Our Mission
Helping leaders and teams thrive through courageous conversations and high impact coaching
We equip leaders and their teams with the clarity, skillset and collective confidence to accelerate tangible, measurable progress, not just ideas that sound good on paper.
We take a highly customised and collaborative approach to designing coaching and development programs that resonate with your business and cultural context and feel personally and practically relevant.
You will progress real work faster and with greater impact.
The leaders who partner with you
We partner with teams and their leaders to drive people-powered growth. We are the people at the core of our business, and also work with a team of brilliant associate coaches.
Founder and Principal Coach
Lou Gilliland
Lou is a professional coach (ACC) and has worked for over 15 years in different leadership roles in the Tech and Financial sectors in the UK and USA. She has first hand experience of building diverse teams and leading with cultural intention and understands the support you need to do so. Steps along her career journey also include knowing what it’s like to be part of a team where that’s missing.
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She has run culture, leadership and team development initiatives since 2011, both as an external coach and consultant, and in house, leading Culture, Learning & Development for a high-growth SAAS company head-quartered in Silicon Valley. After 6 years in the Bay Area Louise returned to the UK in 2021 and now lives in Bath with her young family.
She works with purpose-led organizations who believe that when you grow your people the results follow. Previous clients have included: HiBob, Trinny London, Graphcore, Bill.Com, Niantic Labs, Wildbit, and Google.
Lou is fueled by a love of the outdoors and exercise, her energetic sons, and her passion for languages. Louise is an enthusiastic trail runner, an inconsistent yogi, and has recently taken up open water swimming!
Senior coach
Jo Garside
Jo is a certified coach, trained through the Coaches Training Institute (ICF accredited), with a background in People and HR roles from global corporates to fast-paced start-ups. She began her career at BT and then Amazon, before moving into the world of scale-ups where she found her sweet spot: supporting leaders as they grow alongside their businesses.
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Jo loves running leadership programs to help leaders grow, develop and lead authentically. When leaders start leading from their values, showing up with openness and humility, and giving themselves permission to be vulnerable, that’s when the real shift happens. She’s worked with a great mix of clients over the years, from well-known names like Capgemini, Tonies, Unite Students and Vertical Aerospace.
Beyond work, Jo lives in Bristol with her partner, two boys and two step-children – a busy and very fun household!
You can also often find Jo on a netball court, in a swimming pool or wherever she can get some sun!
Our Principles
1. We are a catalyst who can both coach and consult
We are a catalyst who can both coach and consult. We are skilled at both offering perspective, guidance and structure, whilst asking the questions to allow you the space to come up with the solutions that work for you yourselves.
2. We help you choose courage over comfort
The purpose of engaging with us is to help you build the practice of having the conversations you might be avoiding. We help you build more healthy, productive conflict.
3. We co-create the solution you need
Every business is unique, together we will build the solution and program structure that meets you where you are at and gets you to where you want to be.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a typical engagement look like?
There really is no ‘typical’ as we pride ourselves on customizing our approach based on really understanding your needs. Please read our individual service pages for an outline of our core offerings.
How do you leverage AI in your work?
Currently we leverage AI to synthesize data when we do Insights work. You have the option of including AI for tracking notes in individual coaching conversations. We use AI to accelerate our research and challenge our thinking.
Where are you based?
Our offices are in Bath, S.W England however we have clients all over Europe and the USA. We are fluent in French and Spanish and have a strong interest in working with different cultures.
What sets you apart from other coaches?
We pride ourselves on living and leading with our principles. We embrace courageous conversations in all of our interactions as we believe that’s where connection is formed and the foundation of trust is built.