Leadership development and coaching

New Capabilities: Leadership Development for School and System Improvement. Capacities, Change and Conditions.

To function in a world of accelerating change we need to intentionally develop ourselves, others and our organisations. We also need to cultivate conditions that allow these capacities to grow. The School Effectiveness Team works with individuals, schools, MATs and at a system level to unlock capacities to lead change and create conditions to unlock potential in themselves and others.

We work in partnership to co-create programmes that support your strategic needs. We also bring networks of leaders together to enhance collaborative leadership and build capacities for innovation to support improvement and change, at the levels of self, school and system.

Self: One to One and group coaching for Middle, Senior and Executive Leaders

One-to-One Coaching: working with individual leaders to unlock individual potential
Enhance performance, wellbeing, meaning and purpose
Develop greater self-awareness and emotional self-regulation
Achieve more clarity around professional goals,
Develop strategies to manage challenging situations and relationships
Collaborative Leadership Coaching: working with groups of leaders to unlock collective potential
Develop trust, team identity and cohesion
Build psychological safety
Develop skills for conflict management and collaboration
Create a positive culture for coaching, learning and growth

You can book a conversation about coaching.

School: Leadership Development

We work with schools, Multi Academy Trusts and system partners to design, develop and deliver collaborative innovation learning journeys to support strategic improvement.

Our New Capabilities for a New World leadership development framework equips leaders with new ways of ‘thinking’, ‘being’ and ‘doing’ that support them to lead change, confidently, in a complex world.

We are currently engaged in the following projects:

Black Pear Trust: Collaborative Leadership for sustainable strategic improvement
Bishop Perowne: Collaborative Leadership for sustainable strategic improvement
Societas MAT, Stoke: Collaborative Leadership for sustainable strategic improvement
E-ACT: Togetherness Practices for collaborative leadership
Kings Norton Boys School, Birmingham: Senior Team integration and strategic alignment.
Central Regional Schools Trust: Leadership development for MAT Central Teams

You can book a conversation about leadership development.

System: Networks for collaborative leadership and innovation

Worcester One Collaborative Leadership group
Prince Henry’s Futures Forward Deputies Collaborative Leadership
Worcester Childrens First: Collaborative Innovation for Inclusion
Stoke Futures Forum: Collaborative Innovation Network
We founded and co-lead Rethinking Leadership

You can book a conversation about joining or setting up a collaborative innovation group.

Case study

Bishop Perowne

The School Effectiveness Team stated working with Bishop Perowne High School, Worcester in 2020. The school is committed to leveraging the impact of coaching to build cohesion within its teams. Each year it has commissioned the School Effectiveness Team to coach its Senior Leaders and in the last two years, its middle leaders too. We work with the Senior Leadership Team through the New Capabilities Leadership development programme to support their strategic thinking and collaborative leadership. This programme integrates the Ashoka Togetherness Practice which helps them build capacities and conditions for sustainable growth and improvement.

Meet the team

Tracey France

Tracey is a qualified Executive Leadership Coach and a member of the Association of Coaching. With a deep passion for leadership transformation, she specialises in fostering honest, empowering, and high-impact relationships.

Drawing on years of experience in strategic leadership, Tracey understands the complex pressures leaders face. She specialises in one-to-one coaching, team leadership coaching, and leadership development, with a particular focus on resilience and well-being in leadership. She is committed to helping individuals unlock their potential while creating meaningful value for their organisations.

Shaun McInerney

Shaun is a former Executive Principal dedicated to driving school and system improvement by empowering leaders to meet the challenges of our time. He coaches leaders and designs leadership development programs that foster growth at the individual, school, Multi-Academy Trust (MAT), and system levels. His expertise lies in helping leaders unlock potential to build a more responsive, resilient, and relevant education system for all young people.

Paul Sheehan

Paul is a qualified Executive Leadership Coach with extensive experience as a Head Teacher and Leadership Team Facilitator. He has played a key role in developing Multi-Academy Trust growth strategies and specialises in one-to-one coaching and leadership development. Paul has a deep understanding of group dynamics and excels at creating supportive learning environments that drive meaningful change. Known for challenging conventional thinking, he is highly skilled in leading transformational change for individuals, teams, and organisations.

How we work

‘Through leadership development and coaching, the School Effectiveness Team develop capabilities that unlock potential. We enable leaders, at all levels, to collaborate effectively, develop others and lead change so they can contribute fully and respond to the emerging needs of young people in a changing world.’

School Effectiveness Team

The School Effectiveness Team takes a developmental approach. We integrate research from internal NGO Ashoka on social innovation with perspectives from positive leadership, appreciative inquiry, adult development theory, human systems and relational leaders to help leaders:

Explore and plan new strategic possibilities that meet emerging needs.
Consider how we unlock potential as we enact transformational and sustainable change for school improvement
Ground their contribution we make in individual and collective agency and purpose
Resourcing ourselves through networks of social capital to support our ongoing journey of school and system improvement