25 Best Executive Coaches in Brisbane (2026)

If you have ever watched a talented leadership team sit through another meeting where everyone nods politely and nothing actually changes, you know the problem is not capability.

The problem is alignment. Trust. Honest conflict. The ability to name what is actually happening in the room instead of performing agreement while the real decisions get made afterwards in hallways and private messages. Your people are skilled. Your strategy is sound. But the machinery that turns strategy into execution is jammed, and you are starting to suspect that fixing it requires help you have not yet asked for.

This is where an executive coach in Brisbane can make the difference between another wasted offsite and a team that genuinely works. Not someone who delivers a keynote and leaves. Not another framework that sounds good on a slide deck but never survives contact with your actual calendar. A person who comes into the room, sees the patterns, and knows how to shift them. For more on finding the right facilitator for your team, see our guide to leadership facilitators in Brisbane.

I put together this list of 25 executive coaches working in Brisbane right now who are helping senior leaders unstick their teams, rebuild trust after conflict, and turn nodding agreement into real commitment.

EXECUTIVE COACHES FOR SCHOOL LEADERS

The school leadership world has its own pressure system. Board expectations, parent complaints, staff retention challenges, and the constant weight of being responsible for culture while also being blamed when culture fractures. The coaches in this section work specifically with principals, heads of school, and senior leadership teams in education. They understand the funding constraints, the community politics, and the specific loneliness of leading a school where everyone watches how you handle every single moment.

1. Jonno White

Jonno White works with school principals and leadership teams around the world who are dealing with misaligned senior staff, underperforming hires they inherited, and the quiet erosion of culture that happens when talented people stop genuinely working together. He is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and the author of Step Up or Step Out, which has sold more than 10,000 copies. His approach is built on practical frameworks that transfer into the Monday morning team meeting, not just the offsite.

What makes his work distinct: Jonno focuses on the cascading problems that start at the top. When a principal's leadership team is not aligned, every layer underneath them inherits the dysfunction. His diagnostic work surfaces the patterns most leaders know are there but have not named out loud yet. He works with schools that have tried the away-day and the strategy refresh and are ready for someone who can actually shift what happens inside the room.

Why school leaders engage him: Principals bring Jonno in when they have a deputy who is undermining them in subtle ways, a senior hire who never quite fit the culture despite being brilliant on paper, or an executive team that performs collaboration in meetings but fractures the moment the door closes. The work is about alignment first, capability second. Schools across Australia and internationally book him for keynotes, leadership team diagnostics, and facilitation that sticks past the 90-day mark.

His approach treats the team as the unit of change, not the individual leader. If the people at the top are not genuinely working together, no amount of professional development further down the organisation will solve the problem. Contact him at jonno@consultclarity.org.

2. Dr. Emma Sharland

Dr. Emma Sharland specialises in coaching school principals through the first three years of a new role, which is when most leadership fractures either heal or calcify. She works with heads who have inherited a senior team with entrenched patterns, unspoken alliances, and a culture of sideways accountability where people complain about each other instead of addressing conflict directly. Her background in educational psychology gives her a diagnostic lens most coaches do not carry.

The pattern she helps with: New principals often arrive with a mandate for change and a leadership team that has been together longer than the principal has been in the building. The deputy has been acting head. The business manager has run the finances for a decade. The director of curriculum was on the interview panel. Everyone is polite. No one is actually following. Emma's coaching helps the new principal establish authority without alienating the people they need to execute.

She works one-on-one with principals and runs small group coaching cohorts for heads in independent and Catholic schools. Her clients describe her style as direct without being harsh, and specific without being prescriptive. She asks the questions that make you audit whether you are leading the team you inherited or just managing it.

3. Richard Moss

Richard Moss coaches principals who are three to five years into the role and starting to feel the weight of it in ways they did not anticipate. The job looked manageable from the outside. The reality is board politics, staff grievances, parent complaints escalated past reason, and a senior team that performs competence in public but requires constant intervention in private. He helps leaders decide whether to rebuild the team, reset their own boundaries, or acknowledge that the fit is wrong and start planning the next move.

What his coaching addresses: Principals often reach out to Richard when they are privately questioning whether they should still be in the job. The confidence that carried them into the role has eroded. They are second-guessing decisions. They are working longer hours and seeing fewer results. The board is asking questions. The staff survey results were worse than last year. He works with leaders who need to separate the noise from the signal and figure out whether the problem is the role, the team, or the approach.

Richard's background includes 15 years as a deputy principal and head of senior school before moving into coaching full-time. He understands the mechanics of school governance, the hidden power structures inside staff rooms, and the specific isolation of being the most senior leader in a building where everyone watches how you respond to every single crisis. His clients tend to stay with him across multiple years, using him as the sounding board they cannot find inside their own organisation.

4. Kate Morrison

Kate Morrison works with female principals navigating leadership teams where gender dynamics shape every conversation in ways that are rarely named. She coaches heads who are dismissed as too emotional when they show conviction, too cold when they hold boundaries, and too uncertain when they admit they do not have all the answers. Her work is about helping women lead from authority without performing a version of leadership designed for someone else.

The situation she solves for: A female principal inherits a deputy who was expecting the job. A male business manager repeatedly explains her own decisions back to her in leadership meetings. A head of curriculum undermines her in staff meetings by framing every directive as a question. The board chair keeps asking whether she has consulted her team before making decisions, a question her male predecessor never fielded. Kate's coaching helps female leaders recognise these patterns, name them without apologising, and lead in ways that feel aligned instead of performed.

She runs one-on-one coaching, small peer groups for female heads, and workshops on leading through conflict without softening the message to make other people comfortable. Her clients describe her as the person who gives them permission to stop managing other people's feelings and start leading their actual team.

5. Paul Trevena

Paul Trevena specialises in coaching principals through the specific crisis moment when two senior staff members are in open conflict and the rest of the leadership team has chosen sides. The deputy and the business manager are not speaking. The head of junior school and the head of senior school are running competing programmes. The director of sport and the director of curriculum are fighting over budget, timetable, and staffing, and every decision now carries political weight. He works with principals who have delayed the hard conversation too long and now have to repair trust while also holding accountability.

What his approach handles: Most leadership conflict does not present as open disagreement. It presents as passive resistance, misaligned priorities, communication breakdowns, and meetings where people agree to things they have no intention of implementing. Paul's diagnostic process surfaces the underlying issue, names it clearly, and builds a plan for addressing it that does not rely on the leader becoming a referee. His work is about reinstating direct accountability and teaching senior staff how to disagree productively instead of weaponising politeness.

Paul has worked as a principal, a regional education director, and now a coach for senior school leaders across Queensland and New South Wales. He is the person principals call when the leadership team is broken and the board is starting to ask questions.

EXECUTIVE COACHES FOR NONPROFIT LEADERS

Nonprofit CEOs carry a different weight than their corporate counterparts. The mission is urgent. The funding is uncertain. The board cares deeply but does not always understand operations. The team is passionate but often underpaid and close to burnout. And the CEO sits between all of it, translating board strategy into team execution while also fronting donors, managing community expectations, and holding the emotional load when the work gets hard. The coaches in this section work specifically with nonprofit executives who are trying to lead sustainable organisations in a sector that constantly demands more with less.

6. Claire Hamilton

Claire Hamilton works with nonprofit CEOs who have built the organisation to a point where it needs structure, systems, and senior leadership capacity, but the budget has not caught up to the complexity. The founder is still involved. The board treats every operational decision as a strategic one. The leadership team is a mix of high-capacity people stretched too thin and long-tenured staff who have been loyal but have hit their ceiling. She helps CEOs make the difficult calls about who stays, who grows, and who needs to move on.

The transition point she coaches through: Most nonprofits hit a breaking point somewhere between 15 and 50 staff. The informal systems that worked when everyone knew everyone stop working. Communication fractures. Accountability becomes inconsistent. The CEO is still acting as a senior manager instead of leading through a leadership team. Claire's coaching focuses on helping the CEO let go of the work they used to do, build the team that can carry it, and make the structural decisions that feel like betrayal but are actually necessary for sustainability.

Her clients describe her as the coach who does not let them avoid the hard decisions. She works with CEOs in faith-based organisations, community services, and advocacy groups across Brisbane and beyond.

7. Michael Drayton

Michael Drayton specialises in coaching nonprofit executives through the board relationship, particularly when the board and the CEO have misaligned expectations about authority, decision rights, and what strategic governance actually means. He works with CEOs who have a board that micromanages operations, questions every staffing decision, and treats the CEO as an implementer rather than a leader. His coaching helps executives reset the relationship, clarify roles, and lead the board instead of being led by it.

What his work addresses: Many nonprofit boards are filled with successful people who care deeply about the mission but have never been taught how to govern. They default to advising, questioning, and second-guessing because they do not have another model. The CEO ends up spending more time managing board anxiety than leading the organisation. Michael's coaching gives executives the tools to educate their board, set boundaries, and shift the relationship from parent-child to peer-peer.

He has served as a nonprofit CEO, a board chair, and now works as a coach and governance consultant. His clients are CEOs who have decided they will either fix the board relationship or leave the role, and his work helps them do the first so they do not have to do the second.

8. Alison Grant

Alison Grant works with nonprofit CEOs navigating founder transitions, either because the founder is still involved and has not fully let go, or because the CEO is the founder and needs to learn how to lead the organisation they built instead of doing all the work themselves. She coaches through the identity shift that happens when a founder stops being the person who does everything and starts being the person who leads the people who do everything.

The founder problem she solves: Founders often hire a leadership team but continue making every decision themselves. They say they want to delegate but then override the decisions their team makes. They tell people to take ownership but step in the moment something goes differently than expected. Staff stop bringing ideas because they know the founder will do it their way anyway. Alison's coaching helps founders recognise the pattern, grieve the loss of the role they loved, and step into the leadership role the organisation now needs.

She also works with successor CEOs who inherited a beloved founder's organisation and are now leading a team that constantly compares them to the person who came before. Her approach is built around identity work, boundary setting, and the practical mechanics of stepping into authority when everyone in the building remembers when you were not in charge.

9. David Sinclair

David Sinclair coaches nonprofit executives whose organisations have grown faster than their own leadership capacity, and who are now facing team breakdowns, cultural fractures, and a growing sense that they are not the right person to lead the next stage. He works with CEOs who built something meaningful but are now drowning in complexity, second-guessing every decision, and wondering whether they should step aside for someone more experienced.

The crisis he coaches through: Rapid growth in the nonprofit sector often means the CEO who started the organisation in their living room is now leading 80 staff, managing a multimillion-dollar budget, navigating donor politics, and reporting to a board that expects corporate-level governance. The skills that built the organisation are not the skills required to lead it now. David's coaching helps CEOs assess whether the gap is learnable or whether the honest move is succession planning.

His background includes leading two nonprofit organisations through significant growth phases, stepping down from one when he recognised the role had outgrown him, and now coaching other leaders through the same decision. He is the coach people call when they need permission to admit they might not be the right fit anymore.

10. Rebecca Chen

Rebecca Chen works with nonprofit CEOs dealing with team burnout, high turnover, and the constant tension between mission urgency and staff sustainability. She coaches leaders who are losing good people because the organisation's culture has become one of overwork dressed up as commitment, where boundaries are treated as a lack of passion and rest is framed as letting the mission down. Her work focuses on helping CEOs lead organisations that sustain the people doing the work, not just the work itself.

What her coaching rebuilds: Many nonprofits operate in a state of permanent urgency. Every project is critical. Every deadline is immovable. Every request from a donor, board member, or community partner gets treated as top priority. The team works nights and weekends. People cancel leave. Burnout becomes the expected cost of caring. Rebecca's coaching helps CEOs recognise that burning out your team is not a strategy, reset expectations with boards and donors, and build operating rhythms that allow the organisation to deliver without destroying the people delivering it.

Her clients are CEOs who have watched talented staff leave, received exit interview feedback about unsustainable workload, and realised that hiring more people will not solve a cultural problem. She works across sectors including homelessness services, mental health organisations, and community development.

EXECUTIVE COACHES FOR CORPORATE LEADERS

Corporate leaders carry a different set of tensions than school principals or nonprofit CEOs. The stakes are financial, the board expects growth, and the leadership team is often filled with people who are individually brilliant but collectively dysfunctional. The exec team that looks perfect on paper fractures under pressure. Strategy gets agreed in the room and then interpreted differently by every person who leaves it. Meetings produce consensus but not commitment. The coaches in this section work with corporate executives navigating these exact patterns. For teams that need more than one-on-one coaching, see our directory of executive team offsite facilitators in Brisbane.

11. Andrew Parker

Andrew Parker specialises in coaching corporate CEOs and MDs through the specific moment when they realise their executive team is the bottleneck, not the engine. The team is made up of talented functional leaders who run their own areas well but cannot work together on anything that crosses silos. Strategy sessions turn into turf wars. Every decision requires the CEO to mediate. Meetings run long because no one will make a call. He works with leaders who have spent two years trying to fix the team themselves and are ready to bring in someone who can actually shift it.

The dysfunction he diagnoses: Most executive team breakdowns come down to three issues. One, the team does not have a shared definition of what they are trying to achieve together. Two, they do not trust each other enough to have honest conflict. Three, accountability is vertical to the CEO instead of horizontal across peers. Andrew's coaching helps the CEO see which of these three is the real issue, build the conditions for the team to address it, and hold the line when people default back to old patterns.

He works with mid-sized businesses, family-owned companies, and founder-led organisations where the executive team has been together for years but has never genuinely functioned as a team. His approach is diagnostic first, then structural, then relational. Fix the clarity problem before trying to fix the people problem.

12. Megan Foster

Megan Foster works with executives who have been promoted into a C-suite or GM role and are now leading peers who used to be colleagues. The CFO who was a friend is now direct and distant. The COO who mentored them now questions their decisions in leadership meetings. The sales director who supported their promotion is passively resisting every initiative they try to introduce. She coaches leaders through the identity shift and the relational reset required when the job changes but the people do not.

The peer-to-leader transition she solves for: Most newly promoted executives underestimate how much the relationship changes when authority changes. The people who used to share complaints with you now see you as the person responsible for the thing they are complaining about. The informal influence you had as a peer does not automatically transfer into formal authority as a leader. Megan's coaching helps new executives navigate the space between being liked and being respected, set boundaries with people who still treat them like a peer, and lead former colleagues without apologising for the role.

She works across sectors but particularly with leaders in professional services, tech, and corporate environments where promotions happen internally and the new leader has to establish authority with people who remember them before they had any.

13. Simon Matthews

Simon Matthews specialises in coaching senior executives through high-conflict situations, specifically when two C-suite leaders are in open or covert warfare and the CEO has delayed the confrontation too long. The CFO and the COO are not speaking. The CMO and the head of product are running competing strategies. The CPO and the head of operations are fighting over headcount, budget, and decision rights, and the rest of the exec team has started working around the conflict instead of addressing it. He works with CEOs who know they need to fix it but do not know how without losing one or both people.

What his coaching handles: Most exec-level conflict does not look like yelling. It looks like passive resistance, delayed responses, decisions that get quietly reversed, and meetings where one person's ideas are dismissed while the other person's are championed. The rest of the team learns not to bring up anything that might land in contested territory. Strategy stalls. The CEO becomes the mediator for every decision. Simon's work is about diagnosing the underlying issue, surfacing it in a way that cannot be avoided, and helping the CEO hold both people accountable for resolution or departure.

He has worked as a COO, led post-merger integration teams, and now coaches senior leaders through conflict that has calcified into organisational dysfunction. His clients describe him as the person who says the thing everyone is thinking but no one wants to name.

14. Justine O'Sullivan

Justine O'Sullivan works with family business executives navigating the unique complexity of leading in an organisation where family relationships, ownership structures, and operational authority are all entangled. She coaches leaders who report to a board that includes their siblings, manage staff who have worked for their parents, and make decisions that affect family wealth, legacy, and relationship dynamics all at once. Her work is about separating business decisions from family politics without pretending the two are unrelated.

The family business pattern she addresses: Most family business conflict comes down to unclear roles. Is the sibling on the board a director, an owner, or just family? Does the parent who handed over the CEO role still expect to be consulted on every decision? Do the non-family executives have real authority or are they just implementers waiting for the family to decide? Justine's coaching helps leaders clarify decision rights, set boundaries with family members, and lead the business instead of managing family expectations.

She works with second and third-generation family businesses across Brisbane, particularly those in transition between generations where the founder is still involved but the next generation is trying to lead. Her background includes working inside family businesses before moving into coaching, which gives her credibility most external coaches do not carry.

15. Greg Lawson

Greg Lawson coaches executives who have built their authority on technical expertise and are now in roles where the job is leading leaders, not doing the work themselves. The engineer who became the head of operations. The lawyer who became the general counsel. The salesperson who became the chief revenue officer. They were promoted because they were the best at the work. The new role requires them to let go of the work and lead the people who do it. Most of them are struggling.

The identity shift he works on: Technical experts often stay too close to the work because that is where they feel competent. They review every document. They jump into every problem. They cannot let their team make a decision without checking it first. Their team stops bringing ideas because they know the leader will do it themselves anyway. Greg's coaching helps leaders recognise when they are doing the work because they do not trust the team, versus doing the work because they have not learned how to lead yet.

He works with executives across industries but specialises in professional services, engineering firms, and technical businesses where expertise is the pathway to leadership but also the thing that gets in the way of leading well. His clients describe his coaching as the thing that finally gave them permission to stop being the smartest person in the room and start being the person who builds the room.

COACHES FOR EXECUTIVE PRESENCE AND COMMUNICATION

Some leaders have the strategy right and the team aligned, but lose authority in the room because of how they show up. They are interrupted in meetings. Their ideas get credited to someone else. They speak and people check their phones. The problem is not competence. The problem is presence. The coaches in this section work specifically on how leaders communicate, command a room, and show up with authority that does not have to be performed. For a wider directory of communication specialists, see our list of corporate communication coaches.

16. Vanessa Harding

Vanessa Harding works with senior leaders who are technically excellent but struggle to be heard in exec-level meetings. They prepare thoroughly. They know their material. They start speaking and someone talks over them. They make a suggestion and it gets dismissed, then five minutes later someone else makes the same suggestion and it gets adopted. She coaches leaders, particularly women, on how to take up space in a room without apologising for it.

The communication shift she teaches: Most under-heard leaders soften their language to manage other people's comfort. They say "I just think" instead of "here is what we should do." They frame statements as questions. They apologise before disagreeing. They let interruptions happen without reclaiming the floor. Vanessa's coaching helps leaders recognise these patterns, strip the hedging language, and communicate with the conviction their role requires. The work is not about becoming louder. It is about becoming clearer.

She runs one-on-one coaching, group programmes for female executives, and workshops on leading through communication. Her clients describe her as the coach who taught them to stop managing the room's feelings and start managing the room's attention.

17. Tom Richardson

Tom Richardson specialises in coaching executives whose communication style works well one-on-one but falls apart in high-stakes group settings. They are confident in their office. They are articulate in small meetings. They get in front of the board or the exec team or an all-staff gathering and the authority drains out of the room. They speak too fast. They lose their thread. They undersell their own recommendations. He works with leaders who know what they want to say but cannot land it under pressure.

What his coaching addresses: Most presentation anxiety is not about public speaking. It is about status and perceived judgement. The leader is fine until the room includes people whose opinion matters, then the internal script shifts from "I am here to inform you" to "I am here to prove I deserve to be here." Tom's work is about separating the content from the performance anxiety, building a communication structure that holds up under pressure, and teaching leaders how to deliver their point without needing the room to validate them first.

He works with executives preparing for board presentations, investor pitches, conference keynotes, and internal strategy rollouts. His background includes 20 years in corporate communication roles before moving into executive coaching.

18. Louise Carter

Louise Carter works with leaders whose communication style is so polite it has stopped being effective. They give feedback that lands as a suggestion instead of a directive. They make decisions that sound like they are still open for debate. They hold people accountable in a way that feels more like a conversation than a consequence. Their team likes them. Their team also does not follow through. She coaches leaders on how to be direct without being harsh, and clear without being unkind.

The pattern she shifts: Conflict-averse leaders often communicate in ways that prioritise relational comfort over clarity. They hint instead of stating. They imply instead of directing. They hope people will infer the message so they do not have to deliver it directly. The result is a team that genuinely does not know what the leader expects, and a leader who is frustrated that people are not doing what they never actually asked for. Louise's coaching helps leaders separate kindness from clarity, name what needs to happen, and stop outsourcing accountability to niceness.

She works with leaders in education, nonprofit, and corporate settings where relational culture is strong and direct communication is often misread as aggression. Her clients describe her as the person who taught them that being liked is not the same as being respected.

19. Mark Stephenson

Mark Stephenson specialises in coaching senior executives on how to communicate strategy in a way that actually moves people to action. They present the strategy. The slides are clear. The logic is sound. People nod. Then nothing changes. Three months later the organisation is still doing the same things it was doing before the strategy was announced. He works with leaders who have confused communicating information with creating commitment.

What his approach fixes: Most strategy communication fails because it is built for comprehension, not activation. The exec team understands the strategy. They do not believe it will actually happen. They do not see how it applies to their area. They do not know what to stop doing to make room for the new priority. Mark's coaching helps leaders communicate strategy as a series of decisions, not as a document. What are we doing? What are we not doing? What changes in the next 90 days? Who is accountable?

He works with CEOs, MDs, and senior executives preparing for strategy rollouts, organisational change, and restructures. His background includes leading strategy and transformation programmes before moving into coaching and communication consulting.

20. Sarah Mitchell

Sarah Mitchell works with executives who have been told they need to work on their executive presence but have no idea what that actually means. They have been given feedback that they lack gravitas, need to show up with more confidence, or should command the room better. The feedback is vague. The expectation is clear. She coaches leaders on the specific behaviours, communication patterns, and situational responses that build perceived authority in senior settings.

What executive presence actually is: Most leaders think executive presence is about charisma or personality. It is not. It is about clarity, composure under pressure, and the ability to make people feel confident in your judgement. It is how you respond when challenged. How you deliver bad news. How you hold the room when someone is attempting to undermine you. Sarah's coaching breaks executive presence into observable, learnable behaviours, then helps leaders practise them in the specific situations where they currently lose authority.

She works with emerging executives, newly promoted C-suite leaders, and senior women who have been told they need more presence but never shown what that looks like in practice. Her approach is behavioural, specific, and highly practical.

COACHES FOR SUCCESSION, TRANSITION, AND LEADERSHIP IDENTITY

Some of the hardest coaching work happens when a leader is navigating the space between roles. They have outgrown the current role but have not yet stepped into the next one. They are preparing to hand over but have not figured out who they are without the job. They have been promoted but have not let go of the identity that got them here. The coaches in this section work specifically on leadership transitions, succession planning, and the identity work required when the role changes.

21. Helen Crawford

Helen Crawford specialises in coaching senior leaders who are privately questioning whether they want to stay in the role, but have not said it out loud to anyone yet. They have been in the job five, seven, ten years. They built something meaningful. They are good at the work. They are also tired in a way that a holiday does not fix. They are second-guessing decisions they used to make easily. They are wondering what happens if they admit they might not want to do this anymore. She works with leaders navigating the space between commitment and exit.

The internal conflict she works with: Most senior leaders stay in roles longer than they should because leaving feels like failure. They built the organisation. They hired the team. They made promises to the board. Walking away feels like letting people down. Helen's coaching helps leaders separate identity from role, assess whether the loss of energy is about the role itself or the way they are leading it, and make an honest decision about whether to rebuild their engagement or start planning succession.

She works with CEOs, principals, and senior executives across sectors. Her clients describe her as the coach who gave them permission to ask the question they were afraid to say out loud.

22. James Norton

James Norton works with leaders preparing for succession, either because they have decided to step down or because the board has made it clear their time is coming to an end. He coaches through the practical mechanics of handing over, the identity loss that comes with not being the leader anymore, and the emotional complexity of watching someone else lead the thing you built. His work is about making succession a conscious, planned transition instead of a crisis.

What his coaching addresses: Most outgoing leaders underestimate how much of their identity is tied to the role. They plan the handover. They do not plan for who they are afterwards. They step down and then spend the first six months feeling unmoored, questioning the decision, and struggling to let go even though they chose to leave. James's coaching starts long before the departure date. It works on identity, meaning, legacy, and the next chapter, so the leader is not just exiting a role but stepping into something else.

He works with retiring CEOs, principals moving into consultancy, and senior executives transitioning into portfolio leadership roles. His background includes two leadership exits of his own, one planned and one forced, which gives his coaching a groundedness most succession consultants do not carry.

23. Catherine Reid

Catherine Reid specialises in coaching leaders through the first 90 days of a new senior role, which is when most leadership appointments either establish momentum or start unravelling. She works with newly appointed CEOs, principals, and executives who have inherited a team they did not choose, a culture they did not build, and a set of unspoken expectations nobody has made explicit. Her coaching helps new leaders read the room, establish authority, and make early decisions that set the tone for everything that follows.

The early missteps she prevents: Most new leaders either move too fast or too slow. They announce changes before they understand the context. They defer decisions to build relationships and lose credibility. They try to be liked before they are respected. They inherit a senior team and assume everyone is aligned when half the room is waiting to see if the new leader is strong enough to make the hard calls. Catherine's coaching helps new leaders assess quickly, move deliberately, and establish authority without alienating the people they need.

She works with leaders across sectors but specialises in education and nonprofit environments where new leaders are inheriting strong existing cultures and need to lead them without breaking them. Her clients describe her as the coach who helped them stop performing leadership and start actually leading.

24. Daniel Kim

Daniel Kim works with high-performing individual contributors who have been promoted into leadership roles and are now struggling because the skills that made them successful are not the skills the new role requires. They were promoted for being the best at the work. The new job is leading the people who do the work. They are working longer hours, getting worse results, and starting to wonder whether they were better off before the promotion. He coaches through the capability gap and the identity shift required when expertise stops being enough.

The transition he works on: Most newly promoted leaders try to succeed by doing more of what worked before. They stay close to the work. They jump in when their team is stuck. They review every deliverable. Their team stops taking ownership because the leader keeps taking it back. Daniel's coaching helps new leaders recognise when they are doing the work because the team cannot, versus doing the work because they have not learned to lead yet. The work is about letting go of being the expert and becoming the person who builds other experts.

He works with emerging leaders in corporate, professional services, and tech environments. His background includes his own difficult transition from senior IC to people leader, which gives his coaching a practical honesty most leadership development programmes skip over.

25. Rachel Dunlop

Rachel Dunlop specialises in coaching senior leaders who are navigating the psychological weight of being the most senior person in the building. The principal who has no peer inside the school. The CEO who cannot share the full picture with their exec team. The MD who has to make decisions that affect people's livelihoods and cannot process that load with anyone inside the organisation. She works with leaders who are carrying more than they can name and do not have anyone to say it to.

The loneliness she addresses: Senior leadership is structurally isolating. You cannot vent to your team about the board. You cannot share your doubts with the people who need to believe in your certainty. You cannot admit you are struggling to the people whose job security depends on your competence. Rachel's coaching creates the space where leaders can say the things they cannot say anywhere else. The doubt. The fear. The exhaustion. The private questions about whether they are still the right person for the job.

Her clients describe her as the coach who holds what they cannot carry alone. She works with CEOs, principals, and senior executives who need someone outside the system who understands the system well enough to be useful. Her approach is less about frameworks and more about presence, discernment, and helping leaders process the weight of the role without needing them to perform strength.

Finding the Right Executive Coach in Brisbane

Your leadership team is not broken because the people are incapable. It is broken because something in the system, the structure, or the relationships is stopping capable people from working together. An executive coach does not fix your team for you. They help you see what you have been too close to notice, name what has been too uncomfortable to say, and build the conditions where your team can do the work they were always capable of doing.

The coaches on this list work with senior leaders in Brisbane and beyond who have tried the obvious fixes and are ready for someone who can see the patterns underneath the problems. Your next step is simple. Pick the coach whose focus matches your situation, reach out, and start the conversation. The team you need is probably already in the room. You just need help unlocking it. For further reading on building high-performing leadership teams, explore the leadership training thought leaders in ANZ.