Strategic Influence & Leadership Communication
I work with senior leaders and high-performing functional teams to strengthen how they influence, communicate, and show up in the moments that matter most.
Often already delivering at a high level, but are navigating a shift in visibility, stakeholder complexity, or organisational pressure that requires a different level of impact.
Strategic Influence & Leadership Communication
I work with senior leaders and high-performing functional teams to strengthen how they influence, communicate, and show up in the moments that matter most.
Often already delivering at a high level, but are navigating a shift in visibility, stakeholder complexity, or organisational pressure that requires a different level of impact.
Are you being seen, heard, and truly understood?
In today’s world, empathy alone isn’t enough, and neither is influence without integrity.
Authentic Influence® is the powerful combination of both. It’s how you lead with kindness and get results. Take the free assessment to discover your unique influence style, and how to step into your most impactful, authentic self.
As leaders step into more senior environments, the expectations change.
It’s no longer just about delivery but how clearly you can shape thinking, influence decisions, and hold your position in complex dynamics. Expertise and knowledge is there, but something isn’t consistently landing.
In day-to-day work, this can look like:
- Leaving meetings not landing your point confidently and clearly, and replaying the conversation afterwards
- Agreeing too quickly in the moment, then reflecting later that you would have taken a different position
- Having a clear perspective internally, but finding it difficult to articulate it with enough clarity or authority in the room
- Over-explaining in an attempt to be understood, and losing people as a result
- Holding back in the presence of more dominant or confident personalities, even when you have valuable input or becoming more dominant when feeling ‘under attack’
- Overplaying strengths, which creates blind spots in how your message lands
Over time, this can create a gap between how someone is actually performing and how they are perceived at the next level
These patterns tend to become more visible when:
- Someone steps into a broader or more senior role
- Stakeholder complexity increases
- There is greater exposure to senior leadership forums
- Organisational dynamics become more political or fast-moving
At this point it becomes about:
- shaping direction
- influencing decisions
- holding position in the room
- and being seen as credible at that level
The Strategic Influence Method
My work brings together behavioural insight, practical influence strategies, and communication that lands. The areas we typically focus on include:
Self-awareness & behavioural patterns
Understanding drivers, values, default responses under pressure, and how these are experienced by others using deep dive psychometrics tools and 360 surveys.
Strategic & authentic influence
Navigating stakeholder dynamics, managing competing perspectives, and influencing without force or overcompensation.
Executive communication
Translating complex thinking into clear, structured communication — whether in meetings, briefings, or presentations harnessing the power of story.
Perspective & thought leadership
Developing and expressing a point of view with clarity, without needing to overstate or perform.
Presence & visibility
Being seen and heard in a way that feels natural, consistent, and credible.
This work follows a simple, repeatable structure:
We build awareness, introduce practical approaches, apply them in real business situations, and revisit them until the shift is visible and sustained.
This work is delivered in a way that fits the context of the organisation:
- 1:1 executive coaching
- Leadership development programmes
- Targeted workshops
- Strategic communication sessions
- Keynotes
Often, this work is integrated into broader leadership or transformation initiatives.
If this is an area you’re currently exploring, either for yourself or within your organisation. I’m always open to a conversation.
“I’ve had an immense pleasure of working with Helen for over a year now and I cannot recommend her enough. She is a fantastic professional, TedEx curator, executive coach, consultant, trainer, facilitator that uniquely combines her empathetic, deeply humane approach to everyone and everything she does with hard data-driven business expertise.
Over the years, we’ve worked together on a variety of L&D projects: like Influencing skills course, leadership development programs, learning bites, 121 coaching, etc. Helen has always added value based on her tremendous experience, business know-how and creative flair & empathy, that’s been confirmed by the ongoing top positive feedback received after Helen’s sessions.”
“Helen worked with us on our first virtual Leadership Programme. As usual, her session on Story Telling prepared the group well for their final presentations and the results spoke for themselves. Each person showed how practical the content of the relatively short 2.5-hour session was, with their individual presentations enriched with Helens’ tools. What I love about working with Helen is her ability to quickly understand the context of the job, tailor the to the people in the room, and provide high energy in her delivery.“
Team Development Offsite Days
Alongside 1:1 coaching, I also run senior team offsite days in Brighton to help teams recalibrate, reconnect, and strengthen the way they communicate and work together.
These sessions are honest, practical and highly interactive, designed to surface what’s really happening in the dynamics, reset ways of working, and give people simple tools they can use immediately in meetings, decisions and stakeholder moments.
I host these at Soho House Brighton, and they can be booked as a standalone offsite or as part of a wider programme of leadership and communication development.
Recent themes have included Strategic Influence as a Senior Team, Empowerment and Influence (upwards, sideways and downwards), and building mastermind-style alliances across cross-cultural and cross-functional teams.
If you’re planning your next senior team offsite, book a call and we’ll shape a session that fits your goals, your context, and the conversations your team needs to have.
“Been honored to partner with Helen as a speaker for Pepsi Lipton JV Thrive in Your Career program – a month of webinars, round tables and workshops to empower our employees on their career journey. Helen has developed and delivered a great and powerful session on Storytelling – ‘Crafting your Origin Story for Career Success’. The quality of briefing and understanding the need, the content crafted, flexibility and openness for a dialog, smooth and friendly delivery of the session – every step of the journey of partnering with Helen was delightful and set a really high standard.”
My career story
I started my career in leadership, talent and learning as a coach at Virgin Atlantic Airways at the tender age of 19, and I quickly found my passion for helping people achieve more.
Over the years, I honed my expertise coaching and training everyone from front line managers to C-suite executives on the power of influence, communication, managing conflict, team dynamics and self-awareness.
I supported leaders to deliver engaging speeches, town halls, briefings and team days — often working with complex (and, let’s be honest, quite dull) material… because we still have to use data to communicate.
Over time, I became the go-to person for developing leadership capability, talent and teams in these areas. Along the way, I added new tools to my belt, including one of the most powerful and versatile of all: storytelling.
Since starting my own business, I’ve loved bringing my experience in the world of TED — as both a speaker and curator — alongside supporting SMEs and entrepreneurs as a speaker and storytelling coach, while continuing to work with organisations to keep stretching and enriching my expertise.
Book a call to discuss your specific needs
She has a style that means when you are online with her it still feels safe and the energy she manages to convey is exceptional. She has a real art in making sure that people have really clear, actionable goals following any training intervention and is a pleasure to work with.
My career story
I started my career in leadership, talent and learning as a coach at Virgin Atlantic Airways at the tender age of 19, and I quickly found my passion for helping people achieve more.
Over the years, I honed my expertise coaching and training everyone from front line managers to C-suite executives on the power of influence, communication, managing conflict, team dynamics and self-awareness.
I supported leaders to deliver engaging speeches, town halls, briefings and team days — often working with complex (and, let’s be honest, quite dull) material… because we still have to use data to communicate.
Over time, I became the go-to person for developing leadership capability, talent and teams in these areas. Along the way, I added new tools to my belt, including one of the most powerful and versatile of all: storytelling.
Since starting my own business, I’ve loved bringing my experience in the world of TED — as both a speaker and curator — alongside supporting SMEs and entrepreneurs as a speaker and storytelling coach, while continuing to work with organisations to keep stretching and enriching my expertise.
Book a call to discuss your specific needs
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Helen over the past few years in my leadership role. She’s supported me through one-to-one coaching, delivered impactful group learning sessions for my peers and direct reports, and consistently helped me grow.
In our one-to-one sessions, I experienced some true breakthrough moments, gaining clarity on how to approach challenges and recognising ways I’d been holding myself back. I’ve recently stepped into a new role, and I genuinely don’t think I could have done it without Helen’s guidance. She helped me navigate the barriers, whether self-imposed or external, one step at a time.
Helen has a unique ability to unlock confidence and spark strategic, big-picture thinking. She helped me break free from the busyness of day-to-day demands to see the broader landscape.
What sets Helen apart is not just her expertise, but her humanity. Her blogs and personal reflections resonated deeply with me. As a “people person,” I appreciated the warm, real conversations that kicked off our sessions. Sharing a laugh over parenting chaos made it easier to open up. That relatable, grounded energy makes a huge difference.
Corporate coaching doesn’t need to be dry. With Helen, it never is. She brings energy, insight, and a deep understanding of office dynamics, hierarchy, and leadership from her experience in large organisations and working with senior leaders across sectors. That experience is invaluable and makes the coaching authentic and effective.
I would recommend Helen to anyone looking to develop, reflect and grow.“
“Helen has been delivering training and coaching solutions for us at Opel Vauxhall Finance and is an absolute expert at online delivery as well as still being great in a physical setting. She has helped us design and deliver really effective online and blended learning programs and understand how to get people to open up and get the most from the sessions.
She has a style that means when you are online with her it still feels safe and the energy she manages to convey is exceptional. She has a real art in making sure that people have really clear, actionable goals following any training intervention and is a pleasure to work with.
Are you being seen, heard, and truly understood?
In today’s world, empathy alone isn’t enough, and neither is influence without integrity.
Authentic Influence® is the powerful combination of both. It’s how you lead with kindness and get results. Take the free assessment to discover your unique influence style, and how to step into your most impactful, authentic self.
Qualifications and Certificates
Foundation degree in Psychology
Certificate in Executive Coaching and Mentoring (ILM Level 7)
NLP Practitioner
British Psychological Society Level A & B Certificates in Psychometric testing
CIPD Certificate in Training Practice
Hogan development tools MVPI, HPI and HDS, Myers Briggs, Strengthscope and PI.
