Executive & Leadership Coaching
Leadership Coaching for Leaders Who Want More Than Advice
If you are looking for leadership coaching, you have probably already had plenty of advice. What you are looking for now is a leadership coach who can help you understand what is actually driving your decisions, your relationships, and the way you show up under pressure.
This is our core one-to-one coaching offer at Busara — for senior leaders and managers alike. Whether you are steering an organisation from the top or leading a team on the ground, our leadership coaching is built on real psychological expertise. We support leadership development that goes beneath the surface, so the change you make holds — in the boardroom, with your team, and in how you lead when things get difficult.
A Leadership Coach Trained to Look Beneath the Surface
Most executive coaching works from a model: a framework for delegation, a structure for difficult conversations, a set of leadership competencies to tick off. These have their place — but they rarely explain why a capable leader keeps hitting the same wall.
As a leadership coach, our founder brings a doctorate in counselling psychology and years of clinical and coaching training to every engagement. That means our leadership coaching starts with what is really going on for you — the instincts, patterns, and pressures that shape how you lead, not just the leadership behaviours you are trying to adopt.
This is leadership development that is rigorous, evidence-based, and built to last — because it is grounded in genuine psychological insight, not a leadership model borrowed from somewhere else.
Leadership Development, Built Around You
Whether you are a senior leader preparing for the next step, a founder navigating the isolation of the top job, or a manager finding your feet with people responsibility for the first time, our leadership coaching is built around you.
Typical areas we work on with clients include:
- Understanding your own leadership patterns, and where they help or hinder you
- Making the shift from doing the job to leading the people who do it
- Building confidence and clarity in high-stakes decisions
- Navigating conflict, difficult stakeholders, and complex team dynamics
- Managing the isolation and weight of leadership and management responsibility
- Leading through uncertainty, change, or organisational transition
- Developing a leadership style that is truly yours
Every engagement is one-to-one and bespoke, whatever your level of seniority. We do not run off-the-shelf leadership programmes — our leadership coaching is shaped around the individual in front of us.
Meet Your Leadership Coach Dr. Zahra Shariff
I work with leaders who want more than a set of leadership techniques. My background is in psychology — I hold a Doctorate in Counselling Psychology, a Master’s in organisational consulting from the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, and executive coaching training from Henley Business School. I am also Hogan certified, registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), and a registered member of the British Psychological Society (BPS).
Over the past 10 years, I have provided leadership coaching to individuals, teams, and organisations across the NHS, government departments, charities, social enterprises, and the private sector. I understand the pressures of leadership — the complexity, the isolation, and the weight of responsibility — because I have sat with leaders navigating all of it.
As a leadership coach, my approach integrates psychoanalytic and systemic thinking with practical, forward-focused coaching. I create a space where it is safe to be honest — about what is really driving your decisions, your relationships, and your leadership — so the leadership development we do together creates change that lasts.
Qualifications & Professional Memberships
Psychological Insight. Practical Impact.
Zahra works alongside Renée Mann, an organisational consultant and Chartered Member of the CIPD, to bring both psychological depth and organisational strategy to leadership coaching. This means your leadership development is never separated from the reality of the organisation you lead in — its culture, its pressures, and its people.
We work across the UK with senior leaders and managers, one-to-one, and with organisations of all sizes — from ambitious SMEs and growing charities to NHS trusts, government departments, and corporate businesses.
If you are ready to work with a leadership coach who will treat your development seriously — whatever stage of leadership or management you are at, and with rigour, care, and genuine psychological expertise — we would welcome the conversation.
Busara Consulting’s leadership coaching is led by an HCPC-registered practitioner psychologist and a Chartered MCIPD professional. We are members of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and the Female Founders Rise network.
