Praesta Insights Publications
Praesta typically works at any one time with around 500 senior executives. These relationships give us exceptional insights into the issues facing leaders across many sectors, industries and organisational contexts. The breadth of our coaching work also means that we are able to identify emerging issues quickly and put them into perspective. As well as informing our day-to-day coaching, we capture some of the most important themes in pamphlets, tools for our clients and published books.
The Five Ps of Presence: Developing Your Influence and Impact
‘What can I do to make my presence felt?’ is a recurring question in our coaching conversations. Leaders and aspiring leaders wanting momentum and tangible results often look to develop a more influential presence at work.
Leading through turbulent change:
a compilation of Praesta Prompts
Turbulent change affects every leader. How best do we handle the resulting uncertainty and bring a sense of forward direction? This booklet is a compendium of Praesta Prompts we wrote and sent to clients and contacts at a time of both national and international turbulence.
Stepping Up
Leading with confidence
In our coaching we frequently work with people who want to move up in their careers, and with others who feel challenged by the demands of their current role. This booklet brings together the ideas and reflections that clients have found helpful over the years – in many cases as they have progressed several levels and between organisations.
Wise and responsive leaders
an insight into their real-life experience in current times
This insight document is based on research that we conducted with leaders who have impressed us with their wise, mature, agile, and humble approach to leadership.
Leading with GRACE
a fresh approach to gravitas at work
This insight document outlines a practical framework for anyone who aspires to improve their leadership and impact at work. It will be valuable for individuals across a wide range of organisations who want to take on greater responsibility.
Leading for the long term
Creating a sustainable future
This Insight booklet explores how leaders and teams can best adapt to an unpredictable future. It uses six metaphors such as ‘capture the genius of your people’ to enable leaders to reflect on the key interdependencies they are wrestling with.
Leading Virtual Teams
Living with Contradiction and Uncertainty
Much has changed in the way that business teams operate. We spoke with over 30 senior leaders and executive coaching colleagues across 8 countries, to find out how they and their clients have experienced the shift to remote working in a period of contradiction and uncertainty. It is clear that there is no simple answer to these challenges.
The Resilient Leader
This is a booklet about the pressures of working life and how you keep your resilience, both as a leader and as an individual. We draw from our own observations, and from the direct experience of our senior clients and contacts in a wide range of sectors and countries.
The Resilient Team
In this Insight document we share observations from working with executive and senior teams over many years and through changing contexts. We set out ten characteristics we notice in teams that stay resilient.
The Four Vs of Leadership: An Enduring Framework
Many leaders find it useful to have a framework within which to develop their own authentic leadership beliefs and narrative. The Four Vs of Leadership (vision, values, value-added and vitality) have proved to be an enduring framework for both individuals and teams.
What Value do Senior Women Leaders and their Organisations get from Coaching?
It is important to ask what value senior women and their organisations can gain from coaching. Research has shown that coaching has had a significantly positive impact on women who take on senior roles.
Job-sharing: A Model for the Future Workplace?
In our coaching practice we meet an increasing number of job-sharers who want to tell their story - and others who would like to explore job-sharing if they knew how to go about it.
Living Leadership
Finding Equilibrium
Living leadership is about fully embracing your leadership challenges and opportunities. Leading well is about bringing all your experiences to bear, while not trying too hard and exhausting yourself.
Knowing the Score
What we can learn about leadership from music and musicians
One way to approach the challenge of leadership is to learn from other fields. We see leadership, like music, as a discipline: as a contribution, and not a position in a hierarchy.
Beyond 2020
(Things will be different)
How should organisations reposition themselves for 2020 and beyond?
What should leaders be doing now to prepare for that? Big questions. Our view is that today’s answers are very different to yesterday’s.
Ten Insightful Years
When Praesta’s founding partners first planned their new business, they were determined to create a firm that would be wholly focused on their collective passion – harnessing the power of executive coaching to help people and the organisations they work for achieve their ambitions and aspirations.
Continuity and Succession
How not to lose the baby with the bathwater
The purpose of this Insight document is to prompt thinking and action that de-risks chief executive succession. It is informed by our knowledge of what happens before and after a change of guard at the top.
Riding The Rapids
How to navigate through turbulent times
Leaders today are faced with intense work and personal challenges that can cause them to question their normal leadership approach. As a coaching practice, we have seen the impact of the current economic environment on leaders and the way they work.
Board Players
How Chairs, Independent Directors and CEOs make their boards effective
The characteristics, attributes and behaviours of board members and the chemistry between them, alongside the information they work with, determine the effectiveness of a board.
Metro Leaders: A New Breed of Men in Business?
Saul Klein, the technology venture capitalist behind a host of successful startups describes himself on Twitter as ‘Husband. Dad. Serial entrepreneur.’ He is a high profile example of a new breed of men in business life who are choosing to behave differently in the workplace than older generations...
The Age Of Agility
Agility – how to wait, watch, and make fast, decisive moves at the right time - has become a core source of survival and long-term competitive advantage. Our view is that agility starts with the leader, who shapes the capability of his/her teams and, through them, the wider organisation.
Leading Investors
Here you are, the new team leader, head of investment or CIO. You feel justly pleased by having been given the chance to show your skills at managing people as well as investing assets, and pleasure at being acknowledged by the company as a key member of the overall team. But now what?
Seizing The Future
Seizing the future demands an upbeat and assertive approach coupled with realism, humility and the confidence to lead by example. It involves standing back, re-evaluating and being liberated from those previous frames of reference that constrain. The most successful leaders do this while remaining true to clear guiding values.
Why Are There Still So Few Women On Executive Boards?
Lord Davies of Abersoch set FTSE 100 companies the challenge to achieve 25 per cent of their members being female by 2015. While women now make up 22.4% of FTSE board non-executive directors, the percentage of women executives remains at a tiny 6.6%. It is here that the challenge remains.
Thriving In A Faster Faster World
Work, at senior levels, in the 21st century has accelerated – many executives find themselves in what we call a “faster-faster” world, with unrelenting pressure, global travel and high performance expectations. Yet, contrary to popular belief, many individuals thrive in this pressured environment. How is this possible? We decided to explore this.
What Makes a Great Chair in the Public Sector?
In the UK public sector there is a wide range of bodies of different kinds that support the business of Government. Their nature and numbers may change over time, but they remain an important part of the landscape.
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Coaches Publications
Below is a list of books written and published by Praesta coach Peter Shaw along with his colleagues.
Leadership to the Limits: freedom and responsibility. Norwich: Canterbury Press, March 2020
100 Great Leading through Frustration Ideas. London: Marshall Cavendish, 2019
The Mindful Leader: embodying Christian Wisdom. Norwich: Canterbury Press 2018
100 Great Leading through Change Ideas. London: Marshall Cavendish, 2018
Living with never-ending expectations. Vancouver, Regent College Publishing, 2017
100 Great Leading Well Ideas. Marshall Cavendish, 2017
100 Great Building Success Ideas. London: Marshall Cavendish, 2016
The Reluctant Leader: coming out of the shadows. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2016 (co-authored with Hilary Douglas)
100 Great Team Effectiveness Ideas. London: Marshall Cavendish, 2015
Wake Up and Dream: stepping into your future. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2015
100 Great Coaching Ideas. London: Marshall Cavendish 2014
Celebrating Your Senses. Delhi: ISPCK, 2014
Sustaining Leadership: renewing your strength and sparkle. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2014
The Emerging Leader: stepping up in leadership. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2013, (co-authored with Colin Shaw).
100 Great Personal Impact Ideas. London: Marshall Cavendish, 2013
Leading in Demanding Times. Cambridge: Grove, 2013
Getting the Balance Right: leading and managing well. London: Marshall Cavendish, 2013
The Reflective Leader: standing still to move forward. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2011 (co-authored with Alan Smith).
Thriving in Your Work: how to be motivated and do well in challenging times. London: Marshall Cavendish, 2011.
Defining Moments: navigating through business and organisational life. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2010.
Raise Your Game: how to succeed at work. Chichester: Capstone, 2009.
Making Difficult Decisions: how to be decisive and get the business done. Chichester: Capstone, 2008.
Business Coaching: achieving practical results through effective engagement. Chichester: Capstone, 2007 (co-authored with Robin Linnecar).
The Four Vs of Leadership: vision, values, value-added, and vitality. Chichester: Capstone, 2006.
Finding Your Future: the second time around. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2006.
Conversation Matters: how to engage effectively with one another. London: Continuum, 2005.