Andy Bird

My coaching practice:

Working in a spirit of close partnership, I help my clients think through their responses to the challenges they face in their business activities and relationships. More fundamentally, I work with them to craft a distinctive leadership approach based on their personal values, passions and talents.

I recognise that the ownership and responsibility for changing behaviour lies with the client and that their engagement in the coaching relationship is of paramount importance in fostering positive results. My coaching approach is therefore based upon Rogerian person-centred principles, but I utilise a diverse range of techniques, including behavioural, cognitive, NLP and systems methodologies, as the situation demands.

I also have deep experience in team facilitation and organisational change programmes, so my involvement frequently extends to helping leaders improve the dynamics and capabilities within their teams and broader networks.

My main services:

- One-to-one personal coaching and mentoring
- Leadership team coaching and facilitation
- Delivery of leadership development programmes
- Keynote conference speeches

Coaching experience:

Most of my individual coaching clients are UK-based leaders in large corporate businesses such as HSBC, Marks & Spencer, Siemens and Shell. However, I have also coached people in smaller organisations like start-ups and marketing agencies.

Recent coaching assignments include:

- a new CEO working to clarify their strategic priorities and engage their leadership team
- a marketing director looking to develop a clearer sense of their leadership purpose and style
- a general manager seeking to improve their personal impact and organisational influence
- a senior marketer making the transition to a board level role
- a successful entrepreneur planning the next stage of their professional career

I have also led The Marketing Society’s renowned International Marketing Leaders Programme for the past 15 years. This is a leadership development programme open to high potential marketers about to enter senior leadership roles, which is now run annually in London, New York and Singapore.

Career summary:

I graduated from The Queen’s College, Oxford with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (and managed to play a fair bit of football and music when I was there too!).

I moved on to spend 15 years with Unilever, working in a variety of strategic marketing roles in the UK, Singapore and India. In my last position, I set up and led the Unilever Marketing Academy, a group responsible for driving the development of the company’s global marketing capabilities.

In 2000, I left to become a Co-Founder of Brand Learning, a capability development consultancy which now has a team of 170 people and offices in London, New York and Singapore. Over the years, we have been widely recognised for the quality of our client work and our special culture and employee engagement levels. Following Brand Learning’s recent acquisition by Accenture, I now work independently but still retain very close links with the company.

I am qualified with an MSc in Coaching & Behaviour Change from Henley Business School. I will also be publishing a new book called The Inspired Leader with Bloomsbury in November 2017. Its focus is on how people can discover, experience and maintain their personal inspiration as leaders.