Will James

Profile

Will is highly experienced in coming alongside leaders and helping them make progress in the things that matter most. He partners leaders to develop their self, social and systems awareness, and combines these insights with practical, high impact action plans that deliver results.

Will’s early career leading an inner-city charity and then teaching in secondary schools, developed mastery in creating learning environments in which thinkers are highly supported, challenged and engaged. In commercial settings clients experience this as expert partnership in getting under the skin of the compelling purpose – what they most want to achieve; a high-definition vision of what good looks like; of finding the best way forward, and stretching themselves in focused, high impact action.

To transfer these leadership and development insights to a commercial context, Will’s first L&D role was three years as resident coach for a management consultancy working with leadership teams to leverage their diverse strengths to co-create strategy and develop their teams. It was here that he began training internal coaches and equipping senior leaders with coaching skills, alongside delivering weekly team coaching sessions for senior teams. This resulted in the formation of an easy to teach and highly effective coaching model that Will has been using to equip leaders ever since. Since 2017 he was worked independently with a range of clients, partnering organisations either already clearly motivated by a desire to optimise their impact on people and planet as well as profit (‘Purpose’), or who are committed to unearthing compelling purpose for their organisation to engage their people as well as meeting the urgent needs to respond to systemic injustice and the climate crisis.

What current clients most value in Will’s approach is his emotional intelligence and ability to create both the safety and push, the encouragement and stretch, to help leaders and teams take risks and grow. Feedback also commends his ability to energise, build confidence, overcome biases and blind spots, and ultimately create better team behaviours that achieve results.

Representative Client Engagements

1:1 Leadership Coaching of the leadership teams of purpose-driven innovative businesses, including CEO, COO and ‘Heads Of’.
Senior Leadership Team Coaching addressing:
- Purpose
- Strategic priorities
- Action planning
- Team working
- Culture change

Areas Of Expertise

Leadership development
Equipping leaders with coaching skills
Co-creating strategy
High Performing Teams
Style under stress and High-Performance Zone
Building team cultures of Inclusion and Belonging
Embedding learning culture
Systems Change

Client Types/levels Of Experience

Senior Leadership Team – CEO, MD, Directors and ‘Heads Of’ across a range of industries including Luxury Goods (Loewe, Graham and Green, Secret Escapes), Food and Hospitality, (Cook Food, Hobbs House Bakery), Law (Guildhall Chambers); Tech (Samsung, Mayden) Engineering, (WRc); Consultancy Services (Various).

Industry/functional Experience

Tech – deep work with multiple clients
Education – school leadership teams
Family Businesses
Start-ups and SMEs
Cultural/Multinational Experience
Coaching engagements in UK, USA, China, France, Spain
Residential experience of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Hong Kong, India, Thailand
Of mixed heritage, Jamaican and white English
Coaching of ethnically diverse groups wanting to leverage diversity for greater creativity, resilience and results.

Education

MA in Coaching Psychology (Oxford Brookes Business School)
PGCE (Institute of Education, University of London)
BA English Literature (Durham University).

Professional Affiliations

APECS Certified Professional Executive Coach

Certifications

Certificate in psychodynamic counselling (WPF)
Systemic Coaching and Constellations (The Whole Partnership)

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