Coaching for Leadership

Why Coaching for Leadership?

Most managers in the charity, arts and third sector were never really prepared for the people part of the job. They were promoted because they were good at what they did, handed a team, and expected to figure out the rest.

So they do. They manage on instinct, pick up habits from the managers they've had, and get on with it. Some of those habits serve them well. Some of them don't. And the ones that don't tend to show up in the conversations they keep putting off, the problems that keep landing back on their desk, and the gap between the leader they want to be and the one they are at the end of a hard week.

A coaching approach to leadership doesn't ask you to become a coach. It gives you a way of leading that draws out the best in the people around you, through better conversations, clearer thinking and real trust in your team's ability to find their own way through.

That approach, properly learned and properly practised,

changes how you manage people for good. Not just for the length of the course.

What is Coaching for Leadership?

This programme is not about training you to become a coach. It is about giving you a coherent approach to leadership that you can use in the room with your team, in the 1:1 that keeps getting rescheduled, in the conversation you have been putting off for three weeks.

A coaching approach means asking better questions instead of providing all the answers. It means helping the person in front of you to think something through, rather than thinking it through for them. Over time, that shift changes what your team brings to you, how they work without you, and what your job actually feels like.

Coaching for Leadership is the accredited programme that gives you the framework, the practice and the space to make that shift properly, not just understand it in principle.

Who it's for

This programme is for managers and leaders in the charity, arts and third sector who are responsible for real people and are getting on with it, often without much of a framework for the people part of the job.

You might have been promoted into management from a delivery role and found the job has completely changed shape.

You might be a few years in and still unsure whether you are doing it well.

You might be leading a community or relational organisation where the hierarchy is flat but the responsibility is not.

What the people in our cohorts tend to have in common is this: they care about the people they lead, they want to do it well, and they have not yet had the right support to do it differently.

No prior coaching experience is required.

About the programme

Six months. Five teaching days. Two facilitators in the room with you throughout. The programme is built around the understanding that you cannot read your way into a different way of leading. You have to practise it, repeatedly, with real feedback, over enough time for it to stick.

5 days teaching: 4 in-person, one via Zoom

30 hours of taught sessions – led by 2 highly-qualified tutors.

Smaller-group sessions and 1-2-1 tutorials

2 x 1-2-1 tutorials to focus on your specific context and progress.

3 x 3hr tutor-led online practice groups (choice of dates / times)

Support after the course finishes.

An internationally-recognised qualification

On successful completion, participation receive an accredited qualification from the UK”s leading body for coaching – the Accredited Award in Coach Training.

All teaching and learning materials provided

All teaching materials including a course handbook and resources to embed coaching at work including prompt cards and a mug!

12 month gift membership of the Association for Coaching

On completion, participants receive 12 months' membership

of the Association for Coaching, the UK's leading professional body for coaching.

Book now

Meet the facilitators

Sarah Fox - founder & tutor

Sarah spent more than twenty years working in socially engaged arts before training as a coach so she understands what it means to lead in a sector where the work is relational, the resources are stretched and the stakes feel personal.

She is an EMCC Senior Practitioner Coach and qualified coach supervisor, which means she brings not just coaching expertise but an understanding of what happens to practitioners under pressure. On the programme, that translates into a room where people feel genuinely safe to examine the parts of their leadership they find most uncomfortable.

Find out more

Claire Antrobus - founder & tutor

Claire came to coaching through leadership, not the other way round. Fifteen years of building programmes for coaches and leaders kept surfacing the same gap: the learning that happened in formal sessions, and the leadership that happened back in the teams, were not the same thing. Coaching for Leadership is her answer to that gap.

She is an Association of Coaching Master Executive Coach and a leadership researcher with a particular focus on inclusion and neurodiversity. That specialism is built into the programme design, not added as an afterthought.

Find out more

Frequently Asked Questions

Please reach us at hello@coachingforleadership.info if you cannot find an answer to your question.

I can see the value, but £1,495 per person is a big ask in our organisation. Our L&D budget, if we even have one, doesn't stretch to this kind of spend on a single member of staff.

We get that things are tight and budgets are always a consideration.

But can we ask you a question? What is the unsupported manager actually costing you?

A manager who doesn't know what they're allowed to do lets small problems fester into HR issues. A team that's over-managed by someone running on instinct can't function without constant direction. A leader who carries everything at their desk - because delegation never quite works - is working at the wrong level, and your organisation is paying for every hour of it.

At £1,495, this programme costs less than most equivalent coaching packages for a single individual. It is six months of embedded, accredited, face-to-face development - not a one-day workshop that changes nothing. 100% of our cohort 1 participants reported real, tangible changes in how they lead day to day.

And the investment doesn't just benefit one person; it ripples across every team member they manage and every conversation they have from that point on.

We also offer bursary spaces for smaller organisations where cost is a bigger barrier. It is always worth a conversation.

Five full days out of the office, plus practice hours, tutorials, and self-directed study on top - I simply cannot justify that amount of time away from my work. I'm already at capacity.

The time commitment is real, and we won’t pretend otherwise. This is not a bite-sized online module you can fit around your inbox.

But listen carefully to what you've just said: you're at capacity. You're managing a team and you can't step back from the day-to-day. You're working too much, and you're not sure you're even doing it effectively.

That is precisely the situation this programme is designed to address.

The managers who tell us they don't have time for this programme are, almost without exception, the ones spending too much of their time doing what their teams should be doing themselves - because the team hasn't been developed to function without them.

Thomas Valentine, a participant from Birmingham Hippodrome, described the shift this way: "I approach conversations differently. I approach supporting my team differently." He also felt that his team now saw him as someone who had more time and support for them - because the programme changed how he worked, not just how he thought about working.

The time up front is your investment. The return is all the time you get back.

You mostly deliver in-person, which means travel, potentially an overnight stay - additional cost and hassle on top of everything else. Most training is online now. Why is this different?

We work this way because coaching is a practice skill, not a knowledge skill - and practice skills cannot be learned through a screen.

You can watch a video about how to hold a difficult conversation. You can read a framework for listening actively. You can’t develop the actual capacity to do it without doing it, repeatedly, in real time, with real people, in a room. The physical environment - the trust that builds when a group is fully present together, the non-verbal reading of the room, the discomfort and the recovery from it - is not incidental to the learning. It is the learning.

This is what our first cohort felt. As one participant put it, the course gave them something every second of every time they were together, considered without ever feeling overwhelming. Chris Keady, Head of Learning at Birmingham Museums Trust, described the in-person dynamic with precision: in that room, nobody was 'head of' or 'director of' anything. Everyone learned the same skill at the same pace, regardless of where they sat in the organisational hierarchy.

That flattening - and the trust it creates - is what makes the practice transfer.

If I'm honest, when I hear 'coaching' I picture someone sitting in a room asking me how that makes me feel. That's not what I need. And I'm not looking to become a coach - I'm a manager.

We spend a lot of time explaining what coaching isn't before we can explain what it is. People think it's just someone asking you questions and not taking any responsibility. Or they think it's something a bit woo-woo and new-agey.

This programme is neither of those things. And (critically) it’s not training you to become a coach. You’re right, a lot of programmes in this space either train coaches or talk vaguely about 'coaching culture.'

This programme teaches you to use a coaching approach as a leadership tool. The outcome is always better leadership. Coaching is the method that gets you there.

In practice, that means: knowing how to have a difficult conversation without it becoming a confrontation. How to support a struggling team member without taking their problem on yourself. How to ask the question that helps someone work out their own answer, rather than handing them yours.

We bring rigour, warmth, and two experienced facilitators in the room with you the whole way through.

I manage a small team. I'm not at director level. When I hear the word 'leadership,' I picture people more senior than me - not someone in my position.

Leadership implies a heroic model - capital-L, corner office, keynote speech - that most people working in the arts, charity and third sector have already decided doesn't describe them.

This programme is not for that version of leadership. It's for the person who has real responsibility for real people and is getting on with it, often without any map. The accidental manager (promoted because they were good at their job, then handed a team and expected to know what to do with them) is who this was built for.

One participant who joined our first cohort described the timing: "The course was perfectly timed for me as a new manager, trying to figure out what kind of leader I would like to be." She wasn't a director, she was in the middle of trying to work out how to show up for her team. That is exactly who we're talking to.

Leadership is what happens in the space between you and the people you're responsible for. That space is where this programme does its work.

I manage volunteers and coordinate freelancers, but I don't have anyone formally reporting to me. This sounds like it's designed for people with direct reports. I'm not sure it's for someone in my position.

The third sector does not run on conventional management structures. A programme manager coordinating ten volunteers, a community development worker supporting local activists, a creative producer working with a rotating pool of freelancers - each of these people is doing the work of leadership without the job title that usually accompanies it.

The qualifying criterion for this programme is responsibility for people, not the contractual nature of that relationship. Participants in our first cohort included very newly promoted line managers still finding their feet, more experienced managers who wanted to lead differently, and people whose teams sat entirely outside their employing organisation.

One participant who described themselves as a non-manager wrote that the programme "created a safe, supportive space where I felt valued and heard." And they left with a coaching approach they were already using in their day-to-day work.

If you are responsible for developing, supporting or drawing the best out of other people (in whatever form that takes), this programme was built for the kind of work you do.

Part of me is hesitant because I don't know what doing this would involve - what it might bring up, what I'd have to confront. I've had training before that put me on the spot and it wasn't a good experience.

We get it, training that puts people on the spot, or that reveals gaps without any support to close them, can do real damage. This programme is not that.

It is designed from the ground up to be a psychologically safe environment. A key part of learning is to be able to make mistakes and admit what you don’t know. We playfully explore that in different ways across the course.

The facilitation is led by two people who have spent their careers creating the conditions for people to learn without fear. Chris from cohort 1 described how Sarah and Claire handled sessions with care that went above and beyond what he expected.

It’s true that there is an element of reflection and honest self-examination built into the programme. Some of what participants encounter goes deeper than they expected. But it arrives through doing, in a room full of peers, supported by people who know what they're doing.

As one participant wrote: "Loved how equality, democracy and trust were clearly at the core of the experience. It created a safe, supportive space where I - a non-manager - felt valued and heard."

I'd need to justify this spend to my organisation - and I'm not sure how I'd demonstrate that the investment has paid off. Leadership development is hard to measure.

You’ve been burned by leadership training that fades once the person is back at their desk, with no architecture to embed it, no follow-up, and no way to know whether anything changed.

This programme is structurally different. The six-month duration, the practice groups, the 1:1 tutorials, the post-course Association for Coaching membership - these are the architecture that turns learning into changed behaviour. In our first cohort, every single participant reported real, tangible changes in how they managed and led day to day. There were different conversations, and different outcomes for their teams.

The ROI case is also not confined to the individual. Thomas Valentine reported that his team now felt more empowered and that he had more time for them. Chris Keady described the potential reach plainly: "It has the power to completely flip a culture in an organisation and set people up for their next opportunity."

We are happy to have a direct conversation about what evidence of impact looks like for your organisation - before you commit, not after.

Our HR or L&D team tends to look for ILM accreditation specifically. I'm not confident I can make the internal case for something they won't immediately recognise.

Yes, ILM is widely known, and in some organisations (particularly those with established L&D frameworks), it carries weight simply because people are familiar with it.

Our programme is accredited by the Association for Coaching, one of the leading professional bodies in coaching internationally. Our accreditation application was assessed as outstanding, with a detailed review of our programme design, and assessment approach.

ILM typically accredits management and leadership programmes in a broad sense. AC accreditation validates coaching practice specifically - it confirms that what participants are learning meets a rigorous professional standard for how coaching is taught, assessed, and embedded. For a programme built around coaching as a leadership method, AC accreditation is the more relevant credential, not a lesser one.

If your HR team has questions, we are willing to speak with them directly.

Our HR or L&D team tends to look for ILM accreditation specifically. I'm not confident I can make the internal case for something they won't immediately recognise.

Yes, ILM is widely known, and in some organisations (particularly those with established L&D frameworks), it carries weight simply because people are familiar with it.

If your HR team has questions, we are willing to speak with them directly.

Coaching for Leadership

Why Coaching for Leadership?

What is Coaching for Leadership?

Who it's for

About the programme

5 days teaching: 4 in-person, one via Zoom

Smaller-group sessions and 1-2-1 tutorials

An internationally-recognised qualification

All teaching and learning materials provided

12 month gift membership of the Association for Coaching

A unique, fully accredited and inclusive leadership training programme

Meet the facilitators

Sarah Fox - founder & tutor

Claire Antrobus - founder & tutor

Dates and pricing

Testimonials

Experience a 45 minute bite-size taster

Frequently Asked Questions

Download our free guide - The Leadership Spectrum

Coaching for Leadership

Why Coaching for Leadership?

What is Coaching for Leadership?

Who it's for

About the programme

5 days teaching: 4 in-person, one via Zoom

Smaller-group sessions and 1-2-1 tutorials

An internationally-recognised qualification

All teaching and learning materials provided

12 month gift membership of the Association for Coaching

A unique, fully accredited and inclusive leadership training programme

Meet the facilitators

Sarah Fox - founder & tutor

Claire Antrobus - founder & tutor

Dates and pricing

Testimonials

Experience a 45 minute bite-size taster

Frequently Asked Questions

Download our free guide - The Leadership Spectrum

This website uses cookies.