About Brenda

Brenda’s work in the field of developing leaders stretches back to the early 1990s. Her many years of experience working with CEOs, senior and high-flying executives have built a depth of wisdom, expertise and understanding. She is known for helping leaders deliver excellent results for their organisations and for themselves as individuals, growing in confidence, resilience and impact.

Brenda has significant success in ensuring that her clients meet their and their organisations’ specific coaching objectives both in their roles at work and in their personal well-being.  She works rigorously with her clients to unravel and explore the problems and concerns they bring to the coaching sessions. She guides and enables her clients to build the strategies and skills to confront and resolve the organisational complexities and obstacles facing them. She works by their side to help them recognise and address those personal patterns of behaviour that limit them from performing and delivering to their very best. The relief that coaching brings once positive change starts to kick in, is palpable.

She is valued for her personal warmth, her ability to challenge and ask probing questions, alongside an ever-present understanding of the psychology underpinning individual and group behaviour.

She often works with leaders in transition to a new organisation or to a more senior role - moving on to the Board, becoming CEO or trying to decide on their next role challenge. She specialises in helping leaders expand their emotional intelligence by increasing self-awareness of their core drivers and preferences.  She sharpens leaders’ perceptions of their existing leadership style so that they can see with clarity the impact it has on colleagues and stakeholders around them – both positive and negative. The coaching then focuses on turning that insight into constructive action leading to significant positive changes and results.  Committing to practical next steps, both building on strengths and addressing weaker areas, is an essential part of each coaching session.

Brenda’s much recognised perceptiveness and skill in getting to the heart of each individual’s core concerns and hopes grew from her therapeutic work in the Psychiatric Departments at Guy’s and Middlesex (now University College) Hospitals. She worked with individuals and groups, later moving into a staff development role with Medical teams.

Her interest in the psychology of people’s interior worlds and behaviour, alongside the complex subtleties of human relationships, happiness and pain, blossomed during her degree studies of French Literature at London University. Wanting to combine that analytical, interpretive approach with practical application, she embarked on post-graduate studies at the London School of Economics in Psychology, Economics and Social Policy. She followed this with further post-graduate training at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in organisational consultation.

Brenda acted as a consultant and coach in the Public Sector for some years, working with the NHS, Social Services and Mental Health organisations. Moving into the Private Sector, she worked with Mantra, a Management Training consultancy before joining London Business School as an Associate and Coach. Over a period of 20 years she worked initially on the interpersonal leadership skills modules for the MBAs, Executive MBAs, Sloan and Masters in Finance Programmes. As a coach within LBS’s Executive Education, she developed, directed, led and coached on countless international leadership programmes. She co-worked with a number of Professors within the Organisation Behaviour Faculty on their private client leadership assignments, and has designed, run and facilitated on a huge number of leadership development programmes with teams and groups in the UK and Europe.

She worked for 9 years as an Associate at Sandler Consulting while building her own private practice, Brenda Ross Executive Coaching.

Brenda has a professional executive coaching accreditation from the University of Strathclyde, is an accredited member of APECS (Association of Professional Coaches and Supervisors), a qualified member of the British Psychological Society and an accredited Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®) practitioner.  She is an expert in facilitating 360 degree feedback processes for individuals and groups.

As a member of the Kilfinan Group, Brenda mentors CEOs of Charities. She coaches senior staff at Jewish Care.