From sustainability professional to leadership coach
How I can help
My coaching mission is to develop sustainability professionals and teams that have impact and are resilient.
This means guiding sustainability professionals towards having greater impact in their organisation.
It means reclaiming your sustainability ambition when you feel you are forever compromising on what you care about.
It also means building success because you are a sustainability professional, rather than alongside your passion for sustainability.
This might already connect with you. Or you might have a different challenge as a sustainability professional. I would like to help, so let's have a free, no strings call to see if we would work well together.
My journey as a sustainability professional
I started with caring about the environment and climate change - doing a PhD on carbon capture. I did other jobs along the way, because for a long time sustainability wasn't a "career". These other jobs helped my sustainability career- I worked on the core decisions that mattered to organisations and so learned how to relate sustainability to the organisation. One way or another, it was always sustainability roles that I kept coming back to.
Public sector - leading policy, strategy, research and delivery of sustainability in central government (Ministry of Defence)
Advisory - advising the government on adapting to climate change (Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution)
Consulting - delivering sustainability projects to build client sustainability capabilities
Corporate - building a sustainability team and integrating sustainability into business decisions
Independent - advising organisations on adapting to uncertainty
How Headmark came about
Wherever I have worked, I enjoyed helping others develop themselves and achieve more. And I enjoyed learning from those with experience than me.
Military colleagues shared numerous leadership insights along the way, including the term "headmark" - a strategic goal, or a bearing. "What is your headwork?" became a common question to myself and others to work out what to do and how to do it.
I trained as a professional coach to deepen and broaden my skills and I am accredited as an EMCC Coach Practitioner.
Helping clients find their own "headmark" - their strategic direction - is the foundation of my coaching approach. I have helped many professionals just like you - and I would love to help you too!
Observations on delivering sustainability impact
Sustainability is hard...and deeply rewarding. If you can, it is a wonderful field in which to work. Over the years I have collected observations and insights about what helps.
- Resilience matters. This is a long journey. Patience is needed. Pacing and energy management is essential.
- Influence can be as good as authority...but it has to be cultivated, used wisely and deployed judiciously.
- Understanding how decisions are made underpins how to achieve sustainability impact.
- It is all about the mission - aligning individual and organisational missions accelerates change.
