Coaches On The Couch

Chris Williamson of Weston Williamson joins Rachel and Louise to talk about the practice’s new partnership with engineering company Egis and describes how the success of his long working relationship with Andrew Weston relies partly on playing to each others’ strengths. https://westonwilliamson.com Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted by Louise Rodgers and Rachel Birchmore who are exec and leadership...

Rachel and Louise chat with Oliver Lowrie and Jon Ackroyd of Ackroyd Lowrie about the power of teams and how to harness it; their use of external consultants; and why they think thought-leadership is an important part of their role. https://ackroydlowrie.com Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted by Louise Rodgers and Rachel Birchmore who are exec and leadership coaches. They design and deliver bespoke...

Karen Mosley of HLM Architects is Rachel and Louise’s guest. She tells the story of her 36-year journey with HLM, from fresh-faced school leaver to MD. There are many lessons here including about how the encouragement of life-long learning, which plays to people’s strengths and is linked to purpose, helps to create a culture of belonging. https://hlmarchitects.com Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted...

Rachel and Louise talk to Emily Stupek of Buro Four about how she has carved out a niche for herself within Buro Four; developing her own career, leading the company’s activity in science and innovation and opening a new office in Oxford. https://burofour.com Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted by Louise Rodgers and Rachel Birchmore who are exec and leadership coaches. They design and deliver bespok...

Andy Matthews, co-founder (with James Roach) of newly-established practice Roach Matthews, joins Rachel and Louise on the virtual couch to talk about setting up a studio, inclusive leadership, and what it was like to receive an ADHD diagnosis at the age of forty-two-and-a-half. https://www.roachmatthews.com Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted by Louise Rodgers and Rachel Birchmore who are exec and l...

Kristofer Adelaide of KA-A and Jenni Montgomery of Barton Willmore talk business development with Louise and Rachel. What is the legacy of the Pandemic and how can we open up conversations that may lead to new opportunities? https://ka-a.co.uk https://bartonwillmore.co.uk Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted by Louise Rodgers and Rachel Birchmore who are exec and leadership coaches. They design and d...

Carl Turner and Suzi Winstanley of Turner Works join Rachel and Louise to discuss what it takes to be ‘future fit’; which for them means being prepared for whatever problem they are going to solve next. https://turner.works Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted by Louise Rodgers and Rachel Birchmore who are exec and leadership coaches. They design and deliver bespoke leadership development programmes...

Louise and Rachel chat with Timo Haedrich, Scott Grady and Geraldine Molia of Haptic Architects about culture, collaboration, communication and the Nordic influence on their ways of working. https://hapticarchitects.com Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted by Louise Rodgers and Rachel Birchmore who are exec and leadership coaches. They design and deliver bespoke leadership development programmes and...

In this episode we talk with Annalie Riches, co-founder of Stirling Prize-winning architects Mikhail Riches, about purpose, morals and ethics, and how the decision to work only on net zero projects has impacted the studio. http://www.mikhailriches.com Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted by Louise Rodgers and Rachel Birchmore who are exec and leadership coaches. They design and deliver bespoke leader...

Welcome back! Series 5 of Coaches On The Couch kicks off with an edited version of our second ‘Made Visible’ web event, held on 13th January. Rachel and Louise check-in with a panel of built environment leaders to see how hybrid working is working, and the adaptations being made to ensure that new patterns deliver stronger and more resilient businesses. Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted by Louise...

To close series four, Louise and Rachel reflect on the rich use of metaphor through these seven episodes and its importance in coaching. Also having been in conversation with leaders and future leaders from both EOTs and BCorps in this series, we discuss how these newer company structures seem to support a more emotional sense of ownership, enabling leadership at all levels. Coaches On The Couch i...

In the second of our two-part podcast on motivation to lead, we are joined by four younger professionals from the consultancies we featured last week - Fathom Architects and Stride Treglown, Core Five and LDA Design. What do they see, feel, experience and think about leadership, and what do they have to offer those that lead them? https://corefive.co.uk https://fathomarchitects.com https://lda-des...

Four leaders from four different consultancies - architects Stride Treglown and Fathom, quantity surveyors Core Five, and landscape designers LDA - share their perspectives on leadership. The first of a two-parter on motivation to lead. How can we encourage more people to aspire to leadership roles? https://corefive.co.uk https://fathomarchitects.com https://lda-design.co.uk https://stridetreglown...

Neal Shasore, head of school and CEO at The London School of Architecture, takes his seat on the virtual couch to chat about his route to leadership, what it’s like taking over from a founder and the lessons he learned from his family role models. https://the-lsa.org Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted by Louise Rodgers and Rachel Birchmore who are exec and leadership coaches. They design and delive...

On the first day of COP 26, Rachel and Louise talk to Pete Swift and Naomi Burl, Founding Director and Practice Manager of Planit-IE (Planit Intelligent Environments), landscape designers and architects, about their B Corp journey and how it has shaped not only what their business does, but how it is. https://planit-ie.com Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted by Louise Rodgers and Rachel Birchmore wh...

Alex Ely, principal of Mae Architects, reflects on 20 years in practice and explains how Mae’s commitment to architecture that contributes to the betterment of society and improves people’s quality of life, helped the practice to navigate public sector procurement methods. https://mae.co.uk Evolution of practice articles from RIBA Journal (by Rachel Birchmore and Emma Keyte referred to in this epi...

We are joined by architectural story-tellers David West and Christophe Egret of Studio Egret West, to explore their beginnings and how they have navigated their relationship since founding the practice in 2004. https://studioegretwest.com Coaches On The Couch is co-hosted by Louise Rodgers and Rachel Birchmore who are exec and leadership coaches. They design and deliver bespoke leadership developm...

Joining us from her charpoi, and kicking off the fourth series of Coaches On The Couch, is Pooja Agrawal CEO of Public Practice and co-founder of spatial equality platform Sound Advice https://www.publicpractice.org.uk https://nowyouknowshop.bigcartel.com . Among other things we discuss the intersection between strategic and provocative disruption and how to approach uncomfortable conversations. C...

In this final episode of the current series, Louise and Rachel take time out to reflect on the lessons from the guests who have been on their virtual coach since January and what these mean for how we live, work and lead in the new post-pandemic reality. To mark our 12 month anniversary we created our first publication 'Learning from Lockdown'. This includes contributions from all 46 guests from a...

Adam Scott of FreeState talks to Louise and Rachel about the need to stop thinking of the workplace as a designed space, and start thinking of it as a curated space if we are to engender that sense of “belonging” that will bring people to the other side of the ‘soft line’ that will exist between home and office, post-Covid.

What happens when the client is also a designer? Rachel and Louise chat with Jacob Willson and Sarah Beth Riley of BeFirst and Luke Tozer of Pitman Tozer. We also touch on the difficulty of finding time to get “in the flow”, and discuss how learning partnerships may be a way to build strong client/architect relationships in a hybrid world.

On International Women’s Day, Louise and Rachel chatted with developer Landsec’s Angharad Palmer (design director) and Bernadette Keane (marketing director) about influence, celebrating diversity and the importance of having an overall vision.

A very full virtual coach as Rachel and Louise are joined by five young, emerging architects representing three practices featured in the AJ’s 40 under 40. We talk about the impetus to go it alone and what’s been important to them over the last year.

Rachel and Louise are joined on the virtual couch by Paul Monaghan of AHMM for a rich conversation about the importance of joining, belonging and leaving with grace and generosity, and how his own experiences have shaped his style of leadership.

Dan Whittingham is MD of the project management company, Opera. He joins Rachel and Louise to explore the differences between leading a project and leading a company, and to discuss how, at Opera, they leverage motivation by being attuned to the needs of the people who work for them.