Jonathan Drew is an experienced coach, specialising in 1-to-1 leadership, executive and career coaching as well as coaching for small teams. He also offers team coaching and facilitation on diversity and inclusion.
About
Jonathan’s clients have varied from FTSE100 senior executives and staff in start-ups, small businesses and the charity sector to leaders and managers in the British civil service. He has also coached mid-career professionals through career changes. His clients are based throughout the UK and around the world. He offers in person or online 1-to-1 Coaching, in person Team Coaching and in person or online Diversity Coaching for Teams.
“Jonathan was my coach over a period of 6 months. His style of coaching was relaxed, inquisitive yet friendly which really helped me to open up and explore new approaches to improve my confidence when meeting new people both at work and socially. He also helped me with putting things into perspective which has helped to reduce feelings of stress. These coaching sessions were a really worthwhile investment of my time and I wouldn’t hesitate to have further coaching sessions with Jonathan in the future.”
Jonathan is an International Coaching Federation (ICF) qualified coach and holds an ICF ACC credential. The ICF is the world’s pre-eminent coaching professional association and professional standards body. From 2019 to 2021 Jonathan served on the Board of the UK Chapter of the ICF, latterly as the Vice President. During that time, he formed an unprecedented partnership between the UK Chapter of the ICF with Henley Business School’s Centre for Coaching, led the UK Chapter’s response to the Covid pandemic and designed and implemented a mini-programme for coaches on neuroscience and coaching. Jonathan is also currently serving as Chair of Gatwick Airport’s Noise Management Executive Board and on the International Executive of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, where he is a Fellow.
Jonathan has recently contributed to the Amazon best sellers We Coach! (2021) and Coaching Tools 2 (2022) which are compendiums of coaching tools from some of the world’s foremost coaches.
Jonathan’s style as a coach is to be informal and warm whilst results-focused and challenging. Jonathan is adept in getting to know and understand his clients so he can best provide appropriate challenge for their growth and development. He is particularly skilled in coaching his clients through self-reflection and understanding that transforms the seemingly impossible to the possible, and then the probable. Throughout Jonathan maintains a connection that helps his clients to retain their focus on the results that they want and aspire to.
“Jonathan is a wonderfully talented natural coach. He provided me with practical tools and guidance to find value and meaning in my current work, and identify positives that are often hard to pin down. He encouraged me to face up to tough questions and challenges, and gain confidence in following my strengths and passions, many of which fall outside of the commonly accepted traits of a “9 to 5” finance professional. I found him to be a skilled and intuitive listener, who distilled my rambling thoughts into clear, actionable goals. Working with Jonathan has provided me with a wealth of confidence, focus and increased knowledge on how to situate myself in a career/life I truly aspire to.”
Jonathan was previously a senior British diplomat and was also an internal coach at the UK’s Foreign Office. Over the course of his career, he dealt with international trade policy issues, commerce, security, counter-terrorism and peace building and was promoted to be an Ambassador and High Commissioner.
As a young diplomat he founded the FCO’s LGBT+ staff group and was an early member of its minority ethnic staff group and he continued to support and encourage future minority ethnic and LGBT+ leaders as a senior diplomat. He has coached a number of teams on race and diversity issues.
“Jonathan facilitated a ‘Listen, Learn, Act on Racism’ session for the UK Delegation to NATO addressing issues following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. The session was a hard hitting, raw account of racism and discrimination faced by our colleagues working in government institutions but also in their daily lives. The preparation to organise a discussion on such a complex issue clearly showed Jonathan’s dedication as a coach and he delivered a session of high quality, tailored to the audience. The impact has already been felt at the UK Delegation to NATO with feedback showing that, as a result of the session, there has been more reflection on the issue and staff members saying they will be more alert to racism, especially indirect or covert racism. Staff members gave many suggestions at the session for other forms of action (such as allyship, recruitment and promotion practices and policy relevant) which will be taken forward internally.”
Jonathan holds Canadian and British citizenship, has lived in many different countries and is at ease working with different cultures and cultural perceptions.
In his spare time Jonathan likes to cook dishes from around the world and bake cakes before walking them off on the North and South Downs near London.