John Cummins

Executive and Somatic Coach - International

You lead a company, a team or your own business, and from the outside it works. Underneath, your jaw is tight before the meetings that matter, the inbox follows you into the night, and a familiar pattern keeps coming back, however much you know about yourself. I work with CEOs, founders, senior managers and corporate executives who carry more than they show, and what we work on is how you lead when it counts: clearer decisions, more presence under pressure, that pattern no longer running the show.

I spent 25 years in that world myself: pan-European consulting, investment banking, corporate development, responsibility for product development at a major stock exchange and then a CEO role in a regulated part of a large stock exchange group. I know the pressure from the inside.

Some come to me in a career transition. Others are running on empty: pressure, poor sleep, a short fuse at home. Some have every marker of success and still wait to be found out. Most have done the frameworks and the 360s, and something still does not shift.

The habits that limit you now were once the instincts that built your success. Over-preparing, over-delivering, holding control, keeping the peace: each began as a survival response, learned long before the office, and your body still runs it. None of it needs fixing; it needs to be met. Insight alone rarely reaches something that lives below thinking, so we work with the body as well as the story.

In practice, we talk, and alongside the thinking, I ask you to notice what your body is doing: the breath that shortens, the shoulders that rise before a difficult answer. That is the somatic part, and the tightening usually points to what the behaviour has been protecting. Then you choose how to move forward. You do the work; I keep you guided, help you see clearly and hold you to what you said you wanted.

Over time, energy and presence tends to come back to the evenings and weekends. You say what you mean without three days of rehearsal. The pattern that kept repeating starts to loosen, because it is understood rather than fought.

I am accredited by the International Coaching Federation and a certified communication psychology coach, trained under Professor Friedemann Schulz von Thun. I trained in transformational coaching with Animas in the UK and in Compassionate Inquiry under Dr Gabor Maté. We go at your pace, and whatever you carry is treated as protection before anything else. My Master's in Business Psychology looked at how leadership behaviour affects the psychological health of your people.

I am in Zurich and coach mostly online. If you recognised yourself in any of this, the invitation is to book a 30-minute call. Tell me what is showing up and we will see whether working together is the right next step. You can find out more at https://www.johncummins.org