20 years leading through complexity. Now helping others do the same.
Your team has more to offer than your current decisions suggest.
I work with senior leaders who sense they are making decisions with a fraction of the thinking available to them. The same voices. The same outcomes. The critical thinking that never quite surfaces. I help you see what's invisible from the inside - and change it.
Problem I help with
Most leadership teams aren’t underperforming because of a lack of talent. They’re underperforming because of how their conversations unfold.
The Pattern
The same people speak first. Expertise sits quiet. Challenge arrives too late or not at all. Decisions close before the best thinking has entered the room.
The Cost
It’s rarely visible until something goes wrong. A decision that seemed clear at the time. A risk nobody named. A team that capable people have quietly stopped fully contributing to.
The Shift
Small changes in how conversations unfold make a significant difference to decision quality, team contribution and performance, and the leader’s ability to get the best from people around them.
Services
I work with leaders at two levels: individually and within their teams.
Most start with a conversation.
1:1 Coaching
A thinking partner with no agenda other than yours.
Leadership is often surprisingly lonely. The higher you go, the fewer people you can think out loud with - without it becoming misread or having consequences you didn’t intend.
I offer a confidential space to step back from the day-to-day and look at what’s actually going on. Not just the presenting problem, but the patterns underneath it. The dynamics shaping how you lead, how you’re showing up, and what might need to shift.
We work on what matters to you - navigating a transition, making a complex decision, getting more from your team, or simply thinking more clearly under pressure.
What you get is a thinking partner who has spent 20 years inside organisations like yours. Who understands what intense leadership actually feels like. And who will help you see what’s hard to see from where you are.
What changes: Clearer thinking under pressure - Decisions made with greater confidence - A sharper understanding of what’s getting in your way - More impact from the team around you.
Format: Typically 3-6 sessions | 60-75 minutes per session | Frequency and timeframe agreed around you | Online via video call, or in person where practical.
The Leadership Reset
What's really happening in your leadership conversations?
Every leadership team develops conversation patterns over time. Who speaks. Who holds back. When challenging surfaces - and when it disappears. These patterns become invisible to the people inside them.
The Leadership Reset is a focused, practical programme that helps you see those patterns clearly and make small, specific shifts that change how your team contributes to decisions. It’s not a team-building exercise. It’s not a workshop. It’s an outside observer - with no stake in your internal dynamics - helping you understand what’s happening in the room and what to do differently, individually and collectively.
Delivered over 2 - 4 weeks with minimal disruption to your team.
What changes: - Clearer decisions, shaped by more of the available thinking - Earlier visibility of risk - More of your team’s expertise reaching the table - A leader who understands what they’re creating in the room.
Format: Discovery conversation + one observational / diagnostic session + debrief and practical recommendations. Later follow up can be agreed.
How I work
Start with what’s real. Not the presenting problem. The pattern underneath it. We spend time with what’s actually happening before moving to what to do about it.
Stay close to the work. The most useful coaching conversations are specific, not abstract. We work with real decisions, real dynamics and real situations - not hypotheticals.
Practical always. Every session should leave you with something concrete - a clearer perspective, a different question to ask, or a specific thing to try. Insight without application isn’t enough on it’s own.
I don’t bring frameworks to impose on your situation. I bring a way of looking at it that’s informed by experience of sitting inside the kinds of organisations and decisions you’re navigating now.
My approach is direct without being prescriptive. I’ll name what I observe - including the things that might be uncomfortable to hear - but always with your outcomes in mind, not what I think you should do.
Sessions are confidential. The work is practical. And the starting point is always your reality, not a coaching model.
I am EMCC accredited at Practitioner level and work to the EMCC’s code of ethics, which includes regular supervision.
Three Principles
About Me
What I've always done, in leadership and now in coaching — is help make the complex simpler. Not by reducing it, but by finding the clarity that was already there.
For more than two decades I worked inside global financial services — progressing to senior leadership roles in technology, leading teams across geographies, navigating complex and risk-based decisions under pressure, and spending a significant amount of time in rooms where the quality of the conversation determined the quality of the outcome.
I saw firsthand how much thinking goes unused in organisations. How the same voices shape outcomes while others stay quiet. How expertise that could change a decision never reaches the conversation in time.
I also led work that changed how a global organisation understood and supported neurodivergent colleagues — building a signposting platform developed with neurodiverse people, that gave leaders practical tools to create environments where different ways of thinking could actually contribute. That work deepened something I'd already observed: that the organisations making the best decisions aren't necessarily the ones with the most talented people. They're the ones where the most thinking reaches the table.
That's what I now bring to my coaching. Whether I'm working with an individual leader or a leadership team, the question I'm always interested in is the same: what's not being said in this room — and what would it take to change it?
I work with leaders who want to think more clearly, lead more effectively, and create the conditions for the best thinking around them to actually surface.
Credentials: EMCC Accredited | EIA Practitioner | 20+ years financial services & law.
EMCC Global Accredited
EIA Practitioner
What clients say
*Some clients respectfully wish to keep their identities private, as is the nature of a coaching relationship. Testimonials will reflect the wish of the client*.
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Working with Lorraine gave me the space and clarity I needed to navigate my new role. I came away with a simpler perspective and a clear action plan for holding my executive peers to account.
- K. (Director, Technology)
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Lorraine’s coaching encouraged me to quickly realise the level of delegation needed to be a fully effective decision-maker. It’s a shift that both my team and I are now seeing the true value of.
- S. (Senior Leader, Finance)
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Lorraine’s brings a rare combination of objectivity and practical support, which has helped me see the real issues and take action.
Over many years, she has played a significant role in how I think, lead and how I approach complex challenges.
- V. (Vice President, Engineering)
Frequently Asked Questions
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Internal coaching programmes are genuinely valuable — and for many leaders, they're a great starting point. What an independent coach offers is something different rather than something better: a space that sits completely outside your organisation, with no connection to your role, your relationships, or how your performance is measured.
That separation isn't a criticism of what's available internally. It's simply what makes certain conversations possible — the ones where you need to think out loud without any organisational context in the room.
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1:1 Coaching works with you individually — on your thinking, your decisions, your leadership patterns. The Leadership Reset works at team level, looking at what's happening in your collective conversations and how to shift it. Many clients start with 1:1 work and move into a Leadership Reset as the individual insights raise questions about the wider team dynamic.
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I work with senior leaders and leadership teams, and those stepping into senior leadership for the first time. Typically people with significant organisational responsibility — or who are about to take it on — navigating complexity, pressure or change.
Whether you're established in your role or finding your footing in a new one, the patterns I work with show up consistently. The context changes. The underlying dynamics rarely do.
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Most clients notice a shift in clarity from the first or second session. Meaningful behaviour change — the kind that shows up in how you lead and how your team responds — typically takes four to six sessions of consistent work. The Leadership Reset is designed to deliver practical, usable shifts within 2–4 weeks, with consistent work.
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Both. Individuals can engage directly. Organisations can commission work on behalf of leaders or leadership teams. If you're thinking about something at organisational scale, let's talk — the right approach depends on what you're trying to change.
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It's a real conversation, not a sales call. You share what's on your mind — a challenge, a decision, a pattern you've noticed. I'll ask questions. By the end, you'll have a clearer sense of whether working together makes sense, and I'll have a clear enough picture to tell you honestly if I think it does. There’s no pressure and no obligation.
If something in this is resonating, that’s probably worth a conversation
A 20-minute call costs nothing, and commits you to nothing.
Most people leave with more clarity than they arrived with - however there is no pressure.