Welcome to the world of
Challenging Coaching
Going beyond traditional coaching to face the FACTS
Challenging coaching is designed for executive coaching, conference keynotes and coach development.
Challenging coaching is the joint work of Dr John Blakey and Ian Day; we believe that executive coaching is a crucial tool for transforming leadership capability. We challenge leaders and coaches to be courageous and be more than they currently are.
Our board level clients told us they loved our challenging coaching style –
an approach inspired by our extensive work with business leaders and Olympic medallists.
Latest blogs
- Coaches, are you getting the hard sell, offering the miracle solution in these hard times? I decided to follow up on one of theses and see what would happen and what they were offering. I’ve noticed more and more social media posts offering top secrets for generating business, courses which guarantee success, or people willing to…
- Beautiful blue sky, blossom on the trees, roads quiet. Pandemic, lockdown, 759 deaths yesterday in the UK. Stark reality. Out of this tragedy, good things can come, there is hope for the other side of lockdown. The pandemic has caused tragic deaths and terrible suffering, but out of this enforced lockdown change has come. On…
- I’m feeling lost, scared, uncertain. I can’t visit my elderly relatives and I’m worried about them. I’ve had to close my business and I don’t know what the future will be? Will I have a job? These are some of the comments that I’ve heard recently. In a matter of a few weeks everything that…
- Congruence is about being genuine, acting without front or facade. You are congruent when you are aware of your own feelings and ensure that words and actions are matched to these internal feelings. But has the origins of congruence and the importance in coaching been lost? Many theoretical underpinnings of coaching come from counselling. When…
- We don't listen enough. We are quick to dismiss others. Following on from my blog, “the age of intolerance” , I wanted to further explore how we can bridge the gap, the gap of ‘difference’ and ‘intolerance’. To do this, I would like to talk about the work of William Isaacs, and his fantastic book…
Latest tweets
Hope for the other side: Beautiful blue sky, blossom on the trees, roads quiet. Pandemic… https://goo.gl/fb/CTDakG
Our Coaching Book
'Challenging Coaching' was hailed as a 'game-changing' book in the coaching world.
This book details our FACTS coaching model which is a real-world, timely and pragmatic coaching approach focussing on Feedback, Accountability, Courageous Goals, Tension, and Systems Thinking.
Watch our book review, download a free chapter below, or buy your copy now from Amazon.
Free Chapter Offer
To be sent the first chapter of the book including the foreword by Sir John Whitmore enter your email in the box:
Our Executive Coaching
We work as executive coaches for international leaders in blue chip companies to help them achieve peak performance.
The combination of our own track record as FTSE100 business leaders and our leading edge coaching research gives us impact at board level.

Free Coaching Self-Assessment Tool
We have developed a self-assessment feedback tool to help coaches and leaders assess their challenging coaching skills.
Download this tool for free by entering your email address here...
Our Keynotes, Master Classes and Network
We share our work through master classes and conference presentations - helping others develop their challenging coaching skills whilst building an international network of like-minded coaches through our LinkedIn group.
We hope that through browsing the resources on this web site you will share our passion for achieving courageous goals. Keep up the challenge!