Sustainable changes in behaviours and performance at work

Small tweaks in your behaviour through better self-awareness can lead to real change and have a significant impact on yourself and others.

Welcome to Kilpatrick Executive Coaching. We work with senior leaders and high-potential future leaders in a range of blue-chip corporate organisations.

At the heart of our work is high level executive coaching, partnering closely with organisations and building trusted relationships with individuals. We also offer coaching supervision and are passionate about the development of coaches. We offer a range of tailored services including:

Executive Coaching

Executive Coaching

According to the Association for Professional Executive Coaching and Supervision (APECS), Executive Coaching is differentiated from other forms of coaching by being “primarily concerned with the development of the executive in the context of the needs of their organisation” (APECS, 2020).

Important aspects of executive coaching commonly include helping an individual to develop into a more effective leader (Peltier, 2010), as a form of leadership development (De Haan, Duckworth, Birch and Jones, 2013) or “to improve leadership skills, professional performance, and wellbeing and the effectiveness of the organisation” (Grant, 2014).

There is a growing amount of research into coaching effectiveness, though it is hard to measure definitively and accurately. However, in our experience, coaching is highly effective at both the individual and organisational level. Please see testimonials for some examples of recent feedback.

Why Executive Coaching?

An individual will ask for coaching or be put forward for coaching for any number of reasons, most typically because they have identified the need to work on some key areas that might be holding them back in some way.

How Does It Work?

As Executive Coaches, we work with an individual over a series of frequent and confidential one-to-one sessions. We will ensure that the coaching objectives are clear as quickly as possible and will together meet with the client’s line manager to ensure that the coaching objectives are also tied to the business needs.

We support and challenge our clients to gain insight into their behaviours and to start to make significant changes – but often starting with small tweaks.

We are members of the British Psychological Society and are qualified in both Test User Occupational Ability (level A) and Test User Occupational Personality (Level B). We frequently use tools and psychological models to help further exploration and are trained users of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®), FIRO-B (Interpersonal Relations Tool), NEO PI-R, Strengthscope, Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument and Work Interests Schedule.

360 Degree Feedback

We use 360 degree feedback skilfully and carefully in many of our coaching programmes, often a pivotal part of helping leaders to really understand how they are perceived by others, to see their development areas and also their unique strengths clearly.

View our testimonials for real examples of individual benefits of coaching.

Common Coaching Areas

Stepping up to leadership
Developing emotional intelligence including increased self-awareness (often through the use of 360 degree feedback)
Self-management when in a stressful or demanding role
Maintaining and building levels of confidence and self-esteem
Transition to a new role internally or externally
Work load management, in particular boundary management and learning to delegate effectively
Navigating the maternity transition before and during maternity leave and after the return to work

Building and managing high performing teams
Career cross-roads and career proactivity and development (including managing networking more effectively)
Managing relationships across the firm, particularly difficult or complex ones
Rebuilding confidence after a challenging time such as transition
Assertiveness and holding difficult conversations with colleagues and direct reports
High performing individuals and managing anxiety and high standards
Well-being: addressing the impact of working at full tilt and ensuring an understanding of resilience and recovery

Leadership Development

Leadership Development

We develop and deliver workshops for very senior individuals who:

may not have thought of themselves as leaders until now
may not have had, or prioritised, the time to think of themselves as leaders
are first-time leaders

Some of the workshops we offer

Leadership Development Workshops

We have developed and run a number of highly successful leadership development workshops for both new leaders and more established leaders, focusing on a range of key areas but centering on understanding emotional intelligence and increasing self-awareness.

MBTI Team Workshops

We are skilled MBTI facilitators and run frequent MBTI workshops for teams to help them explore and understand their personality types and their differences as a team in order to work more effectively together.

Senior Female Leaders

We are very experienced at with working with senior female leaders and high-potential future leaders and have helped develop and lead successful programmes for small groups of women across all sectors, focusing on self-awareness, leadership identity and brand, managing the balance of work-home, maintaining confidence and communicating with impact.

Maternity Transition

One of our specialisms is working with women prior to and during maternity leave and, as well as coaching at this transition point, and we create and run workshops looking at career development, changing priorities, managing the transition and the return to work.

Common Coaching Areas

Stepping up to leadership
Developing emotional intelligence including increased self-awareness (often through the use of 360 degree feedback)
Self-management when in a stressful or demanding role
Maintaining and building levels of confidence and self-esteem
Transition to a new role internally or externally
Work load management, in particular boundary management and learning to delegate effectively
Navigating the maternity transition before and during maternity leave and after the return to work

Building and managing high performing teams
Career cross-roads and career proactivity and development (including managing networking more effectively)
Managing relationships across the firm, particularly difficult or complex ones
Assertiveness and holding difficult conversations with colleagues and direct reports
High performing individuals and managing anxiety and high standards
Well-being: addressing the impact of working at full tilt and ensuring an understanding of resilience and recovery

Team coaching

Team Coaching

An area in increasing demand is team coaching, working with teams to help them to work better together by:

addressing key areas of difficulty
understanding team purpose and ensuring clarity over roles and responsibilities
creating commitment to the team
fostering trust and a spirit of growth through acknowledging development areas and understanding difference in the team
exploring conflict and creating a healthy understanding of how to manage conflict
creating accountability for task and role

Team Coaching Experience

We are accredited Systemic Team Coaches with the Association of Executive Coaching. We ensure that the team as a whole, rather than the individuals within the team, is our client.

The coaching focuses on helping the team to better understand where there may be difficulties in relationship and task within the team and also outside of the team with direct reports, senior stakeholders, peers, as well as external stakeholders such as clients and shareholders. We are accredited to use the 360 Systemic Team Coaching model to help teams explore and work with feedback from across and outside of the organisation.

In addition, we use several models to further self-awareness within the team, such as: MBTI to explore personality type, communication and influencing styles, responses to conflict, and reactions under stress.

Our Core Values

Professionalism & Integrity

We work to the highest of standards and adhere closely to, and are bound by, the code of ethics of the EMCC.

View the code of ethics

Trust

We build rapid rapport and make our clients quickly feel understood and supported. Confidentiality is vitally important and we ensure that this is a key part of building the relationship with our clients.

Challenge

We challenge our clients to be the best that they can be, in a gentle but continual manner.

Psychological depth

With backgrounds in business and psychology, we help people to understand themselves better in order to make significant and longstanding changes to the way they behave.

Partnering with the business

We work closely with the organisation sponsoring the coaching to ensure that the coaching is relevant and goal driven and not taking place in a silo. We take time to really understand the organisation and the context in which our client is working and this helps us to do the best coaching possible.

Continual learning

It really matters to us that we are top of our game, much as we help those that we coach to be. We invest time and money in continual learning and self- development through reflection, study, conferences, shared learning with colleagues, and monthly coaching supervision sessions.

Founder & Lead Coach

Connect on LinkedIn

Dr Andrea Kilpatrick

An accredited Senior Practitioner with the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). Qualified coaching supervisor.

Alongside her individual work with leaders, Andrea Kilpatrick is highly experienced in working with teams and groups, both at London Business School, Cranfield School of Management and with several corporate organisations.

She has run numerous 360 degree feedback sessions as well as designing and delivering interactive workshops on leadership development and career development.

In 2022, Andrea successfully completed her doctorate in Coaching and Mentoring on the topic of confidence in the transition to senior leadership. She also holds an MSc in Career Management and Coaching from Birkbeck, University of London and an MA in Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge.

26 years’ experience including 9 years in professional services
17 years’ specialising in coaching and in more recent years coaching supervision
Multilingual: Fluent English, French and Italian

Recent Testimonials

Head of Learning and Development

Law Firm

I introduced 3 partners to Andrea. All 3 partners spoke very highly of her. Their confidence grew considerably. Their increasing level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence was instrumental in their success within their respective teams.

I found Andrea a highly professional individual with the highest level of integrity. In our conversations and meetings, whilst Andrea fed back key concerns about the client, she maintained a strict code of client confidentiality.

Managing Director

Financial Services

Coaching with Andrea was an extremely positive experience. The main result has been that my self-confidence has grown … and my team’s production grew significantly as I became more confident and motivational.

I was ranked at the very top of all MDs. I see the coaching as paying for itself many times over.

Senior Partner and Head of Practice

Law Firm

I feel extremely fortunate to have met Andrea and worked with her. At the time I met her I was under considerable pressure generally with both work and home responsibilities and felt a little as if I might explode.

She is kind, patient and warm and was not afraid of pushing me to consider difficult issues but was gentle in doing so. In short my experience has been so beneficial to me and therefore to my team.

Executive Board member

Not for Profit

I really enjoyed working with Andrea and felt inspired and encouraged by her professional expertise. Andrea very quickly understood what I needed: she made me feel listened to and well supported all the way through the coaching.

She helped me to best position my strengths and achievements and to give me more clarity on my abilities. She challenged me where necessary to ensure that I pushed myself as far as needed but did so in a gentle manner. Andrea has very high integrity and was supportive and responsive at all times.

Partner

Private Equity Firm

Andrea has been of great help in working through specific areas of improvement that she identified through interviews with my colleagues. I have put in place of number of initiatives and processes as a result of our discussions, and this has given me much greater confidence as well as a more structured approach to managing not only my team but also my superiors.

Senior Partner

Professional Services

I was the one who “swam across the channel in the dark” (it was my arms and legs which propelled me through the water). But the coaching was the boat alongside and it provided the encouragement and nourishment and navigation. Andrea has a groundedness, calmness, thoughtfulness, respectfulness, and interest which seem to take the risk out of self-disclosing honesty.

Senior Vice President

FTSE Organisation

Andrea had a sense of calm and was extremely focused. She challenged me to find within myself the answer to any specific issue. In particular, she helped me to find much more focus and to understand what I want and do not want for my professional future so that I can set very clear priorities and have the determination to accomplish them all.

She has helped me to regain energy and to rediscover the love for what I do.

New Leader

Professional Services

The leadership workshop was very thought provoking, it allowed me to consider things like emotional intelligence that I had not done before and this, along with thinking about my leadership brand and the values I stand for, will really help me to be a better leader.

It also helped me to think about how to get the best out of my team.

Executive Director

Financial Services

Andrea managed our relationship with a great degree of patience early on in the process.

She was able to offer me fantastic perspective throughout and this enabled me to hold up a very honest mirror to my own behaviours and principles which greatly changed my own approach.

Board Director

Education Services

Andrea was attentive and gave no feeling of a cookie-cutter approach but genuinely listened to my circumstances. There was a consistency and thoughtfulness about our interactions. She was effective: Andrea worked with me and made me come to some key realisations.

Marketing Director

Anonymous

I’ve had coaching before with others. I used to come away from the sessions feeling like it was “time off” from my day-to-day work but this time I felt the need to prepare for the sessions, being focused on arrival. Knowing Andrea was committed in the session meant I knew I had to be. During the session I found it mentally rigorous and tough, but great company and enjoyable nonetheless.

On reflection, I can say it was the opposite to my previous coaching encounters – not time off for sure. Andrea’s coaching helped me to be promoted and beyond this, she left me with plenty to apply and to continually think about how to improve my leadership and professional development.

Of Counsel

Law Firm

Andrea created immediate rapport and empathy. She was really skilled at listening and drawing out the personal goals and commitment necessary to my role and ambitions.

Once I had articulated these, she was incredibly good at developing these ideas and turning them into practical actions. She inspired me to look at myself and my relationships with others in a new way.