Leadership Triage for Organisations That Can't Afford to Lose Their Best People
Technical brilliance turns into organisational chaos faster than you think. I've watched it for 20 years - your smartest experts get promoted, become bottlenecks, break the teams they built. You've tried feedback and training.
Time for something that actually works.
WHAT CLIENTS ARE SAYING
"This was the first time I felt truly held to account in coaching. Not just a nice conversation but deep, uncomfortable work that shifted me."
— Ben Farren, CEO
I Know This Pattern Because I Lived It
Computer Science degree. KPMG consultant. Oliver Wyman consultant. I built my entire career on being the smartest person in the room, having all the answers, fixing everything myself.
Then I became a leader and discovered that humans don't debug like systems.
I made every expensive mistake your leaders are making now. The midnight escalations because I couldn't let go. The team that stopped thinking because I was faster at solving problems. The strategic work that never happened because I was buried in operational detail.
The identity crisis was brutal. If I'm not valuable because I have all the answers, what am I valuable for?
But it taught me exactly what needs to change. And more importantly, how to change it without the years of painful trial and error.
When a VP Engineering tells me they can't delegate because "no one else gets it," I don't lecture them about trust. I understand that "gets it" means "sees the second and third-order consequences I see" and we work on building that capability in their team, not guilting them into letting go.
WHAT CLIENTS ARE SAYING
"She made me stretch further than I could have done alone. The impact has been transforming—both personally and professionally."
— Jan-Philipp Kruip, Founder
What Makes This Different
Most executive coaching treats leadership as a skill gap. Learn to delegate. Learn to give feedback. Learn to think strategically.
Your expert leaders don't have a skill gap. They have an operating system problem.
Every leader has invisible code installed early—from family dynamics, early career wins, cultural conditioning. That code worked brilliantly as individual contributors. At scale, it corrupts everything downstream.
I rewrite the operating system.
This means understanding the entire leadership ecosystem, not just your leader in isolation.
I interview stakeholders to see patterns they can't see themselves. I understand their KPIs upfront: what they're managing, what they're avoiding, what they don't realise matters. I shadow leadership team meetings to observe dynamics they can't name.
Most coaches work with what the leader tells them. I work with what the system reveals.
When the core operating system changes, everything downstream changes naturally. Teams start thinking. Decision-making distributes. Strategic capacity opens up.
The work evolves as your leaders evolve - from crisis intervention to capability building to succession planning. Some engagements last years because each level of complexity requires different code.
WHAT CLIENTS ARE SAYING
"Tools that appear like a genie from a bottle when I need them. I've grown as a person and leader with capabilities to continue growing independently."
— Zoe Boreham, CPO
Who This Actually Works For
Organisations:
Scale-ups and enterprises with technical/expert leaders struggling at 50-500 people. Usually brought in by CEOs, HR Directors, Chairs, or PE firms who recognise the pattern and can't afford to wait.
Leaders:
Experts who built careers on individual brilliance, now drowning in people complexity. The ones who know something needs to change but can't figure out what.
The Type:
Brilliant, overwhelmed, inadvertently creating bottlenecks despite best intentions. Often the person who's never needed coaching before until the stakes got too high to wing it.
WHAT CLIENTS ARE SAYING
"I found her questions challenging and engaging which helped me to look at the way I work from a different angle. She challenged me consistently and in different ways - robustly pushing me to tackle challenges head-on and quickly nipping excuses in the bud."
— Niall Grant, Public Sector Head
Why This Works When Standard Coaching Doesn't
Twenty years in consulting means I understand your board pressure, your PE demands, your growth targets. I know what "we need results this quarter" really means.
But here's what matters more. I understand the deep satisfaction of elegant solutions, the safety of predictable systems, why letting go feels impossible. I speak to technical identity, not around it.
That combination is why leaders trust me with the uncomfortable work. I've got the business credibility to understand their commercial reality and the psychological depth to address what's actually broken.
Most coaches have one or the other.
WHAT CLIENTS ARE SAYING
"Catherine's sharp mind, intellectual curiosity and strong skill set gives me confidence in her judgement and counsel, and I always feel that she is responding thoughtfully to my situation, not with some 'off the peg' response."
— Matthew Lawrence, Chief Executive
Upgrade Their Leadership Operating System
Your expert leaders have the capability. They just need code that matches the complexity they're managing now.