Steven is a registered Organisational Coaching Psychologist and an internationally certified Transformational Coach. He is a member of the International Society of Coaching Psychology (MISCP), as well as an accredited practitioner in Enneagram and MBTI personality-type assessments.

Specializing in both performance and developmental coaching, Steven guides executives and leader-managers toward intentional, values-based leadership that is authentic and impactful.

Areas of Specialisation

• Leader-as-Coach Development: Enhancing leaders’ capacity for self- and social-awareness and reflective insight, contextual intelligence, emotional adaptability and intentionality.
• Mindset Coaching: Applying the transformative power of metacognition and the observing self – recognising and transforming habitual paradigms.
• Personality Development & Vertical Integration: Helping leaders to recognise core motivations, biases, triggers, and defence patterns.
• Role-Transition Resilience: Empowering leaders to embrace their new roles, navigating identity shifts in career transitions and advancements.

Steven’s approach supports leaders in developing the awareness and skills necessary for transformative, values-aligned leadership.

With a career that spans the creative arts and behavioural sciences, Steven’s coaching approach combines insight with evidence-based techniques. He brings over 20 years of experience as an organisational development consultant, leadership coach, practitioner-researcher, author, international conference speaker and masterclass facilitator.

He is an author of a chapter on Coaching for Authentic Leadership in a peer-reviewed coaching psychology publication. He has frequently presented and spoken at local and international industrial-organisational and coaching psychology conferences.

His coaching experience encompasses executive and leadership coaching, coaching programme research, design and development, leader-as-coach training, project management and coach supervision for large coaching projects.

His practical experience and research highlight a distinct correlation between emotional intelligence competence and authentic, intentional leadership – an insight that underpins his approach to coaching that aims to bridge and integrate Performance (doing/transactional) and Developmental (being/transformational) coaching goals.

Coaching Philosophy

Steven’s coaching philosophy rests on the belief that all meaningful change is rooted in learning, and all meaningful learning is rooted in change. He views a coaching approach as an ideal method to drive and facilitate both change and learning – encouraging leader-managers to build psychologically safe and trust-based relationships, and guiding them toward an intentional leadership style.

He believes that every leader-manager has the potential to embody the role of “Leader-as-Coach” – by adopting the spirit, mindset, skills and capacities required of an authentic leader. The aim is not intended to train leaders as professional coaches, but rather to align their leadership style with core emotional intelligence and coaching principles – demonstrating alignment and congruence in both actions and intent.

Leader-as-Coach Core Principles (for self-mastery leadership and leader-managers):

• Integrating Doing and Being Goals – Balancing external (transactional) capability with internal (transformational) capacity.
• Developing Emotional and Cognitive Awareness – Strengthening self- and other-awareness, along with cognitive intentionality and emotional regulation.
• Nurturing Metacognitive Capacity – Fostering the observing self to intentionally align thoughts, emotions, and actions with core motivations, values, and beliefs.
• Practising Reflective Inquiry – Engaging in meaning-making and insight recognition – accessing wisdom and authentic self-expression.
• Cultivating a Culture of Psychological Safety – Building an intentional culture of trust and cohesion within teams, emphasising engagement, innovation, and overall well-being.

Coaching Approach

Steven’s coaching approach draws on a range of modalities to suit each client’s unique context. His sessions provide a psychologically safe environment, guided by the coachee’s goals and present-moment needs.

Key elements and frameworks in his approach include:

• Integrating Performance and Developmental Goals – Balancing transactional (performance) capability with transformational (authentic connection) leadership capacity.
• Applying Rogerian Person-Centred Approaches – Incorporating Coaching Psychology, Acceptance & Commitment, Motivational Interviewing, Solutions-Focused and Strength-Based Coaching approaches – Encouraging clients to align their thoughts, actions and values; providing solution- and strength-oriented and Positive Psychology coaching aimed at enhancing and supporting well-being and performance.
• Ontological Coaching – Working with coachees on identity, language, emotions, language and somatics to support authentic, integrative growth.
• Depth Coaching – Utilising systems psychodynamics, Gestalt, phenomenology, and emergent pattern recognition, addressing core subjective dynamics and meanings that are unique for each person.
• Neuroscientific and Embodied Approaches – Applying neuroception and co-regulation to integrate cognitive and limbic-based coaching approaches for transformative inside-out, top-down, and bottom-up learning and change.
• Building Emotional intelligence – Developing awareness and regulation to enhance self- and other-attunement, empathy, and trust.
• Metacognitive Development – Fostering a growth mindset and contextual/systemic thinking by applying meta-skills, including mapping mindsets through the observing self.
• Reflective and Compassionate Inquiry – Facilitating self-insight, meeting of mindsets through narrative and dialogical coaching.
• Personality Dynamics – Applying Enneagram and Jungian principles to recognise core motivations, personality dynamics, and ego-/cognitive-developmental pathways.
• Values-Based leadership – Helping clients connect to their authentic and intentional voice.

Steven’s coaching aims to provide a journey of personal growth, deepened understanding and insights – designed to equip leaders to achieve sustainable change through meaningful and authentic engagement.

Steven began his corporate career as an Organisational Development (OD) consultant, leadership development facilitator, and trainer with one of the Big Four firms, eventually establishing his own consulting and coaching practice.

He has held various leadership roles within industrial-organisational and coaching psychology associations, including serving as Chair of SIOPSA’s Interest Group of Coaching & Consulting Psychology and as its representative on the ISCP International Executive Committee.

With extensive experience working across sectors and cultures, he has partnered with both local and international corporations in industries including education, transportation, banking, insurance, consulting, mining, multinational manufacturing, engineering, healthcare, HR, academia, energy, compliance, entertainment, media, technology, and public sector entities such as government departments, parastatals, and municipalities.

His clients range from private individuals to high-level leaders, including CEOs, executive managers, and their teams. Steven is also committed to supporting the next generation of professionals as a pro bono mentor-coach for HR and Psychology students.

Some coaching-project roles

– Lead coach and coach supervisor – for an executive coaching program at a provincial government public-entity agency.
– Coach and developer of a coaching project-management online platform – designed for the senior leadership across multiple provincial and municipal entities.
– Coach for consultancy coach panels and private clients.

Steven’s clients say…

“Steven possesses an exceptional ability to understand the team dynamics and through his Authentic-intention Model refocused the team towards conversations that enable a genuine focus on what the real issues were, thus creating a safer environment for engagement. In addition, he has a keen ability to enable personal transformation that leads individual managers to understand and eliminate barriers to more effective performance. He is an extremely good listener and an authentic and professional coach.” ~ Group Executive

“Steven is an amazing coach, he knows how to quickly and efficiently get to the heart of the matter. I have really enjoyed his coaching style as well as his insights. He is the real deal, I have seen a tangible difference in my beliefs and attitudes thanks to him.” ~ Senior Manager

“I have been coached before, but this coaching was by far the most detailed and challenging. I thoroughly enjoyed every session, and it assisted me in my day-to-day thinking and decision making. It had meaning and made a huge difference to the way I acted, listened and my reaction. What is most probably the best thing about the experience is that my team can notice a remarkable change. And it’s having a positive change.” ~ Divisional Manager