Leadership Development Consultant
Leadership Development Consultant, Grounded in Psychology
If you are looking to hire an executive coach or leadership development consultant, you want more than frameworks and generic advice. You want someone who understands what is really driving behaviour — in you, in your team, and in your organisation.
At Busara, we bring genuine psychological expertise to leadership development. Our coaching goes beneath the surface, so the change you make is grounded in real insight, not a one-size-fits-all model.
Coaching for Leadership Development That Goes Beneath the Surface
Most leadership development programmes focus on skills, models, and behaviours — the outside of leadership. We start from the inside.
As a leadership development consultant, our founder brings a doctorate in organisational psychology and years of clinical and coaching training to every engagement. That means when you hire an executive coach at Busara, you are not simply working through a checklist of competencies. You are working with someone trained to understand the patterns, pressures, and often-invisible dynamics that shape how leaders actually behave under pressure.
This is coaching for leadership development that is rigorous, evidence-based, and genuinely effective — because it is built on a real understanding of people.
An Executive Coach for Leaders at Every Stage
Whether you are stepping into a first leadership role, navigating a promotion into senior management, or leading through significant organisational change, our leadership development consultancy is built around you — not a fixed programme.
Typical areas we work on with clients include:
- Building self-awareness as a leader, including how you respond under pressure
- Navigating difficult relationships, conflict, and team dynamics
- Developing your own leadership style, rather than adopting someone else’s
- Managing the isolation and weight of senior responsibility
- Leading through uncertainty, restructuring, or organisational change
- Strengthening decision-making and resilience in high-stakes roles
Every engagement is one-to-one and bespoke. We do not run off-the-shelf leadership programmes — we work with the individual in front of us.
Meet Dr. Zahra Shariff
I work with leaders who want more than surface-level coaching. 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 worked as an executive coach for leaders 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 people navigating all of it.
When you hire an executive coach, you should expect more than encouragement and frameworks. My approach integrates psychoanalytic and systemic thinking with practical, forward-focused coaching, creating a space where it is safe to be honest about what is really going on — 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 development. This means the coaching you receive is never separated from the reality of the organisation you lead in.
We work across the UK with individual leaders 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 hire an executive coach who will treat your development seriously — with rigour, care, and psychological expertise — we would welcome the conversation.
Busara Consulting’s leadership development work 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.
