Questions people often ask before we work together.

Executive coaching is a confidential thinking partnership for leaders carrying responsibility, complexity or change. The work begins with what is actually happening in your leadership: a decision, relationship, team issue, transition, recurring pattern, or a sense that the way you have been leading no longer quite fits.

My role is not to tell you what to do. It is to create enough space, challenge and perspective for you to see what is happening more clearly, notice what may be shaping your response, and make more intentional choices about what happens next.

I primarily work with CEOs, founders, directors and senior leaders, including people stepping into greater scope, responsibility or visibility.

Coaching can be useful when something is difficult, but it is not only for fixing problems. Many leaders begin coaching because something is going well and the next stage requires something different from them.

Engagements vary depending on the person, context and purpose of the work. Some coaching supports a specific transition or challenge. Other relationships continue for longer where the work is broader or evolving.

We agree the shape of the engagement together after the initial conversation.

There is no single rhythm that suits every engagement. We agree a cadence that gives enough continuity for the work to build while leaving enough space for you to apply what emerges between sessions.

We work with the real material of your leadership: a decision you need to make, a conversation you are avoiding, a relationship that has become difficult, a team dynamic, a transition, or something you can feel but have not yet named clearly.

Sometimes the work is strategic. Sometimes relational. Sometimes behavioural. Sometimes the most useful question is about identity. There is no fixed script.

Yes. The coaching conversation itself is confidential. Where an organisation is sponsoring the coaching, we contract clearly around purpose, confidentiality and any appropriate stakeholder involvement before the work begins.

Objectives or progress may sometimes be reviewed jointly, but there should be no ambiguity about what remains private.

Coaching helps you think, notice, choose and act more intentionally. Mentoring draws more explicitly on the mentor's own experience and advice. Consulting typically involves diagnosing a problem and recommending solutions. Therapy focuses primarily on psychological wellbeing, distress, healing and clinical or therapeutic concerns.

There can be overlap at the edges, but the purpose and contract are different.

Usually, no. I need enough understanding of your context to work intelligently with what is happening, but I am not there to become the technical expert in your role. Sometimes not being embedded in the same industry assumptions is useful.

What matters more is my ability to work with leadership, relationships, identity, judgement, systems and complexity.

Credentials and experience matter. Fit matters too. You need someone you can think honestly with: someone you trust enough to challenge you, who can stay curious without becoming impressed by the role or intimidated by it.

The first conversation is partly about discovering whether that quality of working relationship exists.

External facilitation can be useful when the team cannot easily hold the conversation and manage the process at the same time. That may include an important decision, strategy work, conflict, a team reset, difficult conversations, significant change, competing perspectives, or a need for greater clarity or alignment.

An external facilitator holds the process so the team can focus on the work.

Facilitation is usually focused on helping a group get somewhere important together. Team coaching focuses more deeply on how the team itself functions over time: its relationships, patterns, accountability, decision-making and collective behaviour.

Sometimes one facilitated conversation is enough. Sometimes it reveals deeper patterns that would benefit from team coaching.

Yes. The starting point is understanding what is happening and whether there is enough willingness in the system to work with it. The aim is not to manufacture harmony.

Healthy teams need difference and challenge. The work is about helping the team use that difference more productively.

I normally begin by speaking with the team leader and, where useful, other stakeholders or team members. We explore why now, what is happening, what has already been tried, what the team believes the issue is, what success would look like, and what stakeholders need from the team.

The purpose is not to arrive with a diagnosis. It is to enter the room with enough context to work intelligently.

Sometimes. If there is a specific conversation, decision or piece of work to accomplish, one well-designed facilitated session may be exactly what is needed.

If the same relational or behavioural patterns repeatedly return, deeper team coaching or development may be more useful.

Yes. I work with leaders and teams internationally. Where format matters, we scope the practicalities case by case.

My work combines executive coaching, Narrative Coaching, systemic awareness, facilitation, the Enneagram and more than 5,000 hours of coaching and facilitation. But the value is not in the list of methods.

I am interested in what is actually happening: the immediate challenge, the pattern underneath it, the role you are playing, what has become difficult to see from inside the situation, and what becomes possible when more of the picture comes into view.

I work with warmth, curiosity and challenge. The aim is not to perform expertise at you. It is to help create the conditions for useful thinking and meaningful action.

I am an ICF PCC accredited coach with more than 5,000 hours of coaching and facilitation experience. My background includes acting and physical theatre, executive coaching, leadership development, team work, facilitation, Narrative Coaching, systemic approaches, the Enneagram and embodiment.

I bring together:

• ICF PCC
• Diploma in Transformational Coaching
• Narrative Coaching
• Systemic & analytic approaches
• iEQ9 Enneagram
• Physical Intelligence & embodiment
• Advanced coaching and supervision

Yes. Robert Stephenson Coaching is my independent coaching, team and facilitation practice. I work directly with leaders, teams and organisations across a range of contexts.

Yes. I work with leaders and teams internationally online, with selected in-person work by arrangement.

Book a 20-minute conversation. You do not need a polished brief. Tell me what is happening and what you are thinking about. From there, we can work out whether the next step makes sense.