Deep conversations
Role transitions ask leaders to change how they are seen before they always feel ready to be seen differently.
Helping a senior commercial leader step into a bigger role with clearer influence, confidence and practical leadership tools.
A focused one-to-one coaching programme for a senior finance and commercial leader moving into a broader leadership role inside a major health and wellbeing retailer.
Holland & Barrett is a health and wellness retailer operating across the UK and Europe, with leadership and people development needs at operational scale.
The context
The visible brief was role transition: supporting a capable leader to step into a larger remit with confidence, clearer stakeholder influence and stronger leadership impact. Underneath that sat the more useful work of translating self-awareness, neuroscience and practical tools into day-to-day leadership habits that would hold under pressure.
The work
We created the space to think clearly, together.
Clear thinking
Kate designed a three-month coaching programme around three connected themes: leadership impact, authentic storytelling and stepping into the new role. The work combined neuroscience-informed coaching, SCARF, practical communication tools, resilience practices and live preparation for real leadership moments.
Practical ways forward
Used neuroscience-based techniques to make pressure responses easier to understand and work with.
The outcome
Stronger foundations. Clearer direction. Better relationships.
- The leader developed a more deliberate, people-centred leadership style
- Stakeholder communication became clearer, more confident and more memorable
- Role transition work turned into practical short-term goals and visible leadership habits
- Neuroscience-based tools gave the leader techniques they could use in everyday work
“The neuroscience was fascinating, but the real value was having practical tools I could use day to day, with a meaningful impact on my leadership style and the team more broadly.”
The impact
Clarity that changed how the work could move.
The useful coaching was not abstract reflection. It gave a thoughtful commercial leader a practical operating kit for influence, confidence and role transition.
Delve deeper
Related resources for the pattern underneath this work.
01
Neuroscience
You know exactly what habit you need to change. So why haven't you?
Most leaders, at some point in their development, arrive at a moment of uncomfortable clarity. They can see the pattern.
02
Leadership habits
Why good leaders still behave badly under pressure
Most leaders who behave badly under pressure are not bad leaders. They are people whose nervous system has taken over from their intentions at exactly the moment their intentions were most needed.
03
Habits at Work
You are not being collaborative. You are being conflict-avoidant. There is a difference.
A journal on people-pleasing in leadership, the threat response underneath it, and the difference between real collaboration and avoiding the useful conflict.