Meet the team

Richard Boston

  • Strategic
  • Inventive
  • Ally

Richard, LeaderSpace’s Managing Director, is committed to helping leaders become as good as the world needs them to be – particularly in challenging environments.

He loves learning and is continually evolving. He’s also a big fan of running, writing and paddle-boarding.

Richard is a psychologist focused on enhancing leadership and team effectiveness to improve organisations’ performance and culture. He’s worked with a wide range of clients including BHP, BT, Cancer Research, Deutsche Bank, Ernst & Young, Gucci Group, HM Prisons and Constabularies, the UK’s NHS and FCO, various nations’ armed forces, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, Shell, Siemens, Southampton Football Club, the South Australian Government, Virgin and the wildlife charity Wildscreen.

He’s written three books:

  • ARC Leadership, helping leaders and their teams to be more Authentic, Responsible and Courageous – three qualities he tries to embody in everything he does
  • The Boss Factor, which offers ’10 lessons in managing up for mutual gain’
  • Upgrade, with Karen Ellis, helping leaders build their capacity for complexity by upgrading their own and others’ ‘internal operating systems’ – the ways they see themselves, the world, and everyone and everything in it

Richard is known for his commitment to making a lasting difference, whatever it takes. His clients and colleagues describe him as genuine, down-to-earth, challenging and a deeply curious lateral thinker. He’s also keen to contribute to the development of his profession. Hence, he wrote two chapters for Routledge’s Practitioner’s Handbook of Team Coaching, has appeared on industry podcasts and has run sessions for coaches on behalf of one of coaching’s governing bodies.

You can reach Richard at richard@leaderspace.com or on +44 7949 324001.

Focus

Qualifications

  • Coaching leadership teams
  • Coaching individual executives, up to CEO level
  • Designing and running leadership and management development interventions for groups of leaders
  • Profiling leaders and leadership teams for recruitment, promotion, development and management audits
  • Writing and speaking about leadership, team performance, leadership development and coaching
  • Delivering insight through psychometrics – Richard used to train the trainers in the use of tools such as MBTI and Hogan’s ‘Dark Side’
  • Running seminars on change, complex / VUCA environments, ‘followership’ and Authentic, Responsible, Courageous leadership
  • Providing insight on the implications for organisations on developments in automation, robotics and artificial intelligence
  • Chartered Occupational Psychologist
  • Chartered Coaching Psychologist
  • Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society
  • Postgraduate Certificate in Executive Coaching
  • Certificate in Supervision in Teams and Organisations
  • Postgraduate ‘Master Practitioner’ in Systemic Team Coaching
  • Postgraduate Certificate in Occupational Psychology
  • Certified Practitioner Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
  • Certificate in the Fundamentals of Systemic Coaching and Constellations
  • MSc in Investigative (Forensic) Psychology
  • BA (Hons) in Psychology and Philosophy
  • Registered with the Health and Care Professions Council

Career Highlights

Designing and delivering one-to-one and group coaching for CEOs and senior staff across Gucci Group’s eight brands worldwide, including Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and YSL

Designing and running Southampton Football Club’s Senior Management Team Development Programme, a one-year intervention combining coaching, team development and team-to-team facilitation and training, with continuing support after the programme to keep the learning flowing

Designing and running a leadership development programme for Deloitte senior managers on the cusp of directorship. This unique programme ran for seven years, helped over a thousand participants and was a finalist in the 2011 Training Journal Awards

Designing a global ‘leading change’ programme for a well-known FMCG company

Helping with a joint venture between two telecoms giants, which included working with the CEO, his team and the rest of the top 70 to help build leadership capability and integrate the people and cultures of two merging organisations

Speaking on leadership at a conference for middle-eastern CIOs, in Abu Dhabi

Writing three books and contributing to Routledge’s handbook on team coaching

“
A highly skilled coach who won respect from senior managers, whose respect in this area is not easily given. Richard combines personal authority, gravitas, empathy and expertise in a way that creates trust and productive coaching relationships.
Alistair McIntosh, Head of Organisation Development, British Library

Other team members

Bernard Cooke
  • Insightful
  • Provocative
  • Humour
Bernard is a Chartered Business Psychologist and accredited executive coach – and often works as a supervisor to other coaches. He has a dry, self-deprecating sense of humour and a unique way of challenging that provokes insight rather than defensiveness. His special interests include resilience and red wine.
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Sarah Mast
  • Generative
  • Wise
  • Energised
Sarah is an experienced organisational development consultant. She is famed for being quick to grasp exactly what clients need, is bags of fun and has boundless enthusiasm. She thrives in any lively or challenging environment.
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Shefali Sharma
  • Passionate
  • Warm
  • Supportive
Shefali is highly knowledgeable in psychology and emotional intelligence, and sees right to the core of issues. She is a Chartered Psychologist with a special interest in neuroscience. Shefali has an insatiable appetite for learning and is a warm, giving person. She has helped rear lions and tigers – and has the scars to prove it.
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Natasha Graham
  • Perceptive
  • Attentive
  • Organised
Natasha combines rigorous ethical standards with a highly perceptive interpersonal style. Her passion lies in uncovering authenticity in individuals, teams and organisations to enable true change and continuous growth. Her love of the countryside and her personal discipline in practicing ballet keeps her on her toes outside of work.
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Hanane Gamhiouen
  • Creative
  • Immersive
  • Fun
Hanane helps people and organisations to be their best selves in times of uncertainty and change. When she’s not working with clients she’s travelling the world immersing herself in indigenous cultures, experimenting with non-ordinary states of consciousness or in warm waters scuba diving.
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Anna Heywood
  • Incisive
  • Understanding
  • Relaxed
Anna blends a relaxed, approachable style with perceptive, incisive questioning rooted in a deep understanding of human nature. She finds her passion for life-long learning is met in equal measures by her work and her role as a parent.
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Claire Davey
  • Centred
  • Holistic
  • Enabling
Claire brings diversity of thought and experience, wonderful vitality and a great sense of humour. Her warmth and compassion help her clients quickly feel safe, enabling them to bring their whole selves to the work they’re doing together.
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Anna Crollick
  • Kind
  • Supportive
  • Astute
Anna is passionate about enabling people to find greater clarity of purpose, meaning and happiness at work. Her approach is rooted in psychological rigour and insight. She’s also fascinated by the impact visual images can have on coaching and often draws on art-based approaches to enable more profound awareness and impact.
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Sarah Perrott
  • Pragmatic
  • Energetic
  • Commercial
Sarah is energetic and positive, with a warm, engaging style and a focus on values. She helps create the energy and self-belief that enables senior leaders to grow and succeed. She loves walking along the River Thames and is passionate about yoga, aiming to maintain flexibility in body, mind and spirit!
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Ken Rowley
  • Friendly
  • Thoughtful
  • Questioning
Ken is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist, who loves helping people gain greater meaning and happiness from their work. He has a passion for life-long learning and a drive to support others in their developmental journeys. He loves to use stories to bring concepts to life and to engage his audience.
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Angelina Bennet
  • Rigorous
  • Warm
  • Curious
Angelina is known for her innovative approach to developing effective, productive leaders and her award-winning change leadership. While her work is rigorously backed by research, she engages with a combination of perceptive questioning and a warm, personable, non-judgemental style. As a music obsessive, when not at a gig, Angelina can be found playing guitar, practising yoga or tap dancing.
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Jabiz Parvardin
  • Energising
  • Inclusive
  • Soul
Jab has a huge passion for helping people become the best they can be. He is an engaging natural communicator, skilled in getting teams excited about positive change. He’s a keen golfer and lover of sport. He also loves exploring different cultures and creative arts.
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