My Method

I would love to tell you that in 2019 I went to Aspen or Oxford or Cambridge, Massachusetts and whilst surrounded by the world’s best thinkers, I envisaged the exact shape of my coaching practice, and I have been building it ever since. I would love to tell you that. It would be a lie.

The shape of my coaching practice is the result of a consistent learning loop linking intentional actions to an ongoing process of enriching my understanding. Its evolution mirrors my coaching methodology – understanding, intention, action, reflection and ongoing adjustment.

I built my coaching practice to address two aspects of executive support that always troubled me: memory and inspiration.

Memory

In my executive life, I would see my coach or therapist. We’d have a great session. I would leave it and walk into a whirlwind of meetings and messages. A day later I couldn’t remember the detail.

This is true for all of us: in life’s busyness, without a record, it is easy to forget crucial insights – missing possibilities and, potentially, stumbling into avoidable problems.

Inspiration

I dislike encountering out-dated executive education or common-sense approaches to complex problems.

I ensure that my coaching integrates the best of contemporary thought, as well as ancient wisdom and hard-won lessons.

Almost always, an appropriate example has enabled my clients to uncover new possibilities.

My leadership system rests on three pillars:

01

Curated Best Practice

I invest 600 hours a year to this process – immersing myself in world’s best thinking on topics from strategy, leadership, change management and culture to existential questions about political economy, identity and building meaningful lives. I have done this since 2019.

All of my reading is consolidated into a database of 7,500+ quotations drawn from over 110 authors across disciplines including history, biography, memoir, best practice research from worlds of strategy, development and social psychology, and leadership development and, of course, fiction.

02

A Regular Newsletter

Strategy, Soul & Self is my newsletter.

It has gone out most weeks since January 2020. Over the years I have drawn on more than five hundred writers, researchers, leaders and thinkers. There are few South African equivalents.

Writing it ensures I bring rigour into every coaching engagement.

The letters also give my clients quick access to a book’s key ideas or the best thinking on a topic. I curate them to fit your coaching needs.

Several clients use them with their teams: everyone reads a letter centered on a current challenge. The letters become a springboard for more informed debate.

03

Coaching Reflection Letters

Different to every coach I know, I follow each session with a 2,000 – 4,000-word reflection on our conversation.

By the time our work ends, you will have a leadership system designed just for you.

These letters protect memory, add further inspiration and provide a bridge between sessions.

They record your journey and integrate the world’s best thinking, curated for you and the moment you face.

My clients tell me that they are an invaluable part of the process, deepening their reflections and sense of possibility. Many continue to read them years after the coaching has ended.

These three pillars form the beneath-the-surface scaffolding of my coaching practice:

  • 2,300+

    reflective essays

    More than 2,300 reflective essays, across more than 250 leaders and organisations, since 2019. Banking, financial services, energy, media, technology, universities, professional services, and the public sector. Founders, divisional executives, senior managers, chief executives and subject matter experts.

  • 7,500+

    indexed reading entries

    A curated collection of more than 7,500 entries, the product of seven years of systematic reading, sustained at roughly 600 hours a year, held and indexed so that the right idea can be matched to your situation.

  • 300+

    published letters

    More than 300 published letters. Strategy, Soul & Self has gone out most weeks since January 2020. It is where I test the reading before it is ever used with a client.

Core Coaching Concepts

The work across these three pillars: hundreds of clients across multiple countries and sectors; immersion in the histories – the patterns, characteristics, successes and failures – of epochs, countries, companies and individuals, and in understanding the strategic, historical, sociological, psychological and spiritual infrastructure beneath these histories; together with rigorous reflection and writing about all I am seeing has given me the privilege of witnessing how we best create effectiveness, equanimity and excellence.

I say witnessing, because they’re not my invention. If you look widely and for long enough, you will see them too. They are there for all of us to use; the accumulated lessons from thousands of years of life.

I have distilled them into six core concepts that are at the heart of my coaching and advisory work. They’re not a recipe: the sculptor uses a chisel differently to the carpenter; the watchmaker’s lens is different to the welder’s. They are an approach to living a good life and creating great organisations.

Together they compose an ecosystem. They apply as much to ourselves as they do to companies, communities, and countries; they’re social systems made by people.

  1. Understand

    Shopping centre maps know it. They say, “You are here”. Apps know it. The blue dot pulses, “You are here”. We forget it. We are so busy doing we lose sight of where we are. More than that we rarely pause to explore how we got here. Forty, Fifty, Sixty years’ worth of living. When last, when ever, did you explore the patterns beneath your life? This is where our work starts. Understanding where we are, what we have and where we are our best and worst selves is the precursor to knowing what we can and must do.

  2. Energise

    We are hasty. We want change. For ourselves, for the organisations we lead. But is there the energy in the system to sustain the action required for change? Change requires energy. Quite often my coaching work starts here. It is not even possible to do the work of understanding until energy has been added. We repair energy leaks. We find sources of flow and inspiration and amplify them. We work with the physical, the emotional, the relational, the spiritual and the systemic.

  3. Enrich

    We have our context and our histories. We can only see what we know. We cannot enact what we cannot picture. An enriched imagination is a prerequisite for expanded possibilities. Our work adds case studies, mental models, anecdotes, new ideas – all in service of enriching what you can perceive, receive and then adapt to your world. I am intentionally eclectic. Unfamiliar ideas create new ways of seeing. I am intentionally pragmatic – I introduce ideas that are close enough to your and your business’s reality that they can connect.

  4. Envision

    We are told vision is important, that we need it for strategy. Some insist it is the first step; that is not possible. How can we shape a vision when we don’t know where we are, what terrain we’re standing on, what tools we have, what capabilities we need for our next, and we don’t have the energy or capabilities to get there? This is why strategies stay in drawers and vision boards lie in the back of cupboards. And still, vision is essential. We must know where we are going. It helps you remember which strengths to strengthen. And inspiration is essential – how else will we make the effort that is needed?

  5. Act with Intention

    Without intention life happens. The world and our lives are filled with so much that grabs our energy and attention. Vision and strategy aligned consistent intentional action is what creates the life we live in. This does not, not ever, mean that every minute is scheduled. We must breathe and dream and be silly and be. It does mean identifying key areas of focus. We act because it is with action that we generate new knowledge. We act with intention because consistency compounds. Sunlight turns to flames when magnified. The flywheel only spins after many pushes.

  6. Compound Yourself

    Leadership is a lifelong craft. If we pay attention each day becomes an MBA. Our contexts are dynamic. They change. We change. We need periodic pauses to assess what adjustments are required – there will always be something – and, critically, to invest in what already has momentum.

    It is the essence of our coaching work – reflecting on what your intentional action is revealing about the world around you. It is a capability you will carry into your life and leadership, ensuring each day is rich with learning.

If this sounds like the kind of work you want to do: