Catherine Sandler

Catherine specialises in work with individuals at Board and Director level across all sectors. Clients range from FTSE 100, professional partnerships, SMEs, entrepreneurs, public sector organisations and not-for-profits. Catherine has a strong track record of working with female leaders, having founded and run the Talented Women’s Impact Programme.

When both coaching and supervising, Catherine combines an in-depth understanding of psychology with a business perspective and a strong focus on practical results. She has established a reputation as a highly skilful and proactive practitioner who combines empathy with advice, helping coachees shift longstanding but unhelpful patterns of behaviour. She is known for her work with complex or challenging individuals, including those with significant behavioural issues or in severe emotional distress. She draws on a wide range of models and tools to meet her clients’ development needs.

Catherine has taught at several leading educational institutions including London Business School and INSEAD. She worked as an associate at LBS from 1993, coaching on multiple internal and company-specific programmes. In 2000 she helped establish group coaching at INSEAD’s Global Leadership Centre and taught on its flagship programme, Coaching and Consulting for Change. She has also been a teacher, consultant and PhD supervisor at the Tavistock Clinic in London. Her own doctorate is from Oxford University and she is also a qualified counsellor.

In Catherine’s book, Why Good People Behave Badly at Work (and what you can do about it), available from 3rd September 2026 she describes how stress at work can shift any of us, in the blink of an eye, from our most effective to our most dysfunctional selves. Drawing on her popular Emotional Profiles Triangle framework, she explains the strengths and vulnerabilities of the high-powered Tiger, the empathic Dolphin and the self-contained Owl. When anxiety peaks, they can be triggered into Fight, Flight or Freeze and leave their skilful self behind. Grounded in years of experience and packed with case-studies, interviews and practical tools, this highly accessible book helps us manage ourselves and our coachees to become as skilful as possible.

Catherine is a leading authority on the psychodynamic approach to executive coaching and her 2011 book Executive Coaching: A Psychodynamic Approach is still the most widely sold in the McGraw Hill Coaching in Practice series. Catherine has also written articles for a wide range of professional journals on topics including the emotional role of the leader in turbulent times, coaching leaders under pressure and tackling bullying at work. She speaks regularly on coaching-related topics at conferences, business schools and training courses, runs leadership development workshops for client companies and runs coaching masterclasses for coaches and allied professionals in the UK and abroad. She has been interviewed for features in the Financial Times and The Times on leadership and on executive stress.