Bold Leap coaches individuals and teams to achieve high performance. The barriers to high performance are often invisible – our attitudes, our thinking, our ways of talking, our behaviours and the dynamics of the situation.
By diagnosing what is really happening, we unlock new performance. We work with you, and with teams, to make the invisible visible. And we make sure that the end results are visible too - the best outcomes are always noticed by others.
We use a variety of analytical models and frameworks to reveal the data.
By choosing analytical techniques which are appropriate for the dynamics of the situation, we can go deeper to see what is happening below the surface and create actions that go beyond the superficial.
Each individual, team, dynamic and performance context is unique, so the coaching approach reflects that.
There are building blocks for high performance - which we can use to accelerate – but the journey of awareness, realisation, choices and action is seldom linear.
Our work is bespoke to you and we’ll adapt our approach to your needs.
We work really hard to find a safe space to explore, learn, try new things, practice, occasionally to fail but always to grow.
In that space we work with you to find new possibilities, new growth, and new confidence.
We work with you - at times, we might even fight harder for you than you do.
We work closely enough to be able to see what is going on and to offer real-time support.
But we’ll always do this with enough detachment so that we can be objective, honest and realistic.
We don’t homogenise or generalise.
By holding tightly to the possibility for reflection, we find that we do have choices and the choices enable change.
Nothing is set in stone.
It matters profoundly that you are successful, sustainably.
It is vital that we get to concrete actions and clear results, noticed by others, and felt by you.
Old habits die hard and behaviour change is notoriously difficult to achieve - this is true for us as individuals and especially true for organisations. The data shows that nearly half of all leadership transitions fail *.
The key to success is to think about transition not change (and build a plan accordingly). Change is often external and happens to us, it can happen quickly and it cannot always be shaped. Transition, however, is something we can choose, it is a process not an event, we can influence the pace and we can frame it in our own terms.
Bold Leap works by accurately planning the context for the individual or team or organisation and creating bespoke transition plans that deliver.
* SOURCE: McKinsey, How to get leadership transition right, Scott Keller and Mary Meaney, May 2018
There is frequently a gap between expectations and results. As much as 40% of a strategy’s potential value is lost due to the breakdown in execution – and people failing to work together effectively is the most cited reason for the gap **.
New leaders will ask ‘why is it not working as I want?’ and teams will ask ‘why does this seem so hard?’
Bold Leap uses a number of diagnostic tools, including forensic language analysis, to reveal what is really going on. We then work together to co-create actions plans which are systemic and get people working together powerfully and productively.
** SOURCE: Harvard Business Review: Turning Great Strategy into Great Performance, Michael Mankins & Richard Steele , July–August 2005 Issue
Teams exist to produce more than we can produce as individuals. The output, therefore, is the result of a combined effort. Almost all of our working lives are spent working in teams of one sort or another. Our working life is therefore typified by relationships.
Most relationship issues never get resolved and are perpetual problems based on personality differences ***. Over time unresolved issues only get worse and then eventually spill over. Personality issues is the most frequent justification made by employers firing an employee (not performance).
Our work here intensifies to get back on track, at an individual, team and organisation level.
*** SOURCE: The Gottman Institute, quoted www.gottman.com
“First and foremost I just want to thank you. You have been such an amazing source of strength and perspective for me over the last 6-8 months and I cannot express how much you have helped me”
“I cannot thank you enough. The work we have done together has been so enlightening. You have helped me turn my focus inward and I am able to see myself in a new light’”
“Overall, a step change improvement and as well as being seen by the organization to add great value, I think they will now see that we are much more cohesive as a team. We now have common goals that we agreed collectively and that has greatly reduced concerns about alignment on “what” we do. We work well with each other and levels of trust have increased substantially”
“This is a team that has significantly progressed over the last twelve months. We trust more and challenge more.”
This is a bit about us - because it is really about you.
Ben has transformed the performance of some of the best-known businesses in the world through their brands and their people. His experience spans all marketing environments with UK, European and Global businesses that are leaders in their field including GlaxoSmithKline, Diageo, Kimberly-Clark, McVitie’s, Reckitt Benckiser, and ICI.
Ben’s journey into coaching began when he worked alongside the Diageo Executive to develop and teach the Diageo Leadership Performance Programme to support cultural change within the organization. He subsequently qualified as a certified team coach under Phil Sandhal’s supervision at Team Coaching International.
He is focused on delivering his own purpose through coaching – to realise the potential in people, relationships, brands and businesses. His recent projects include; coaching a high-performing leadership team to deliver sustainable growth; coaching performance in the transition to new roles for senior executives; developing agile ways of working in a highly visible business environment; and re-establishing trust as the basis for performance in a global healthcare organisation.
Clare’s fascination with language has been the consistent thread running through her personal and professional life, both in terms of learning new languages (she is fluent in French and competent in Dutch) and analysing language in use.
As a marketing professional she used her skills in linguistic analysis to define and articulate brand positionings in order better to appeal to their target consumers. As a language trainer, through a deep understanding of her own language as well as the context of use, to develop linguistic competence and confidence. As an academic researcher, she uses analysis of discourse and relates it to wider structures of meaning.
Clare completed her PhD at Birmingham in 2015 - a language-based study examining discourses of language, gender and ageing. Her book Discourses of Ageing and Gender: the Impact of Public and Private Voices on the Identity of Ageing Women was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019.
Clare continues her research and teaching interests as an Associate Tutor and supervisor on the Distance Learning MA Applied Linguistics programme at the University of Birmingham, Visiting Lecturer in Media, Culture and Representation at University of Roehampton, and Visiting Lecturer in Language and Gender at Goldsmith’s, University of London. Clare is a certified TEFAL teacher (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and currently has one Japanese student. And she is also Assistant Editor of ‘Discourse, Context and Media’.
Clare combines her academic interests with consulting. She is a certified practitioner of VoicePrint TM . Her consulting work focuses on diagnosing the ‘language gaps’ which can appear between organisations and their target audiences, between brands and their consumers and between individuals and teams. Her core purpose is to empower people to reclaim confidence and visibility in all domains of their lives. She strives to create confident, sensitive and skillful communicators.
