Executive & Team Coaching
Corporations & SMEs
The survival of most organisations depends on astute commercial management. Their success relies on aligning products and services to customer demands, providing inspirational and effective people leadership and influencing complex stakeholders.
Rachel’s success in coaching executives in corporations and SMEs lies in meeting the needs of both the individual being coached and the organisation that is sponsoring it. Her commercial background and experience guide her approach to coaching leaders as they respond to the increasing complexity of:
- Significant shifts in market access and regulatory controls
- Diverse and demanding stakeholder needs
- Capitalising on changes in consumer sentiment and needs
- Crisis management
- Cultural change and inspirational leadership
- Agile systems, product and service development
- A tremendous increase in pace for delivery
- Politics of people, organisations and governmental bodies
- Operating as dynamic and productive leadership teams
Rachel’s executive coaching private sector clients include C-suite Executives, Directors and Functional/Technical Managers. Throughout her career, she has worked across all industry sectors. Most recently, she has been coaching in corporations and SMEs in professional services, logistics, banking and financial services, property development, real estate, IT & telecoms, manufacturing, member-based organisations, and healthcare.
Coaching Approach
The type of coaching required will depend on the individual’s and the organisation’s needs. A typical coaching programme consists of between 4 and 8 one-to-one sessions taking place over a period of 6 to 18 months. Rachel is a highly adaptable coach who recognises the busy schedule and on-going demand of executives. Sessions are held at times that suit her clients.
She can provide her coaching services in her offices near Baggot Street Bridge, onsite with the client, in other suitable locations, or using secure online video platforms.
Psychometrics, 360° feedback and line manager or stakeholder feedback is valuable in enhancing self-awareness for the individual. They provide direction for development and help prioritise issues to be addressed during coaching. Rachel is experienced in integrating a range of relevant personality, motivation, emotional intelligence and 360° instruments. The choice and use of these tools are discussed as part of the initial coaching engagement.
Those who work with Rachel appreciate the focus on:
- Delivering tangible results from the beginning to the end of coaching – usually based on three or four critical coaching goals
- Liberating leaders to draw on their own thinking and resources to deliver success, while realising they have choices when it comes to their thinking habits and actions
- Supporting and challenging to proactively build insight, knowledge and understanding of self in order to enhance leadership capacities
- Managing their energy in the work environment so that they can still have enough energy to go home and enjoy life outside of work
- Building trusting but objective relationships over time
- Creating undisturbed thinking time away from the day-to-day demands of the role
- Achieving real moments of clarity so that they can try new things
Types of Coaching
The type of coaching required is identified in the introductory session. While the format of coaching will depend on the client-specific requirements, there are a number of general coaching services that Rachel provides:
C-suite leaders often find that they don’t have the opportunity or time to step back to review and understand how to manage their role within the organisation. They are often surprised when they feel unsupported and isolated.
Executive coaching at this level is often focused on embracing strategic and complex change, influencing stakeholders and systems and tackling critical problems so that their teams can do their best work. This requires developing an inspirational and resilient leadership approach. Leaders need to be adept at navigating diverse groups, be politically savvy and build a strong supportive network, often outside of the organisation.
Most management teams are made up of financial, technical, scientific, legal and knowledge-based specialists and people managers. Rachel works with leaders who need to let go of the stuff that made them successful as individual expert contributors and embrace the notion of getting work done through others.
At management level, leaders learn to utilise active listening, powerful questioning and persuasive communication to be more effective in delegating, setting goals for others and managing ‘difficult conversations’.
Transition failure is a common phenomenon with newly appointed executives. By helping newly promoted or hired executives to match their strengths to the specific requirements of the role and navigate the organisation, onboard coaching can help the executive make immediate, significant and lasting contributions to the organisation.
Career coaching can be used to remotivate or reorientate a client, in their current position or a new position. The increasing recognition of the value of breadth in career experience means that coaching can provide an opportunity to achieve career goals.
Understanding how to act up or ‘be in role’ before a promotion is critical. Coaching supports individuals in identifying their best career options and developing the skills and style needed to excel in their new role.
Individuals taking on a new responsibility or developing new skills that they feel they have not displayed effectively will usually request skills-based coaching. In many cases, time is of the essence. Wider training and development initiatives may not be immediately available to meet this need. Skills-based coaching provides short, high-impact sessions that introduces the individual to one or more key skills.
In light of new challenges or changes, existing clients use top-up coaching to refocus their approach or thinking. It is very focused as the client is already familiar with the coaching process and presents with clear objectives.
Workplace resilience coaching is relevant where personal support in adapting to or coping with current or new challenges is required. This type of coaching is requested by individuals who are surprised and distressed by their personal response to changes or new demands in their work or personal life.
The purpose of workplace resilience coaching is to enhance the individual’s coping skills, help them recognise their own strengths and vulnerabilities, and enhance their response to and delivery on work challenges.
Team Coaching
“A team is a small group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”
Katzenback and Smith (HBR, March 1993)
For many teams, this beautifully crafted definition of high-performing teams presents a real challenge. It prompts questions for individuals and the team as a whole
- Are we creating the right conditions to capitalise on everyone’s skills?
- Do we need everyone on this team?
- Are we agreed on what our team purpose is? How different is that to what I see as my own purpose?
- Do my colleagues have my back?
- Do our stakeholders agree with our purpose, is that what they are asking us to do?
- Are we prepared to address unhelpful behaviour and make some tough decisions?
- Am I doing my best thinking in this team?
- Are we set up to compete instead of collaborate?
Coaching Approach
Rachel’s objective as a Team Coach is to help liberate a team towards improving its performance, wellbeing, engagement and development. Rachel does this by providing a clear set of principles and process to create the self-sustaining conditions for individual members of a team do their very best thinking supported by the attention, insights and experience of their colleagues.
Team coaching helps team members to:
- Build trust
- Clarify significant issues
- Create better strategies and processes
- Make more effective decisions
- Energise commitment
- Ensure that time is focused only on what is important
Team Coaching Programmes
Team coaching is generally tailored to the needs of the organisation. A typical coaching programme consists of 4 to 8 team-coaching sessions over a period of 18 months, with a number of one-to-one coaching sessions for the team leader (usually a C-suite executive). Team coaching sessions are usually a mix of full-day, half-day and two-hour sessions.
Psychometric and Feedback Instruments
Team diagnostics, psychometrics, 360° feedback and stakeholder feedback are valuable in enhancing self-awareness of the team and individual strengths and stumbling blocks. They provide direction for development and help prioritise issues to be addressed during coaching sessions. The choice and use of these tools are discussed as part of the initial team coaching engagement.
Rachel has coached leadership teams in industry-representative bodies, real estate and public sector bodies such as regulators and school management teams.
Team Coaching often covers areas such as
- Team strategy
- Agenda setting
- Problem identification and solving
- Decision making
- Transforming meetings
- Communication
- Delivery of results
- Stakeholder management
- Boundary and relationship management
Group Facilitation
A group consists of individuals who are independent of each other and have clearly defined and different sets of tasks.

Rachel also works as a facilitator for groups of individuals where she manages meetings to explore a number of questions or critical issues relevant to all members of the group. The members of the group may be from one organisation, from multiple organisations or have come together in a voluntary capacity.
In this context, Rachel’s role is to facilitate meetings in order to keep the balance and energy in the group, help the group capture and organise its best thinking and come to a point of clarity on recommendations or ideas, agree on actions and take those actions.
Through group facilitation, individuals find that they can:
- Learn how to identify key projects and find opportunities to collaborate
- Contribute their best thinking in order to address important questions or critical issues
- Create a more collaborative culture
- Learn how to build better agendas
- Improve communications
- Manage conflict more effectively
- Gain better clarity on individual roles and how they can be independent of each other, as well as collaborate on projects outside of their own remit
- Challenge the way they work and what to focus on as a group.