Dr Caroline Stovell
You were trained to be an excellent clinician. Nobody trained you to lead.
Executive coaching and professional supervision, leadership team coaching and workshops for leaders in healthcare, from someone who has sat in the chair.
Book a 30-minute conversationMy approach
What I believe
Leadership is its own speciality, and it can be learned.
Medical training gives you outstanding clinical skills. It rarely gives you the inner skills and personal development that medical leadership demands.
Your clinical training had a clear pathway, with shared knowledge, practice, reflection and observation. Leadership rarely does. Excellent clinicians are often placed into leadership roles with no clear roadmap, no obvious place to start and little effective developmental support.
Without it, many capable leaders find themselves:
- overworking and firefighting, while the strategic work keeps slipping
- letting difficult behaviours go and avoiding the hard conversations
- putting off difficult decisions, or second-guessing the ones they make
- holding back in meetings, or being overlooked and ignored
- struggling to bring people with them through change
- living with a loud imposter voice, frustration and exhaustion, and edging towards burnout
You were never trained for this
Most clinicians step into leadership without preparation. Struggling with it is not a personal failing. It is a gap in training and development, and that gap can be closed.
Leadership starts on the inside
How you think, how you manage pressure and how you respond to others shape everything you do as a leader. Awareness and understanding of your inner operating system is key.
Leaders need space to think
Even with good tools, clinical leadership brings relentless demand and risk holding, workforce challenges, culture, governance issues and a fast pace of change. Holding all of that needs space to think and a supported reflective space: time to step out of the day, think clearly and strategically, and prioritise your highest-impact work in a world where reactivity and overworking often dominate.
You cannot outwork a skills gap.
My approach
Three pillars of medical leadership
Every coaching relationship is tailored to you and your real leadership challenges. Expect warmth, compassion and supportive challenge, with a healthy dose of humour along the way. My approach is pragmatic and practical, and draws on three connected areas.
Pillar 1
Leading From Within
Self-awareness, emotional regulation, confidence, energy and leadership identity. Building inner calm, clarity and stability under pressure.
Pillar 2
Leading With Others
Communication, influence, difficult conversations, conflict, delegation and psychological safety. So much of leadership comes down to people and relationships.
Pillar 3
Leading in Action
Effective line management, change management, decision-making, culture, governance, chairing meetings and managing your workload with a pro external operating system. Presenting and networking. Applying it all to the work right in front of you.
Work with me
Three ways to work together
Every conversation starts with a free, no-obligation 30-minute call, so we can work out together what would help most.
Executive leadership coaching
For medical leaders and senior healthcare leaders
One-to-one coaching to build the inner skills, relationships and practical capabilities that foster and sustain effective and enjoyable senior leadership.
- Medical Leadership Accelerator Programme: in-depth, longer-term coaching with support between sessions.
- Medical Leadership Accelerator Essentials Programme: a shorter, focused programme built on the same approach.
- One-to-one professional supervision: bespoke and tailored to your needs.
Self-funded or funded by your organisation
Leadership team coaching
For senior leadership teams
Coaching for the whole leadership team, focused on how you work and lead together. The way a senior team works together shapes the culture of the whole organisation.
- Trust and psychological safety: so honest challenge and real debate become possible.
- Shared clarity: on purpose, priorities, roles and how you work together.
- Better conversations and decisions: handling tension and conflict well, and deciding together under pressure.
Tailored to your team and your context
Workshops
For teams and organisations
Practical, interactive workshops and group programmes for clinical teams, practices and services.
- Navigating conflict and difficult conversations: a half-day workshop on handling difficult conversations and tension in teams.
- Being Brilliant Every Day: understanding and managing your state, so you can bring your best to work even on the hardest days.
- Fear and courage-based practice: a workshop or group coaching programme for clinicians who are struggling with risk.
- Coaching skills: for GPs and GP educators, and open to others.
In-house or tailored to your team
What leaders say
In their words
“
Working with an experienced coach who is also a senior doctor was essential, and has been invaluable. I now tackle difficult conversations, meetings and interactions with a greater sense of curiosity, clarity and conviction.
Senior Medical Leader
South East England
“
Caroline has helped me understand what was actually sitting underneath some of my frustration and recognise what I could do differently. I think more clearly, I slow down more, I communicate differently and I feel more self-assured in my role.
AW
Clinical Director
“
Within a few months, I noticed the compound effect of relatively small, sequential changes to my thinking, awareness and attitude was huge. Coaching has helped me become the calm, steady and focused leader I needed to be.
Matthew
GP Partner, South Wales
“
Caroline has helped me develop greater confidence and clarity in my leadership approach, enabling me to become more intentional in how I lead. Having dedicated space for honest reflection and growth has been one of the most valuable aspects of our work together.
Senior Educational Leader
South West
“
She helped me recognise the strengths I already had and find the confidence to use them more effectively. I now protect the time I need for important work, I'm much kinder to myself, and my confidence and happiness are both up.
Lorraine
Emergency Department Consultant
About me
I know this from the inside
I have been a GP for 18 years. Early on I was a GP Partner for 10 years, and then I went on to become a Deputy Medical Director. Like so many of the leaders I work with, I stepped into leadership with a doctor's bag full of clinical skills and an empty leadership toolbox.
I spent the next decade filling it. Now I help clinical leaders build the inner skills that clinical training leaves out, so they can lead effectively and flourish without burning out.
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Contact
Let's talk
Book a free 30-minute conversation, connect with me on LinkedIn, or send me an email.
