Jonty Leicester

Leadership Coach - Luton, Aylesbury & Hemel Hempstead

My name is Jonty and I am currently living on a narrow boat in the UK after spending twenty years in Sweden. After school I chose to study Psychology because I have always been fascinated by what makes people tick. I did an MSc in the application of psychology to work and launched my career as an assessment specialist using psychometrics, interviews and other tools to help recruit graduates and to advise on senior level appointments.

After a stint at one of the big banks as their Group Head of Assessment I moved back into consultancy designing and delivering a range of courses and team events for organisations who wanted to support managers with the challenges they faced. Everything from tactical support and applications of things like Stephen Covey's seven habits of effective leaders, to helping senior teams establish strategy, and effective working procedures and a team climate to help them perform better. I love working with real life issues, and bringing a psychological frame of reference to help make sense of whats going on.

Since 2005 I have been self employed and doing more and more coaching.

You know how newly promoted leaders and established senior leaders can sometimes realise that what made them successful in the past may not to be working so well now. They struggle with high levels of perfectionism, difficulty with letting things go, not really trusting certain colleagues, or an assumption that they always need to be as efficient as possible. What I do is to help people stop and take stock of why this might be, where these messages come from and to identify the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that will start a fly wheel that helps them shift course. For example, one of my recent coachees was finding that even her regular trips to the gym at a weekend were no longer helping her switch off and her work brain was constantly in 'on' mode. Over four sessions we looked at her values, what had made her succeed and how some more subtle subconcious messages were damaging her self confidence. A combination of revised beliefs and some small behavioural habits really helped her. Firstly to see new ways of thinking about her inner dialogue and then very practical ways to improve her impact and relationships with key stakeholders and her team to get different results.

The way I work is on two levels at the same time. On the surface what behaviours do you need to adapt or adopt to be more effective? Here non verbal communication alignment is often key. The second level is what are the underlying messages or assumptions you make about how you behave. When do these work against you and how can you channel you values to continue to work for you in the future

If this sounds of interest to you then please feel free to get in touch.