Organisational psychology for senior leaders and leadership teams.
Based in Melbourne, working across Australia and internationally.
Endorsed organisational and counselling psychologist · Award-winning PhD · Certified executive coach · 25+ years advising senior leaders
When you choose someone to help with a difficult leadership or team issue, you are also choosing the perspective they bring to it.
The work may involve goals and actions, behaviour and skills, relationships, the leader’s internal experience or several of these at once.
My training and experience allow me to look across them. I consider what you are bringing to the situation, how you are taking up your role, what is happening between people, where authority sits and what the organisation itself is contributing.
The difficulty may sit mainly in one place or emerge from several factors interacting. Working that out matters. It changes how the situation is understood and therefore what you need to do next.
My work draws on organisational psychology, counselling psychology, systems psychodynamics, executive coaching training and leadership experience inside organisations.
Organisational psychology brings an understanding of people at work, including leadership, roles, authority, teams, culture and organisational systems.
Counselling psychology adds depth in relationships, emotions, conflict, significant transitions and the impact of sustained pressure and harmful workplace experiences. The work remains focused on the leadership situation and what needs to happen at work.
Systems psychodynamics helps me understand the person in role, including how authority, power and group dynamics shape what happens. It also pays attention to conscious and unconscious pressures in organisations.
My PhD in organisational psychology examined relationships and emotions at work and received seven awards.
Earlier in my career, I worked in marketing, human resources, management consulting and market research. I also led teams and departments with responsibility for people, performance and profit.
My experience spans publicly listed companies, government and community organisations, professional services firms, health services and family-owned businesses across many industries.
Across more than 7,400 one-to-one sessions, this breadth has become part of how I think. It shapes what I notice, the questions I ask and how I understand what a client brings.
One client had significant governance and compliance responsibility. A peer was undermining her authority, her manager was ignoring her concerns and some staff were resisting reasonable direction.
She was perceptive about what was happening. I was the first person who believed her.
By the time we started working together, she was highly distressed, doubting her own judgement and at risk of losing her job.
Three questions had become tangled together. Was she reading the situation accurately? What responsibility and authority did she still have? What outcome was worth pursuing if the politics were unlikely to change?
Separating those questions gave her a way forward.
She protected her judgement and professional standing, stopped trying to fix what was outside her control and concentrated on completing an outdated systems upgrade that mattered for the organisation’s compliance.
She completed the upgrade and left for a C-suite role with a salary increase of more than $100,000.
Some clients come with one issue and finish when they have what they need.
Others continue as their role and responsibilities change. A difficult relationship may be followed by a promotion, a board decision, a team problem, a restructure or a decision about whether to stay.
My breadth of psychology, coaching and organisational experience allows the work to move with them. They do not need to find a different adviser whenever the problem takes another form or explain the organisational history again from the beginning.
Over time, some clients come to use me as a trusted adviser. I know the leader, their history and the organisation around them, while remaining independent enough to question how they are reading a new situation.
Clients continue while the work remains useful. Across my practice, the average client relationship is more than 50 months.
One-to-one coaching for senior leaders.
Facilitated work when the issue belongs to the team, not one person.
Discreet, on-demand coaching for pressure, conflict or difficult decisions.
Organisational psychology is the science of people at work. Organisational psychologists apply knowledge of human behaviour and organisational systems to leadership, people and work.
Their work can include executive coaching, leadership development, psychological assessment, team development, organisational change, workplace wellbeing and organisational analysis.
My organisational psychology services focus on senior leaders and leadership teams dealing with difficult decisions, strained relationships and organisational transitions.
A psychologist brings formal education and supervised training in human behaviour, emotions, relationships and psychological functioning.
Registered psychologists are accountable to the Psychology Board of Australia and must meet professional requirements covering conduct, competence, confidentiality, informed consent, professional boundaries and continuing development.
A coaching qualification alone does not place a practitioner within that regulated professional framework.
Being a psychologist does not automatically make someone an effective executive coach. I combine psychology registration with organisational and counselling psychology endorsement, executive coaching certification and first-hand leadership experience.
In Australia, the title has legal meaning.
An organisational psychologist must be registered as a psychologist and hold an area of practice endorsement in organisational psychology.
The endorsement reflects approved postgraduate study and additional supervised professional practice beyond the requirements for general registration. Only psychologists who hold that endorsement can use the title organisational psychologist when advertising their services.
It is not a description someone can adopt because they coach executives or work with organisations.
People search for executive psychologist, coaching psychologist and business psychologist when looking for psychological expertise applied to leadership, coaching and organisations.
Anyone using psychologist as a professional title in Australia must be registered as a psychologist.
Executive psychologist, coaching psychologist and business psychologist are descriptive terms. They do not, by themselves, indicate a Psychology Board area of practice endorsement.
Organisational psychologist is the title associated with the recognised organisational psychology endorsement.
If you are looking for an organisational psychologist to work with a senior leader or leadership team, book a conversation.
Based in Melbourne. Working across Australia and internationally.
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