ORIGINS

Natalie started her professional career as an investment banker and then moved into the education sector. She became an Assistant Headteacher at an ethnically diverse comprehensive school in London, where she realised the desperate need for mentoring and guidance for school students in addition to their formal academic curriculum.

Her advisory skills were honed during her 11 years as a teacher and Director of Higher Education, giving career advice to students, and through mentoring other teachers. She designed and delivered many careers programmes in schools and universities. She developed an Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) accredited Leadership Programme for Middle Managers at Immanuel College, Hertfordshire and a ‘mini-MBA’ for students (also accredited by the ILM). She also set up multi-year coaching programme for students at University College London. She then moved into designing university mental health programmes for doctoral students, for example, at the University of Cambridge, Durham University and Queen Mary University of London.

Coaching

Natalie coaches executives in industry, retail, technology, HR and the legal sector helping them navigate their personal and professional growth in a changing working environment. She also works with doctoral students, helping them get to the finish line of their studies in good psychological health.

Eight Tensions® Leadership development programme

Today’s emerging leaders need to navigate human connection, ethics, AI tools, strategy and values. They need to have flexible wisdom to draw on for the unchartered future ahead.

Natalie, alongside trusted associates, Rosie Darbyshire, Jacqueline Weeks and Laura Garwood, work with leaders to develop a set of adaptable principles from which to make strategic, contextual decisions with integrity.

We have developed the Eight Tensions® Leadership Programme to equip emerging leaders to handle complexity, identify and adapt to emerging trends, manage conflict, evaluate risks and fluidly negotiate competing demands between the individual, the organisation and the world.

The Eight Tensions® Leadership Programme is based on the work of Natalie, who identified eight overarching tensions which, when studied and practised, are a timeless yet contemporary set of principles to use in leadership.

Provision of supervision and CPD

Natalie supervises coaching psychologists, coaches and supervisors. She is the facilitator of Coach Development Club, where members meet every month in an intellectually stimulating environment to meet their Continuous Professional Development needs. She trains coaches and coaching psychologists in the Eight Tensions® Framework she developed out of her doctoral work and facilitates Eight Tensions® Coach Club to ensure certified Eight Tensions® coaches maintain their knowledge and skills in delivering coaching using the Eight Tensions® methodology.

Natalie is a regular keynote speaker and speaks at events on:

Eight Tensions® Leadership

Supervision for Coaches and Coaching Psychologists

Who is the research really about? The researcher and the researched

Qualitative Methods

Existential and human issues including:

• Creating our own meaning and structures
• Personal growth and living with intention

Evolving professional identities of coaches, coaching psychologists and coaching supervisors

Coaching in education

Writing and creativity

Natalie’s research

Natalie’s research focuses on existential psychology; coaches’, coaching psychologists’ and coaching supervisors’ identity and the impact of coaching supervision on supervisees. Her doctoral research was on personal growth and the impact of coaching on university students’ values, sense of self, key relationships, academic performance and life plans for her PhD in Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London. Natalie is a graduate of the University of Oxford, Middlesex University, King’s College London, The Open University and Birkbeck, University of London. She is a peer reviewer for various academic journals.
Natalie is a Master’s and PhD supervisor at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, London. She was a Senior Lecturer working on the University of East London’s MSc in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology (MAPPCP).

Research from previous supervisees:

• An exploration of how well-being is conceptualised within existential and positive psychology: How can these understandings be integrated during individual therapy? (MSc in Psychotherapy Studies)

• An exploration of Team GB elite track and field athletes’ reflections on career transitions twenty-five years post hoc. (MA in Existential Coaching)

• The lived experience of black therapy trainees. (MSc in Psychotherapy Studies)

• Rethinking dips in motivation from an existential phenomenological perspective. (MA in Existential Coaching)

• The lived experience of identical twins who are separated in school and its impact on identity formation – an existential-phenomenological study. (DCPsych in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy)

• How do professional boxer’s experience anxiety and courage? (DCPsych in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy)

• The lived experience of identity formation for Black, Second Generation, West Indian Women – an interpretative phenomenological analysis (DCPsych in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy)

• Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Using Existential Tensions as a Supervision Heuristic for Coaches and Coaching Psychologists in Supervision (MA in Existential Coaching)

• Rehumanising The Experience of Being at Work: An Existential Perspective of Psychological Safety (MA in Existential Coaching)

• Disclosure in coaching (MA in Existential Coaching)

• Peer Coaching in the Hierarchical Culture of the London Fire Brigade (MA in Existential Coaching)

• Adolescents’ worldview through social media (MA in Existential Coaching)