Leadership Coaching

Gary is a qualified leadership coach and an EMCC Accredited Coach at Senior Practitioner level.  He provides leadership and executive coaching, career coaching, and hiking and coaching, Gary has developed The Leadership Tree model of authentic leadership to support his work.

Gary has over 25 years’ experience in Higher Education, both as a published management academic and Director of Research at Loughborough University Business School; Director of Research, Business & Innovation at Aberystwyth University; and most recently with The Leadership Foundation, and consequently Advance HE, as Director of Membership (Wales). Gary is experienced in leading strategic partnerships between universities and industry, and he has worked with Welsh Government, HEFCW, Universities Wales, and higher education institutions supporting Leadership, Management, Governance, Learning & Teaching, and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Gary’s earlier career included 7 years in the telecommunications industry and experience as a school teacher and Further Education College lecturer

Gary has experience leading a team of fifty people; merging two departments; and managing Aberystwyth University’s REF2014 submission. He was appointed to the REF2021 Equality & Diversity Advisory Panel, and was an external examiner at Loughborough University School of Business & Economics and the Limerick Institute of Technology. Gary is passionate about wellbeing and equality

Gary has been designing and facilitating leadership and management programmes for over 25 years, and has experience lecturing in Further Education and at Loughborough University where he was Programme Leader on three post graduate management programmes.  Most recently Gary was Programme Director for Advance HE’s Strategic Leadership Programme and the Wales Further & Higher Education Executive Leaders Programme. Gary is an Associate of Advance HE and Vitae.

It is safe to say that my sessions with Gary have played a central role in my leadership journey and enabled me to address some key areas where I needed to develop my thinking and methods, and reframe certain challenges. Gary’s approach is always focussed on me as an individual, bringing in powerful concepts that I have repeatedly applied in not only my working life but also on a personal level, all of which have resulted in demonstrable improvement. The core of ‘integrity’ in his approach has always resonated with me, and his own authenticity and compassion shine through in every session. I am confident that I have benefitted from opportunities in my career due to the guidance and focus I have gained from working with Gary, and I would have no hesitation in recommending him as a leadership coach to anyone.

Dr Paul Davies, Dean of the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Science, University of South Wales.

I have had the immense pleasure to work with Gary over the past 5 years in his capacity as leadership coach. During our coaching sessions, I have been able to gain valuable insights into my leadership style and identify areas for improvement. Gary has helped me develop specific strategies to overcome obstacles and achieve my goals. As a result of Gary’s outstanding coaching, I have experienced significant growth, effectiveness, and impact as a leader. 

The strengths of Gary’s coaching lies in his ability to listen attentively, provide thoughtful feedback, and tailor his approach to meet my unique needs as someone working across clinical and academic domains. Gary has a deep understanding of individual, team and organizational dynamics, which is critical for leaders seeking to navigate and lead complex environments and systems. 

What I particularly like about working with Gary is his professional, authentic, personable and supportive demeanour. I feel comfortable working through my vulnerabilities/challenges with Gary and he provides constructive, supportive and solution focused feedback/approaches in a non- judgmental way. 

In summary, Gary is an expert leadership coach. He brings his wealth of expertise and experience to every session, and ensures that the encounter is insightful and generative. I have no hesitation in recommending Gary to anyone seeking to develop their leadership skills, increase their self- awareness, and build effectiveness across healthcare and academic contexts. 

Dr Joseph C. Manning, MBE

HEE NIHR ICA Clinical Lecturer
Young People & Families Nursing; Charge Nurse PCCOT; Deputy Director - Centre for Children & Young People’s Health Research; Nottingham Children’s Hospital and Neonatology / University of Nottingham

Gary’s coaching sessions made a fundamental difference to my professional and personal effectiveness in my role during a time of considerable change and challenge. It was especially helpful to develop the goals for our programme together and to have opportunity to work through my practical approaches to real time issues as well to also think more widely about my career. Gary’s support and active listening and use of techniques such as role play [Gestalt Chair Work] have been especially important in helping me ‘recalibrate’ my thinking on my priorities and professional development after a period when I had to cover staff vacancies and respond to changes of key peer work relationships. I would commend him very strongly to anyone considering coaching".

Louise Jagger, Director of Development and Alumni Relations, Aberystwyth University

First of all, Gary is a fantastic career coach!

I found interaction and engagement with Gary really insightful and tremendously helpful.

Gary provides useful, practical, strategic advice and most importantly inspiring mentoring. He is knowledgeable, helpful, supportive and clear on not only providing but also elaborating and digging deep into all the up-to-date information on various aspects of the career journey.

What I loved is his approach on perceiving the career as a manifold. That was so clear from the very start – even from the preliminary material shared with me including the work and questionnaires to be completed before our first session. I was really amazed by this!

Gary is so passionate about coaching. He is really gifted in identifying the issues that might be troubling us at the specific point in our career and can forge a strong connection by employing what I would characterise as a novel Socratic method building trust and fostering critical thinking on the multiple fronts of your career path and journey as well as your personality.

I would not change anything in future sessions. They worked fantastically well for me and I am so happy to share that after having these sessions with Gary I managed to secure a permanent post in my field within less than a year. I recommended Gary to my colleagues and I can still recall how better I performed in interviews following the sessions with Gary!

Dr. Dimitris Kalogiros (he/him), Lecturer in Data Science, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Queen Mary University of London