I.
1:1 Career Coaching
Six structured sessions over three months. We map where you are, where you want to be, and the deliberate steps between. For people who feel stuck, plateaued, or quietly underused in their current role.
From£1,200
CompassCareer Coaching
020 7405 5544London & Online · ICF-PCC · Est. 2016
Same career path. New direction.
Compass is a small career and executive coaching practice in central London. For nine years I have worked with professionals who are competent, well-regarded, and quietly stuck. The work is not glamorous. It is precise, confidential, and almost always quieter than people expect.
ICF-PCC Certified·Twelve Years' Coaching·Established 2016·Money-Back on Session One·EMCC Member
01 — Approach
Four convictions that shape how I coach.
i.
Direction over destination
Most people do not need a new career. They need a new direction in the one they already have. We begin with the smaller question, and only widen it if the answer demands it.
ii.
Coaching, not consulting
I will not tell you what to do with your career — that is not what coaching is. I will ask the questions that surface the answer you already half-know, and hold you to acting on it.
iii.
ICF-PCC standards
Professional Certified Coach with the International Coach Federation. The PCC accreditation requires 500+ logged coaching hours and ongoing supervision. It is not a weekend qualification.
iv.
Money-back on session one
If the first session does not give you something useful to take away, I refund it without quibble. I have refunded three sessions in nine years. That is the standard I work to.
02 — Services
Five packages, clearly priced.
I do not run a subscription, I do not sell modules, and I do not offer half-day workshops to teams. The work is one-to-one, time-bounded, and priced before we begin. If your need does not fit one of these packages, say so — I will build something that does.
II.
Executive Coaching
For senior leaders navigating a promotion, a new mandate, or a board-level transition. Confidential, off-the-record, and built around the questions you cannot raise with HR.
From£2,400
III.
Career-Change Package
Eight sessions for clients pivoting into a new sector. Includes skills audit, market mapping, narrative rewrite, and the introductions list most coaches will not put in writing.
From£1,800
IV.
CV & LinkedIn Rewrite
A full rewrite of both, by hand, after a 90-minute discovery call. Designed to read like a senior person wrote it — because one did. Two rounds of revision included.
From£450
V.
Interview Preparation
Two intensive sessions before a critical interview. Question-by-question rehearsal, narrative coaching, and the quiet work of helping you sound like the person you already are.
From£350
03 — Who I Work With
A small caseload, deliberately.
I work with twelve to fifteen clients at a time, no more. That is enough to keep the practice viable and few enough to remember the texture of each person’s situation between sessions. Three groups make up most of the work.
01
Mid-Career Professionals
Eight to fifteen years in. Competent, well-paid, and quietly unsatisfied. The question is usually whether to leave, or to stay differently.
02
Senior Leaders in Transition
Directors and C-suite navigating a new role, an internal promotion, or a difficult board. Confidential coaching with someone outside the organisation.
03
Career Changers
Returning from parental leave, leaving the public sector, or pivoting after a sale. Practical, methodical work on what next, and how to be taken seriously in a new market.
04 — Process
Four stages, over three to six months.
A coaching engagement is a deliberate piece of work, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. We agree the shape of it before we start. We do not drift.
01
Discovery call
A complimentary 30-minute conversation by telephone. We establish whether coaching is the right fit, and whether I am the right coach for you. No obligation, no follow-up sales call.
02
Mapping session
Ninety minutes in person or on Zoom. We build a clear picture of where you are now, what is working, what is not, and what you want the next chapter to look like.
03
The work
Fortnightly sessions over three to six months. Each one builds on the last. Between sessions, there is reading, reflection, and small experiments in the world you are trying to enter.
04
Closure & continuity
We end deliberately, with a written reflection on what changed and what to watch for. Most clients return for a single tune-up session 6–12 months later.
05 — The Founder
Helena Ward, Professional Certified Coach.
I spent the first sixteen years of my career inside the City — first as a strategy consultant at a tier-one firm, then as a director of operations at a FTSE-listed business. By forty I was well-paid, well-regarded, and quietly miserable.
The thing that changed me was a single coaching engagement, taken on the recommendation of a colleague. I retrained as a coach in 2014, opened Compass in 2016, and have been working with people in the same predicament ever since.
I hold the Professional Certified Coach accreditation from the International Coach Federation, a postgraduate certificate in executive coaching from Henley Business School, and ongoing supervision with one of the senior figures in UK coaching practice. I write occasionally for Coaching at Work and speak at the EMCC’s annual conference.
From a recent client
“I came to Helena assuming I needed to leave my firm. Six sessions later I had renegotiated my role, moved divisions, and discovered I had been asking the wrong question for two years. The work was uncomfortable in the way good coaching should be.”
Director · Professional Services · 2025
06 — Begin the Conversation
The first call
is on me.
Thirty minutes by telephone, at no cost and no obligation. We will talk about where you are, what you are weighing, and whether coaching with me is the right next step. If it is not, I will tell you, and where possible recommend someone who is.
Call 020 7405 5544 →Studio
28 Bedford Square
Bloomsbury
London WC1B 3JS
Bloomsbury
London WC1B 3JS
By Appointment
Monday – Thursday · 9.00 – 18.00
Friday · 9.00 – 14.00
Online sessions available worldwide
Friday · 9.00 – 14.00
Online sessions available worldwide
Telephone
020 7405 5544