Coach: Alastair James

Maximum Performance

Coach: Alastair James

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Overview

Alastair is a Leadership Coach and Mentor with an extensive corporate and consulting leadership background, whose purpose is to equip the leaders of tomorrow to succeed in an increasingly dynamic, complex and demanding world.

Alastair focuses on helping his clients to:

Strengthen their ability to focus on what really matters to have an impact.
Build the skills to influence and inspire colleagues and external stakeholders.
Understand their motivation, purpose, values and ethics; and
Forge their own personal leadership style.

He employs a judicious combination of mentoring – offering insights and perspectives from his 20 years as a leader – and coaching – helping his clients develop their own answers to the challenges they face.

During his 35 years in business – as an engineer, a management consultant, a risk and audit leader and a non-executive director – he has worked across every sector and in most business functions; with some great teams and some challenging ones; for some inspiring leaders and some very disappointing ones. He has led teams with a handful of members to ones with over 100 people – sometimes on the other side of the world.

He has always led in a mentoring/coaching style, enabling his team members to develop to the best of their ability. He is an avid reader of books on leadership and business, and the latest developments in cognitive science and psychology – which informs his thinking and the support he can provide.

‘Alastair is an incredibly smart and insightful coach. He listens intently, asks challenging and thought provoking questions, and helps me to look at challenges from different perspectives. It is evident to me that his guidance and reflections are aided by his immense experience across many sectors and different types of organisations.’

‘Alastair brought a very practical approach to coaching that combined both insightful questions and observations that got right to nub of the points we were discussing and tested my thoughts and emotions around them with some very useful relevant perspectives derived from his experience of holding senior positions in the same and other industries. His ability to guide me towards simplicity, clarity and order was invaluable and enabled me to both structure and stretch my thinking. His approach, guidance and input has undoubtedly shaped my future for the better.’

‘The one-to-one support I have received from Alastair has been exceptional – by turns insightful, supportive, challenging and provocative. Most importantly, it’s remained purposefully focused and really practical. Thank you for all your support over the years. Your advice has always been very sage!’

‘Alastair is probably the most personable senior leader I have ever encountered. Due to his compassionate nature it was very easy to get to know him and for him to understand me. He quickly knew what type of guidance I needed: whether mentoring, as I was venturing into new territory in change management and he was able to draw upon his professional expertise to guide and equip me; or coaching, where he had the ability to assess when I knew the answers but just needed them teasing out of me. Your perennial directness is a trait I very much appreciated.’

‘You are one of two people that have made a significant difference to my career by trusting me and giving me the right encouragement to develop.’

‘You were very direct and very encouraging and had a great influence on how I altered my style, way of working/thinking in a new country, in a new job.’

‘Your honesty, decency and belief that we should do the right thing in all circumstances however uncomfortable has always impressed me.’