Redundancy, career change and setbacks
What if I didn't just
do this again somewhere else?
Coaching for experienced people who have reached the point where what got them here isn't necessarily what they need next, whether that's a voluntary redundancy decision you have weeks to make, a restructure that took your role with it, a corporate career you are no longer sure you want, or your confidence to rebuild after something went wrong. I work with senior leaders across the UK and internationally.
The conversations people actually arrive with
Here's what people tend to bring me. You might recognise your own situation in one of them, or in bits of two or three, and either way it's a good place to start a conversation.
You've been offered voluntary redundancy and you don't know whether to take it
There's usually a deadline, a number attached to it, and far less time to think than the decision deserves. The financial modelling is the part most people can do on a spreadsheet in an evening, and it's rarely what keeps them awake. The harder and more interesting question is whether you actually want the job you'd be staying in, and whether that money would buy you a genuine change of direction or simply a pause before you accept a very similar role somewhere else. It helps enormously to think that through out loud with someone who isn't in your household and isn't in your organisation, because everybody close to it has a stake in what you choose.
Your role has gone in a restructure
Being made redundant when you're senior is a peculiar kind of loss, and I don't think we talk about it very honestly. You can know perfectly well that it was the role and not you, and still find that knowledge doesn't help much at six in the morning. Most people respond by getting straight into activity, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. The CV, the recruiters, the conversations, they all matter. What I'd gently encourage you to protect is a little space alongside the activity, because otherwise it's very easy to land somewhere almost identical to what you've just left, for reasons you never got the chance to examine.
You want to leave a corporate career but not your income
This is the conversation I have most often, and I think it's the one that's served worst elsewhere. The advice available tends to sit at one of two extremes: follow your passion and trust it will work out, or stay where you are and be grateful for what you've got. Neither is much use to someone with a mortgage, a family and twenty years of hard-won earning power. Wanting to keep earning well isn't a failure of nerve, it's a sensible constraint, and constraints are much easier to work with once they're out in the open. What's usually more revealing is separating the parts of the work you genuinely want to keep from the parts you've simply become very good at tolerating.
You don't want to be a director any more
Or a partner, or a head of something. Sometimes what someone wants isn't a different employer at all, it's a smaller remit, fewer people to carry, and more of the work that actually interests them. That's a completely legitimate thing to want, and it's often the hardest to say out loud, because the world around you tends to read it as stepping back rather than as choosing deliberately. I'd rather help you look at it clearly than talk you out of it.
Career change after twenty years in one industry
You almost certainly have more that travels with you than you think, and it isn't the industry knowledge. It's your judgement, your ability to run things that are only half built, your instinct for people under pressure, and your willingness to decide without the full picture. Those things are genuinely valuable in places you haven't looked yet. The frustration is that a CV written for one sector is hopeless at showing them, so the work is often about learning to describe what you're good at in language that travels too.
You're being managed out or performance managed
Being on the receiving end of this is destabilising in a way that's very hard to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced it, and it can shake your confidence in your own judgement quickly. I'm not an employment lawyer or a union representative, and if you need that advice you should get it first, from someone qualified to give it. What I can help with is the other half of it: staying steady while it plays out, keeping hold of a fair view of your own capability, and deciding what you actually want next rather than accepting whatever brings it to an end soonest.
Recovering from a setback you didn't see coming
A promotion that went to someone else. A programme that failed publicly with your name attached to it. A new boss who seems to have made their mind up about you before you met. Coming back after burnout or illness and finding your confidence hasn't come back at the same pace as your diary. Setbacks like these tend to be treated as something to get over quickly, when in my experience they're often the point at which people start asking much better questions about what they want. Confidence comes back through evidence rather than reassurance, which takes longer than anyone would like and does genuinely work.
What the work looks like
We start with what travels with you, which isn't the same thing as your CV. It's what you're unusually good at whatever the employer or the job title happens to be. Then we look at the part almost everybody skips, which is deciding which of those strengths you actually want to keep using. Being excellent at something is not, on its own, a reason to carry it with you into the next twenty years.
Then we get honest about the constraints, and I mean all of them. What you need to earn, who depends on you, how much risk you can genuinely live alongside, and how much of your sense of yourself is currently bound up in your title. None of that's a character flaw to be coached out of you. It's the material the decision is made from, and it becomes much easier to work with once it's said plainly.
From there we look at possibilities, deliberately plural, and we test them one at a time rather than asking you to pick a whole future off a blank sheet of paper. That might be a senior role on different terms, a move into another sector, going independent, building a portfolio, or starting something of your own. Quite often it turns out to be staying, having genuinely examined leaving, which is a very different place to stay from.
I went through a version of this myself, after twenty years in banking, consulting and transformation at a senior level and on a good salary, before I left it and built something else. So I'm not neutral about how hard the decision is, and I won't pretend it comes down to courage. What I will do is help you look at it differently, and with a good deal more optimism than it probably deserves at first glance.
Common questions
Do you help people who have been made redundant?
Yes, both people weighing up whether to take voluntary redundancy and people whose role has already gone. The work usually comes down to two things: making a good decision about what comes next rather than simply a fast one, and getting your confidence back to where it was before all this started.
Is this outplacement or career coaching?
It sits somewhere different. Outplacement is usually a short package bought by your employer and focused on your CV, LinkedIn profile and interview practice, all of which is useful. I work one to one with senior people on the decision underneath all of that, which is what you want your working life to look like next and what you're no longer willing to keep doing.
Will you tell me to leave corporate life and start a business?
No, and I'd be wary of anyone who did. Plenty of the people I work with stay where they are and do it far better, on terms they have renegotiated. Others move sector, go independent, build a portfolio, or step down a level quite deliberately. What matters is that you choose it on purpose rather than recreating what you've just left because it was the nearest thing to hand.
I'm in a grievance or dispute with my employer. Can you help?
Please get legal or union advice first, from someone qualified to give it, because I'm not that. Once you have it, coaching can help you stay steady while the process runs and work out what you want on the other side of it.
How does it work and what does it cost?
Usually a three-month one-to-one programme, or something shorter if there's one particular decision you need to make well. Sessions are online, or in person if you're near Worthing and West Sussex, and I work with clients across the UK and internationally. Fees and programme details are on the coaching page.
Who are you?
Daisy Goreham. I spent twenty years in banking, consulting, operations and transformation, leading large teams at senior level, including time living and working in the Middle East and Asia, and then I left it and built something else. I'm an ICF Associate Certified Coach and I work with senior people in the UK and worldwide on leadership challenges, career decisions and periods of significant change.
You don't have to decide your whole future today
A free discovery call with no obligation attached to it. Bring the decision you keep circling back to and we'll look at it together and see what's actually there.
Not ready to talk? The free leadership assessment takes three minutes and is a reasonable place to start.