Executive Coaching

The Tavistock Institute has long standing expertise and experience of delivering coaching. We have coached executives in many areas including: Health (NHS); Public Protection (police, army, probation service, prisons); Arts & Culture; Social Enterprise (voluntary sector); Banking; Retail, Local and Central Government.

Our distinctive approach to coaching is that we work with the individual but always have in mind that we are part of larger systems, e.g. an organisation, community, society. Thus we explore with the client what is occurring at the interface between them and their professional environment.

Both organisations and coachees benefit from the coaching through:

• improved strategic thinking;
• more effective management based on understanding people as individuals, as members of groups, organisations and the wider society; and
• increased capacity to lead and manage in rapidly changing and uncertain environments.

Our versatile coaches have developed a number of models which they apply creatively to the Executive Coaching setting. Through the executive coaching relationship, coachees build their capacity to relate to the complex systems they encounter, and to understand the part they play in these, that is, how what they do and say affects these systems

In the one-to-one working relationship the Tavistock Institute coach:

• Provides a regular space to consider how the coachees approach taking up their role, whether this is new or developing
• Enables them to develop their capacity for leadership and the exercise of authority in that role
• Helps them develop resilience in role and manage the psychological processes of occupying a senior executive role
• Provides expert input to enable them to think about the 'below the surface’ issues in the organisation.
• Develops their awareness of the whole system dynamics and their role on the boundaries
• Enables them to identify further learning and development needs

We offer bespoke Executive Coaching which is tailored to your needs and will reflect the particular aspects of your career stage. These include:

• Coaching in the Current Economic Climate: Massive unemployment explodes the myth of the dependability of society and work organisations. Those who do get back into a job are conscious of its precariousness and tend to adopt a “heads down” strategy of survival. However, there are a growing number of people who do manage to adopt alternative role models. This process of positive adaptation can be speeded up with timely executive coaching. We therefore offer:
  • Coaching for the recently unemployed or those about to become unemployed due to current redundancies to help them come to terms with the new situation they are facing and then re-discover their resources to move forward and re-engage in the employment market
  • Coaching for ‘survivors’ of redundancies to help them work through the emotional impact of retaining their employment in order to not become paralysed by anxiety or guilt
• Assessment and Testing: our coaches are able to support the coaching process by using:
  • Psychological and personality assessment to identify how accumulated attitudes, behaviours and internalised feelings impact on willingness and capability to engage in change and development.
  • A range of 360° evaluation and feedback tools to ground, contextualise and round-off the coaching process.
• Coaching for leadership: working with executives and leaders to deliver objectives by addressing business, personal and inter-personal issues. This is particularly important in a context where individuals typically are managing situations of uncertainty and risk, or are involved in complex cross-functional, cultural or international collaboration. Frequently we help individuals develop as thought leaders in their fields.


• Moving from professional to managerial roles: coaching ”new’ managers in their period of transition from professional roles (e.g. NHS consultants, GPs, lawyers) to taking up managerial responsibilities in their institutions.


• Home Life coaching: managing roles, responsibilities, tasks and expectations to and from others; working with those who grapple with balancing career aspirations and progression with running and bringing up a family and/or balancing community culture and espoused values and beliefs.


• Stage of Life and/or Career: assessment of strengths, development needs, life-stage and aspirations; career planning and strategic networking; working with senior achievers facing retirement on next steps, stepping down, generational issues in the organisation and issues of succession.


• Teams and groups coaching: providing in-house training and consultancy in coaching as a core management competence and supporting the organisation to develop a coaching culture, where opportunities for learning, reflecting and advising are embedded in the organisational structure. Coaching here addresses the diversity and multi-culturalism issues which increasingly face organisations today as these are faced with globalisation and multinational make-up of staff.


• A certificated training course: Coaching for Leadership and Professional Development: Our coaching practitioners train coaches in the approaches that underpin their practice and delivery. This is an annual course of 4 x 2-day modules.


• Coaching Supervision: The Tavistock Institute Coaching Unit is built around a technology for the provision of continued spaces for reflection, deliberation and emerging action. This model informs the Tavistock Institute coaches supervision practice which is also offered to coaches-in-training, to internal or external consultants, HR managers and other interested organisational practitioners. Coaching supervision is usually offered in groups that meet at regular intervals for an agreed period.