This page gives an overview of our consultancy, professional development and training services, and links to case studies which illustrate our work.

Role consultation and executive coaching for CEOs and leaders

Today's business leaders face multiple challenges in sustaining and growing their organisations, and a role complexity previously unimagined.  Leading an organisation is a lonely position, and a regular one-to-one consultation enables you to reflect in depth on what the current situation demands, and make plans in the face of unknowns and many variables.  Role consultation includes aspects of executive coaching, but goes beyond it in focusing on the total requirements of the role; from the start the careful choice of focus is an important joint task.  It can be very practical, for example in planning and reviewing work with Board, Senior Managers and partners; it is strategic, planning the next steps in what may need to be a campaign sustained over time; it is psychologically informed, always considering the human dimension; it is realistic, responsive to organisational and environmental imperatives. The insights you gain enable planning for real action in the real, usually complex, world, and we review and refine strategy together.

For CEOs managing social enterprises, we are attentive to the challenge of managing the 'double bottom line' of the tension between social benefits and financial soundness.

'Our sessions have made me comfortable with my own power'

'The process is seamless - I can't see how it happens, but when I come here the big picture emerges'

'This is the only place I can talk about this'

Turning it round
Planning for succession
Creating and implementing business strategy
And what our clients say

Individual and group development for coaches and consultants

Coaches and consultants need reflective space in which to review their practice, regain perspective, tackle challenges and regenerate their capacity to support others effectively. We offer you a consultation service to tackle immediate challenges and allow a deeper and broader understanding of your work to develop over time, leading to greater confidence and effectiveness.  We also help coaches deepen their understanding of group dynamics and skill in working with teams through our supervision and reflective practice groups.  Our work is underpinned by twenty years' experience of consulting to business leaders, and group, supervision and psychological training offering insights into motivation and how to make progress even when the going gets tough.  We offer individual or group supervision, and a reflective practice group, 'Working into organisations'.  Click here for more information about our London reflective practice group for consultants and coaches.

'Thank you.  The team event went really well after our redesign'

'Plenty of food for thought.'

'I tremendously enjoyed yesterday, and in fact, I seem to get a lot of value out of our sessions every single time'

What our clients say

Team coaching with Senior Management Teams, Boards and other teams

How do you ensure that those at the top of your organisation communicate fully and effectively to face the challenges of the business together, and to learn together how to overcome them?  Based in a solid understanding of group dynamics, our team consultation focuses on promoting robust communication and shared learning to strengthen the business as a whole.  Organisations undertaking major change or undergoing transition often use us, allowing leaders to work together on agreeing, communicating and implementing change stragegy.  Team coaching is usually offered in conjunction with a one-to-one consultation with the CEO, to ensure that the best fit with your organisational objectives and leadership style is maintained.

"I personally benefited and learnt a lot from the days we spent with you and have really valued the supportive way in which you facilitated some very difficult and challenging discussions."

"I have learned to work with what is going on, and to use my feelings as well as my thinking"

 Really good.  I have been surprised by just how much everyone has 'stepped up'.

Rapid growth
Strategy for small organisations
What our clients say

Professional development groups and action learning sets

Our groups offer sustained and in-depth learning opportunities over time with like-minded peers meeting together in a regular group to develop their management capacity and skills, by thinking about and progressing current work challenges.  Learning is focused on the real professional needs of each individual.  Group numbers are kept small [maximum 6] to ensure the maximum benefit to each member, balancing enough people for a diverse spread of views with enough time and attention for each person to ensure in-depth learning.  The focus is your own and others' professional dilemmas, with a high degree of trust.  Most 'graduates': are highly positive about the depth and breadth of the learning from inside and beyond their own industries; have developed greater flexibility and a wider range of options when faced with future problems; have enhanced interpersonal skills, even when they started with a good level of skill.

Learning in the Balkans
What our clients say

Training

Our 20 years' experience of working in depth with a wide range of organisations is distilled into short training courses in key areas.  We have two new suites of training for 2010, 'the secret life of groups' and 'social intelligence'.

The secret life of groups: group dynamics training

A new suite of training in group dynamics ranging from a half-day introduction to sustained development, based on Christine Thornton's latest book Group and team coaching [Routledge 2010].  Email for more information

Social intelligence: developing leaders

Further research led Daniel Goleman to extend his idea of emotional intelligence to social intelligence, the ability to understand and motivate others, essential to effective leaders.  This suite develops participants' social intelligence through the power of group interaction.  Email for more information

All courses are highly interactive and practically oriented. The focus here is on topic-based learning, and we can tailor courses to your needs.  We also provide a full training design service if you wish to commission a design for delivery by in-house trainers. Below is a list of our training themes.

Thornton Consulting regularly wins repeat business; since establishment in 1990, returning clients have made up most of our work.

At least 85-90% of our time over the last two years has been spent on repeat or ongoing assignments.

Learn more about why we're different.

If you have an enquiry, you can send us an email enquiry here.

If you would like us keep informed of our new free downloads and events you can sign up here to join our mailing list for updates, which are sent out 2 to 3 times a year.