Leadership, Coaching & Business Psychology Blog

Insights on leadership, coaching, and business psychology.

Latest Articles on Leadership & Psychology

When Your Best Analyst Becomes a Leader: What Firms Get Wrong About Senior Manager Transitions

When Your Best Analyst Becomes a Leader: What Firms Get Wrong About Senior Manager Transitions

Promoting your best analyst to Senior Manager is one of the most common decisions in professional services, and one of the most frequently mismanaged. The capabilities that made them exceptional as an individual contributor are not the same ones that make them effective as a leader, and that gap does not close on its own. This article examines how business psychology and psychometric assessment can help firms make better promotion decisions and support the transition where it matters most.

Dale Thoroughgood11 May 20268 min read
From Exceptional Associate to Effective Partner: The Transition Most Firms Are Not Ready For

From Exceptional Associate to Effective Partner: The Transition Most Firms Are Not Ready For

The transition from Associate to Partner is one of the most significant moments in a professional services career, yet most firms arrive at it without the frameworks or language to navigate it well. This article explores what the individual and the firm are each experiencing at this moment, why the capability gap is so consistently underserved, and what structured development support looks like when it is designed to genuinely close it.

Dale Thoroughgood1 May 20269 min read
The HR Leader’s Guide to High-Return Coaching Engagements
Executive CoachingHR Strategy

The HR Leader’s Guide to High-Return Coaching Engagements

Commissioning coaching is the easy part. What determines whether an engagement actually produces results is how HR and business leaders structure, support, and manage their role within it. This article examines the evidence on what makes coaching work from an organisational perspective and what HR leaders need to do before, during, and after the engagement to protect their investment.

Dale Thoroughgood13 Apr 202611 min read
The Peter Principle Is Alive in Your Firm. Executive Coaching & Leadership Development Is How You Stop It.
Executive CoachingLeadership DevelopmentManagement Development

The Peter Principle Is Alive in Your Firm. Executive Coaching & Leadership Development Is How You Stop It.

Your best individual contributor just became a line manager. The skills that made them exceptional at their previous role are not the skills the new one requires. This pattern has a name, a fifty-year evidence base, and a measurable cost to UK organisations running into billions. This article sets out why the Peter Principle remains stubbornly active in financial and professional services firms, what the research says about the consequences, and how executive coaching and training at the point of promotion closes the gap before it becomes an employment relations case, a retention problem, or a sickness absence bill.

Dale Thoroughgood25 Mar 202612 min read