it helps leaders understand how they operate across complex systems and organisational boundaries, and develop the capacity to perform effectively in challenging environments.

Who you could work with?

Coaching is delivered by are experienced consultants and coaches, many EMCC-accredited and all with masters or doctoral level training in the systems-psychodynamic approach. Our staff bring experience from a wide range of leadership roles across sectors, alongside diverse professional and personal identities.

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Charlotte Williams, Director
EMCC Senior Practitioner and BACP Senior Accredited, Tavistock-trained in the systems-psychodynamic approach. Coaches NHS chief executives, executive directors and boards, with particular depth in leading at board level under scrutiny. Works bilingually in Welsh and English. Read Charlottes profile

Midge Seymour-Roots, Senior Organisational Consultant
EMCC Senior Practitioner and psychodynamic psychotherapist, with a clinical and higher education background and a Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Coaches senior leaders and boards across the NHS, higher education and the voluntary sector through periods of change. Read Midges profile

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Impact

Our clients tell us the depth and quality of our work has had a lasting and sustainable impact on their working life with clear benefits for their wider organisation, including:

Sharp, perceptive and kind observations on aspects of my working life I have underattended to. A space to reflect on the interface of my personal and professional lives

NHS Leader

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Make an enquiry

Whatever challenge, opportunity or development you’re facing, an enquiry call offers a chance to pause, reflect, and think it through together, without any obligation or pressure.

When you contact us, a member of our team will either address your enquiry directly (if you’re just looking for information) or let you know that a consultant will be in touch to arrange an initial online conversation.

If your enquiry is more urgent, please feel free to contact us on 020 8938 2475.

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