Rachel Stone

Why organisations work with Rachel Stone

• A coach’s diagnostic eye rather than a speaker’s set piece. She reads what is actually happening between a leader and their team and names it, then offers next steps the leader can act on the same week.
• Direct experience of the operator’s chair. Commercial buying, retail management at Safeways PLC, classroom teaching and senior college leadership, before twelve years coaching 130-plus companies. The advice lands because it is grounded in those rooms.
• A clear behavioural model. The “breathe life into people” frame and the Kindness Economy (People, Planet, Profit) give leaders a vocabulary for what trust-based leadership looks like day to day.
• Tools that travel back to the workplace. ICQ Global DISC and Growth Zone diagnostics give audiences something concrete to use with their own teams, not just a takeaway feeling.

Biography highlights

• Founder of Rachel Stone Coaching Ltd, established 2012.
• Author of “Spend Time With Me: A Story to Inspire Transformational Leaders” (2024), foreword by Professor Damian Hughes.
• Accredited ICQ Global DISC Profile and Growth Zone Practitioner.
• Qualified business coach via The Coaching Academy.
• Coached 130-plus companies and 250-plus leaders across construction, retail, education, manufacturing and professional services.
• Earlier career: commercial buyer in electronics, retail manager at Safeways PLC, Business Studies teacher and senior college manager.

Biography

Most managers are promoted for being good at the job they used to do. The job they now have is different, and the gap between the two is where engagement breaks, conflict festers and culture quietly drifts. Stone built her practice around closing that gap. She works with business owners and senior teams on the small behavioural shifts that change how a team performs, not on abstract leadership theory.

Her route into coaching was unusual. After commercial buying in electronics and retail management at Safeways PLC, she retrained as a Business Studies teacher, took on senior college management, and in 2012 left to start her own coaching business. Twelve years later the client list runs to more than 130 companies across construction, retail, education and manufacturing, with over 250 individual leaders coached. The work spans board-level transformation, embedding coaching cultures, and middle-management development.

The intellectual frame is set out in her 2024 book “Spend Time With Me: A Story to Inspire Transformational Leaders”, with a foreword by Professor Damian Hughes of the High Performance podcast. The book pairs her own story with the principles she teaches: trust as a leadership currency, the “Kindness Economy” of People, Planet and Profit, and the idea that leaders “breathe life into people” rather than extract performance from them.

Audiences leave with usable language and a diagnostic. ICQ Global DISC and Growth Zone tools give leaders a way to read their own behaviour and their team’s. The delivery is pacey and pragmatic; the focus is on what a leader can do differently on Monday morning.

Key speaking topics

• Transformational leadership
• Coaching cultures and coaching as a leadership skill
• Trust and team performance
• Communication and conflict in teams
• Employee engagement and burnout
• Resilience and self-management for leaders
• The Kindness Economy: People, Planet, Profit
• Workplace culture in hybrid and growing businesses

Ideal for

• Business owners and founder-CEOs scaling beyond a hands-on operating model.
• Senior leadership teams in mid-market and SME organisations who need a behavioural reset, not a strategy day.
• HR and L&D leads commissioning manager development or embedding a coaching culture.
• Leadership groups in sectors that promote technically (construction, manufacturing, professional services, education).

Audience outcomes

• A clearer read on how their own behaviour shapes their team’s engagement and output.
• Practical coaching techniques managers can use in one-to-ones and team conversations from the next working day.
• A shared vocabulary for trust, conflict and culture that survives beyond the session.
• Tools to spot early signs of burnout and disengagement before they cost the business people.
• A working definition of transformational leadership grounded in behaviour, not theory.