Neil Almond Executive Coaching
Why Neil?
It can be lonely at the top. When the buck stops with you, where do you go to gain crisp clarity of thought, to rant safely or bounce strategy and thoughts before they’re publicly ‘consumable’? Who around you has the courage to tell you the unvarnished truth and help you decipher the facts from excuses?
Executive Coaching is an invaluable tool for senior executives (and for those on a trajectory towards senior management). An executive coach is a trusted friend and advisor, someone who’s on your side (even when that means pointing out uncomfortable truths), but they also can be your most loyal and faithful cheer leader.
Neil Almond is a highly experienced executive coach with a passion for supporting, coaching and facilitating leaders and their teams. He has worked at the highest level of business, charity and government with a client list including: Three Mobile, Chubb Insurance, BT, Live Nation, O2, Virgin, Defra, NHS, Community Housing Cymru and KPMG. Over his career, he has also had the pleasure of working with the likes of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as well as business leaders such as Sir Richard Branson.
Neil has rich and deep experience as an executive coach. He also holds a master’s degree in Coaching and Mentoring from the University of Wolverhampton. He is also a certified NLP Master Trainer (one of only a handful in the UK) and was winner of the prestigious ANLP Making a Difference Award at the 2017 International NLP Awards. While NLP is a very useful tool within his coaching arsenal, Neil’s coaching style is also influenced by an array of other modalities, including leadership theory, change management, positive psychology and systems thinking.
Neil is based in the beautiful city of Bristol, operating from offices in South Bristol (BS4). And whilst of course he loves to work locally (who wouldn’t? Bristol is consistently voted one of the best places to live in the UK), many of his executive coaching and facilitation clients are spread around the country, and indeed internationally.
Real life experience
Having been founder and chief executive of a successful youth charity for the best part of a decade, Neil understands what it’s like to be making tough decisions and choices at the top of an organisation. This brings not only a level of lived experience to Neil’s deck as a business coach, but also integrity. Neil’s work takes into account the complex dynamic between entrepreneurialism, commercial thinking and collaboration, that together play such an integral part in any business.
His experiences as Kikass’ CEO and Head Coach also super-charged his ability to work with complex coaching issues, in political environments and with deeply entrenched, potentially psychological, issues. He often jokes that once you’ve coached scathingly resistant young people, depressed and stressed youth workers, PTSD sufferers and victims of traumas such as kidnap and abuse, then the corporate boardroom seems blissfully calm. Neil brings real compassion, humility and empathy to his executive and leadership coaching work, but also the courage to push back and hold up a mirror to business owners, executives and leaders. Part of Neil’s humility in an executive coaching context comes from his own psychological recovery after a 2008 plane crash (ditching).
Neil recognises that every coaching client is unique, which is why he doesn’t use a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, Neil draws from his rich experience and portfolio of evidence-based and applied practices to construct every session to meet the individual business and personal needs of the leader and team he’s working with.
Team and Business Coaching
Neil is often called on by his executive coaching clients to coach and facilitate teams within their organisation. Team coaching is complex and needs a dynamic and experienced coach, capable of using a wider angled lens to help track the journey of individuals and nurture and support genuine long-term change. Neil can host team coaching events at our Hub in South Bristol, within your organisation or at a venue of your choice. He is also able to offer executive-level mentoring and consultancy support (in areas such as values alignment and team dynamics) to help you to unleash the potential of your people and organisation.
One of the main constants in organisations these days is change. Leaders need to be both responsive to change and personally resilient to it. A coach can give you the time to think beyond the organisational needs to make sure you’re taking care of your most valuable asset – you! Neil believes in positive organisations where the whole team has a real sense of meaning from their work and in developing cultures in which they can flourish, grow and thrive. So often senior executives focus on the needs of their team to the detriment of themselves. Investment in Executive Coaching reverses this trend and allows you to be the best possible leader you can be
Get in touch
If you would like to explore hiring an executive coach in Bristol, Bath, Cardiff or the South West then why not book an informal chat with Neil to explore options.
Outside of his South West bolthole Neil currently has active business and executive coaching/facilitation clients in London, along the M4 Corridor (Swindon, Maidenhead, Reading), Gloucester, Oxford, Birmingham and Manchester.
Our coaching offices are based in South Bristol (BS4), but as you see above Neil will also be very happy to come to you or talk virtually.
Neil would be delighted to talk to you if you have any questions or queries. Please do get in touch.
Tel: 0117 325 8000