About
About me
I'm Matt. I coach leaders and high performers, I work with people stepping into the sales director's role for the first time, and I take on a small number of executive roles as Managing Director, Sales Director or Commercial Director. I live in Southampton.
Twenty-four years of commercial work
My working life has taken in financial services, recruitment, field sales, premium retail and healthcare manufacturing. I started two businesses in my early twenties and lost them both before I was thirty. I spent the best part of thirteen years at Harvey Jones, finishing as Sales Director and a board member. When Covid closed the showrooms, we had to take a business that had always designed and sold face to face and do both online, which carried it through the pandemic, widened its reach afterwards and led on to a successful management buyout that I jointly delivered. After that I became Commercial Director of a healthcare manufacturer, reshaping a commercial team in a highly specialised and entirely new-to-me sector.
Along the way I've led a team of ten and a team of a hundred, sat on boards and advised them from the outside, and been handed training and marketing teams as well as sales. I've hired people, grown teams, rebuilt them and had to make redundancy decisions. When a client describes a hard decision about their business or their people, I have usually had to make a version of it myself.
Coaching, and knowing when it isn't coaching
I've coached hundreds of people across a wide range of settings, and I don't force the work into that shape when it doesn't fit. Sometimes the answer isn't in the room yet, because the person hasn't done this particular thing before, and then I'll advise, direct or teach instead. It works the other way too. When I'm in an executive seat, there are moments when coaching is what the person in front of me needs. I try to be clear about which of those is going on.
The part I enjoy most is watching someone build faith in what they are capable of as they come to see and accept themselves more fully.
What over-stretch costs
For a long time, the parts of my life that came with a salary and a title got nearly all of me. The patterns that drove me produced results that were commercially valuable and well rewarded, and they cost me something that took me years to add up. I've been in the over-stretched team, and I've been the leader running out of resourcefulness, and I've seen what it costs. Nobody is better off for it, and it doesn't stop with the leader, because the people they lead go home to somebody.
I've had coaching and guidance myself, and I know what difference it can make.
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A few other things
- I'm married, with a grown-up daughter, a Cavapoo and a cat.
- Outside this work I study and teach the Enneagram, which has its own home at The Map to You Coming soon.
- These days I'd travel further for a quiet beach than for a big night out.
- I took up golf in my forties. I'm bad at it and I keep playing.