In a new service offering for Howgate Sable, we have linked up with experienced executive advisory consultant Dr Marie-Caroline von Ledebur to offer her extensive skills to clients and candidates.

Caroline works as a consultant and coach for organisations, individuals and families. She has built her own consulting and coaching practice and advised CEOs and top leaders on personal effect, impact, relationship building, achieving goals, as well as development and performance. She is the kind of person who has lived many lives in one – part scientist, part corporate consultant, part entrepreneur, part traveller and always a curious observer of human systems.

Having lived in seven countries on three continents, Caroline is fluent in English, German and French.

We sat down with Caroline to find out more about her work and her approach, and how she works with Howgate Sable clients.

Hi Caroline, you’ve got quite the colourful career history! Can you tell us some more about your background and how you got to be where you are today?

As the child of a diplomat, I lived all over the world – my father’s work took us to new horizons every few years. Because of this, I was schooled in the Lyçée Français in different countries, graduating with a Baccalauréat in science. Having developed a keen interest in genetics along the way, I went on to receive an undergraduate degree from Smith College – one of the all-women’s Seven Sisters colleges in the USA, worked as a research assistant at Rockefeller University in New York, and received a doctorate (DPhil) in molecular biology from the University of Oxford.

As much as I loved the academic life, I ultimately decided to pursue a more corporate career and joined global management consultancy firm Roland Berger, working in the Pharma/Healthcare team. From there, I moved to executive search firm SpencerStuart, leading the European biotech and R&D efforts within the global life sciences practice.

Later in my career, again US-based, I was CEO of G100, a membership based organisation for CEOs and Chairmen of some of the largest and mostly public companies, where I cemented my understanding of the issues impacting modern leaders and continued to develop my recognition of what great leadership looks like.

It was during that time that I saw first-hand the benefits of coaching, and I trained as a life coach and an executive coach in the US, launching my consultancy and coaching business in 2006. All these years later, it still keeps me fulfilled and brings me huge joy to work with people and help them discover their potential.

Your coaching brings significant value to your clients. How do you help them achieve more?

The most important prerequisite for being a good coach isn’t the formal training, but the variety, the range, the scope of your life experiences. The more colourful they are, the better the coach. As a coach, my personal exposure, joys, losses, mistakes, learnings serve as a source for insight and enabling change.

Great coaching is all about helping people discover their true self so they can play to their strengths. I allow people to feel seen for who they are – everyone is more than their job title, but your sense of self can become lost in a high pressure environment. I believe I see patterns others miss and I bring clarity.

What kind of support do clients use your services for? 

I enable change.

How?

I act as a mirror. I give clients a reflection of themselves – or of their leaders. I show them how they come across and where this originates. It goes beyond surface behaviour and there is a strongly intuitive part than just a standardised appraisal. There are aspects that are more art than science, requiring presence, patience and the willingness to go deep.

I help leaders access the power of building lasting relationships. Networking and growing your personal sphere of influence, can help ambitious leaders move into new roles. But few people network effectively, instead treating it as a quick sell. Proper relationship building requires you to bring your true self to the table – and in order to do that, you need to know who your true self is.

I work with businesses seeking to improve their offering regarding women. I help build the context for women’s success within the client company, coach leaders the implementation and women on how to succeed. You can fill buildings with the volume of studies that prove that greater diversity equals greater success.

A common ingredient to all of this is communication. Great communication is about listening and adapting your viewpoint or plans to consider other approaches. Often, people seek help in communicating better across all areas of their life: their boardroom peers, their family, their colleagues, their juniors. An ability to communicate well is an executive superpower, and unlocking the skills to do it can make a huge positive impact on career plans.

Tell us more about how your work helps businesses develop.

I work with businesses and individuals, to assess their current set up and suggest ways of improvement. The unusual variety and years of experience give me an acute ability to read people. Much of my work is around reflection and assessment, like a mirror, which is relevant to a CEO who wants to understand and use his team optimally. Finding out what skills and behavioural habits you have within the organisation’s leadership and developing the people who lead is vital if you are to move it forward effectively.

How will you work with Howgate Sable?

All of these services will be open to Howgate Sable clients, both as individuals and as businesses, but I will also be working closely with the search partners to understand the people we’re interviewing for key positions.

Executive search is all about people. Clients come to us for a specific need, but stay because of our ability to draw wisdom from unlikely places. I work with the team as they break down a client brief and identify the types of candidate that might be suitable, and then I help them assess their long and short listed candidates – who is going to fit in? Who has the right values for the brand? What personality traits do they have that make them right (or wrong) for this job?

This is where we add real value. Howgate Sable is never just about filling a role and moving on. It’s about finding the right person for the right role at the right time.