Leaders in transition

Olwyn has mentored me since 2018. Her experience of our industry, coaching methods and her knowledge and application of neuroscience has been hugely beneficial to me. I have learnt a lot about myself, my self confidence has increased and I am much clearer about the kind of leader I want to be. I have greatly benefited from my time working with Olwyn

Olwyn is a thoughtful, adaptable and highly strategic coach. I found her immensely useful whilst transitioning to joining our Group Executive Committee. Her input led to meaningful and long-lasting behaviours and outputs. International in nature and approach, she is unscripted, but well-prepared.

When I started the coaching process, I decided to fully engage with what it offered but I wasn’t really sure what to expect. But a year on, as I look back at the time that I have spent with Olwyn as my executive coach, I realise that it was extraordinary. It has truly accelerated my learning. I took the feedback and rather than getting defensive about it, I digested it and found new strategies to deal with challenging situations and people. I have grown and evolved as a leader and feel more confident in how I lead others. I have built capability and bench strength in the team and sought ways to develop them too. I start my new leadership role wiser, more confident with greater resilience to tackle what lies ahead.

Olwyn is always focused, prepared for the discussions and a great listener. She has the magical words that are just needed for any sort of situation! We discussed many aspects of stakeholder management, leadership skills, ‘gravitas’, presentation tips, managing time, personal brand: you name it, she has experience with it. Olwyn has had a deep impact on my career and persona. I think of her often when I am in more dire situations: ‘what would Olwyn do/say?’ Always inspiring!

My time with Olwyn has helped me enhance my leadership style with my Direct reports – team meetings have become much more inclusive and engagement has increased significantly.

Olwyn has made a tremendous difference to my leadership journey. She had completely sussed what made me tick within about 20 mins of meeting me and we built a strong rapport immediately. As I presented her with some of the challenges that I am working on, she helped me re-frame many of them as well as consider a lot of angles I hadn’t thought about. With a quiet assurance, she was able to directly challenge where needed, as well as encourage and support. I owe her a huge debt of gratitude for everything she has done for me.

I have been using your techniques and have had some great feedback – focusing on 1 or 2 max points each call. My particular focus has been: Delivery – clarity and brevity of communications; Trigger points – keep aware of these – advance preparation of what I anticipate during the call. When I have used the techniques I notice a marked difference in my meeting performance.

What worked well was Olwyn’s professionalism, experience and skills; coach preparation and my homework; clear objectives and regular reflections on the results. Part of the coaching sessions were focused on driving the process of identifying my successors as well as future organisation development. Today, I have a clear vision for the future organisation under the current situation as well as identified and stated coaching process for my successors. Significant focus on Executive Maturity is helping me to drive better results and refocus on more strategic initiatives rather than being tactical.

Olwyn is a really great coach. Very direct, open, honest and clear with “asks” – lots of value-add. She is a superstar! The coaching experience was a great way to pause and think about myself and take time to act based on this. You also need to be ready for coaching. I recall having done some previous coaching sessions and was probably not ready to learn and act upon it then.

Olwyn truly challenged me to think very differently and kept pushing me back to what I needed to focus on to be a more successful leader. She helped me to spend time thinking about this and reflecting on different approaches I could consider taking and sometimes she just helped me see the “wood from the trees”. I want to express my thanks to Olwyn for holding me true to investing time in my development and guiding me on this new journey and new experience, it’s much appreciated and I know there is still more to come!