The Grounded Leader

Here’s what I’m seeing a lot among my clients at this level. Let me know if it resonates:

• In your day to day you’re getting pulled into operational detail all the time.
  
  That makes complete sense by the way because it’s your ability to handle the detail and fix problems that have made you successful up until this point.
  
  What it means though is that you crave time and headspace to attend to the big things and you might be worrying that you’re not operating strategically enough.
  
  Or maybe you’re trying to prepare for a leadership level role and you don’t know how to do that when you have a full managerial level workload and you physically can’t do any more.
  
  
• Your team is depleted because of a collision of recruitment freezes, budget cuts and additional bureaucracy that’s been created by recent “transformation” projects across your institution. 
  
  
• The team that’s left is amazing (most of them anyway) and you want to do right by them because they’ve been through so much over the last few years.
  
  However, you also have a suspicion that you should be doing more to delegate effectively and you’re probably not as good at holding them accountable as you think you should be. 
  
  
• It doesn’t feel like there are enough hours in the day but you also know that if I magicked up another 10 hours per day for you, there still wouldn’t be enough time. So perhaps the issue is that the job is actually too big or the remit too wide but you don’t see that changing anytime soon.
  
  
• Perhaps you accidentally ended up in this more senior position through a restructure or the sudden departure of your old boss and now you’re riddled with self-doubt. You don’t feel like you really earned the promotion or feel like a leader.
  
  
• You probably have a bunch of stuff going on in your personal life too: kids, aging parents, house things to keep on top of, health concerns perhaps….the list feels endless.

Or maybe for you it’s simpler than that.

You might just sense that you’re outgrowing your current role, or maybe it has an expiry date due to a contract or project ending or you’re seeing the writing on the wall from a pending restructure.

You know you’re ready for more but you don’t know how to position yourself for the next opportunity. You know you want to progress and take on more of a leadership role but they seem to be few and far between and you want to feel really ready when the right opportunities come up….whatever and whenever that may be. 

What you might be feeling...

What you might be feeling but not saying out loud is that you’re wondering if you’re even cut out for leadership, or if this is the right role/institution/sector for you.... But you do kind of love it too and you can’t really see yourself anywhere else.
It’s confusing!

You know you should be delegating more but you can’t seem to make yourself. There’s comfort in the familiar detail oriented work and you’ve built your career on being someone who gets shit done and being a “safe pair of hands”, even if it’s overwhelming at times. 

And maybe you’re having this debate with yourself about how you know you’re capable of more: more impact, more responsibility, a bigger remit…and the bigger salary wouldn’t go amis either. And yet, you also think maybe you should be grateful for what you’ve got and be happy that you’ve even got a job, given the state of the sector. Sound familiar?

You wish you felt like you were in the right place, making the kind of contribution you want to make and still had enough headspace and energy to be present with your family and friends at the end of the day.

About your coach

I’m a specialist self-belief coach with a background in HE professional services and I’m obsessed with the stuff of management and leadership: the patterns, the relationships and the practicalities.

What I’ve learned from coaching people through this exact transition is that sometimes it feels really gross in your body but that isn’t a signal that you’re doing it wrong or that you’re bad at it.

It’s a signal that you’re doing something unfamiliar and those two things are different.

You’re growing into:

• a thoughtful, grounded leader who knows how to make great decisions,
• who speaks to yourself more kindly and is able to reassure yourself when things go wrong so you bounce back more quickly,
• who makes progress on the big stuff because you’re delegating well and trusting your team to get on with their jobs while you get on with yours.

All of that has far more to do with how you feel about leadership and management than it does with what specific tools or techniques you’re using. And the surprising thing (for my clients) is that this shift happens gradually and it often sneaks up on them.

It’s like they’re seeing their growth in the rear view mirror rather than in the day to day, until one day, it just feels really normal and natural. 

You should know though, I'm not an instructional or directive coach, and I'm not here to fix anyone.

I operate at the more therapeutic edges of the coaching spectrum, interested in patterns, relationships, and the stories you’re telling yourself.

My work draws on neuroscience, self-belief coaching, and an understanding of how our bodies hold the tensions and doubts that show up in our leadership and what happens when we shift them.

My past clients have occasionally mentioned that I should warn people that coaching with me feels more like therapy than they thought coaching was like.

So take this as fair warning. We go deep, quickly.

But I also want you to know that I’m a trauma-informed practitioner and I know my scope of practice so if anything comes up in our sessions that is outside of my professional capacity to support you with, I will refer you to appropriate therapeutic support. 

How it works

This programme is a 12 month group coaching programme. We have weekly calls and a monthly masterclass.

It’s open enrolment so people can join throughout the year but I’ll always keep the groups to 12 people or less because the quality of the relationships matters and I want each of you to have a great experience. When you sign up you'll join a kick off call (there's one every month for new joiners) and we'll work through the first phase together. You're then free to join the ongoing weekly calls in whichever time slot suits your schedule best.

At the moment the calls are 10:00 - 11:00 on Thursdays and as more people join I'll add more time options for the regular calls.

There are four phases of development within the programme:

We start with Clarity. Using my Hidden Curriculum framework and some Ai wizardry we’ll create a bespoke hidden curriculum for your career step. It shows you what senior leaders are looking for at your level.

Then we’ll spend most of the time in responsive coaching. Each week we’ll talk about:

• what’s going on for you,
• what you’re experiencing,
• how you’re finding it,
• what you’re noticing
• and what you want to experiment with next.

This is the competence phase and we spend most of our time in this phase.

Then as the programme progresses we’ll move through credibility and conviction. In my experience these kind of sneak up on you.

There will come a point where you’ll come to a session and reflect “I got invited into a conversation about the next level of strategy” or “I talked to the VC and ….” The credibility phase is when people begin to see you differently and doors start opening for you.

Then there’s the conviction phase. This is when how you see yourself shifts.

It’s the moment when you look back and realise that you’re really doing it. Leadership at this level is feeling like second nature and you begin to feel like the leader you always wanted to be.

You know you have conviction when, for example, you go to an interview and you have no interest in convincing the panel that you’re the right candidate. Instead it oozes from you. The credibility and competence are so much a part of who you are that you become the obvious candidate for the role. No convincing required.

You will thrive here if you:

• Are ready to dive in and do the deeper work of unpicking your patterns and stories
• Are optimistic about what’s possible for you
• Want to actually do things differently, not just absorb content

This is not for people who think that emotions are for losers or anyone who is looking for an academic programme.

This is applied, practitioner level leadership. 

When it works

You will be different in 12 months.

You’ll have developed more steady emotional responsiveness and be operating from that sturdy, grounded place inside yourself.

You’ll bounce back from setbacks more quickly.

You’ll be able to recognise your own thought patterns and make conscious choices about how you show up in any given situation.

You’ll be able to discern the meaningful signal from the noise and you’ll be making progress on the things you were previously putting off.

How you show up in meetings will change.

You’ll speak to yourself more kindly and advocate for yourself differently.

You will feel like a leader and people around you will sense it.

Conversely, ask yourself this: what happens in a year or two from now if nothing changes? 

When you're ready to join

 If this feels like the right fit for you then join now.

There are monthly kick off calls so you don’t have to wait for a launch date, just join when you feel ready and join the next kick off call.

The next one is at 10:00 - 11:00 on Thursday 5th February 2026.

The investment is £175 per month or £2,100 in full. 

If after 60 days you don't have absolute clarity on what leadership credibility looks like, where you currently stand, and what you need to work on, we'll rip up the agreement and part ways as friends. No need to complete the programme or pay another penny. 

If you’re not ready to join yet you can get the Hidden Curriculum Grade Guide for this level here.

You can join the programme whenever you’re ready. In the meantime, here are some questions you might be mulling over:

Or if you stil have questions, email me at [email protected]. I'm happy to jump on a quick call to make sure this is right for you.

I can't wait to support you.

Fiona x