Hilary Lines

Hilary Lines is a leader, coach, and author

Hilary Lines is an executive and team coach, educator, facilitator and author with over 35 years’ experience of working with senior executives and their teams in a range of sectors across the world. She helps clients unlock their full leadership potential enabling them to develop the relational presence, agility and impact to engage productively with their teams, peers and clients. A driving force for her work lies in her belief that leaders in complex organisations create value through working constructively with difference: She helps leaders and teams take a fresh look at the roots of underperformance and find new ways of relating and leading that ignite energy and deliver results. Hilary leads coaching and systemic team coaching programmes, and provides Systemic Team Coaching supervision to experienced coaches.

I care about how we, as human beings, together can create leadership that makes a positive difference to others, to enterprises and to the world. I have worked with leaders for over 40 years in pharmaceutical and manufacturing sectors, in law and other professional services, in healthcare, in the voluntary sector and in the church. I coach leaders one-to-one, as leadership teams, and I create and deliver leadership programmes to enable leaders to learn to lead with others. In all these settings I attend to the context in which leaders aspire to lead, and partner with my clients in a way that helps us explore together how to create more effective leadership given the particular pressures and demands of their world.

I am a leader myself: I led an Organisation Development function in the pharmaceutical sector, I was Global Head of Partner and Leadership development for PwC Consulting, and I lead faculty teams who are responsible for delivering programmes to leaders and to coaches. Outside of work I lead initiatives to help communities prevent and combat human trafficking and slavery, and am a committed fundraiser. I am also a mother of three young men.

I bring deep thinking to my work: I have a doctorate in organisational psychology, I am an author of three books in the field and contributing author to others’ books, but I never believe I know best in my coaching. I bring humility, curiosity and space to our relationship so that you can explore what is present and right for you, and so that together we can create the conditions for new awareness, confidence and direction in your leadership.

I am honest, down-to-earth and challenging. I do not waiver from using myself as a mirror in our conversations, providing feedback about how you show up to me, and what is going on between us, as a clue to how you might be showing up with others. I have an ability to sense what is going on within your wider organisation and use this to help shine a light onto the pressures you face and how you can respond effectively to them.

I bring optimism and a sense of the possible to our work together. I have a deep belief in the capacity of my clients to make changes for the good of themselves and for others. I help my clients expand their sense of what is within their grasp, and experiment with new ways of seeing and being in the world, thinking, experiencing and relating, so that they can be more effective in a wider range of places and situations.

I not only develop leaders, but also help coaches to develop leaders. This might be through a programme on executive coaching, such as those with Teleos Leadership Institute, or through my work with Academy of Executive Coaching and Renewal Associates, in which I am co-founder and lead faculty for a suite of Systemic Team Coaching programmes, delivered worldwide since 2010. I am an experienced coach and team coach supervisor, working one-to-one, with co-coaching pairs and with groups of team coaches.

And I believe personal growth can only happen if it is enjoyable. I bring humour to our conversations and encourage you to do likewise.