ALISON SMITH

Executive Coach & Consultant

Summary​

Alison works with senior executives and teams to identify and challenge limiting beliefs and behaviours to enable healthy, high performance. Common themes that Alison works with include successful career progression and role transition, confidence/imposter syndrome, executive presence and communication, building relationships and networking for introverts, difficult relationships and professional anxiety. ​

Coaching Style​

Alison uses a coaching psychology approach – working with clients to enable desired cognitive, emotional and behavioural change through increasing their self-awareness and using psychologically-informed coaching techniques and tools to challenge self-limiting beliefs and behaviours. Alison regularly works with senior executives moving into new roles or stages of their career when behaviours that previously brought them great success can become derailers, e.g. self-criticism, perfectionism, people pleasing and over-working. Alison’s coaching style is proactive and results-focused, underpinned by a balance of support and straight-talking challenge. Alison is also an accredited mediator, giving her added expertise in helping clients navigate challenging workplace relationships and communication and allowing her to offer a coaching-mediation approach to resolve workplace conflict.​

Professional Experience​

Prior to joining Aesara, Alison was a Corporate M&A Partner at Freshfields in London. Alison led global legal teams working on complex, cross-border M&A transactions, including advising AB InBev on its £78bn acquisition of SABMiller, and Comcast on its £30bn takeover of Sky. Through her management role at the firm, Alison became increasingly interested in the psychological factors associated with successfully leading teams in demanding business environments and enabling sustainable high performance. It was Alison’s interest in these challenges that led her to step out of the legal industry to undertake a Master's degree in Psychology and to train as an executive coach.

Qualifications

Alison has a Master’s in Law from the University of Cambridge, a Master’s in Psychology from the University of Exeter, and a Postgraduate Certificate in Business and Personal Coaching. She is a Certified Team Coach Practitioner, an ICF Associate Certified Coach (PCC), a CEDR Accredited Mediator and is Hogan, Insights Discovery and Strengths Profile accredited.

Personal Interests​

Outside of work, Alison enjoys spending time outdoors with her family at their home in the South-West. Her ultimate ambition is to one day combine the family's passion for sailing with team coaching.