Focus In Leadership started in 2016 when our founder, Rachel Ngata, left a 15-year career in operations management to focus full-time on coaching. She had spent the previous three years running an internal leadership program at a mid-sized manufacturing company in Adelaide. The program produced measurable results: participant teams saw a 22% reduction in voluntary turnover and a clear improvement in employee engagement scores over 18 months. When the company was acquired and the program was shelved, Rachel decided to take what she had built and offer it to other organisations.
The first year was small. Rachel coached six executives and ran four workshops. Word spread through referrals. By 2018, she brought on a second coach, Marcus Hale, who had been a regional general manager in financial services. The two of them built the emerging leaders program that same year, drawing on their combined experience of what new managers actually struggle with versus what most training programs assume they need.
Today the team has grown to five people. We've worked with organisations ranging from 50-person professional services firms to divisions of ASX-listed companies. The common thread across our clients is a belief that leadership skill is learnable and that investing in it pays off in retention, performance and culture.
We don't have a values poster on the wall. But there are a few principles that shape how we design programs, choose clients, and hold ourselves accountable.
Knowing the difference between transactional and transformational leadership is interesting. Being able to have a difficult conversation with a direct report on Friday afternoon is useful. We bias toward the useful. Every session, workshop and assignment is designed to produce a change in what the participant actually does, not just what they know.
Our coaches and facilitators will tell you what they see, even when it's uncomfortable. If a leader is avoiding a conversation, we name it. If a team's "alignment" is actually compliance driven by fear, we say so. We do this with care, but we don't soften the message to the point where it loses meaning. Clients hire us because they want someone who will be straight with them.
We set observable goals at the start and check them at the end. If a program didn't produce the change we agreed on, we want to understand why. Sometimes the goals were wrong. Sometimes the organisation's context shifted. Sometimes we could have done better. We track outcomes because it keeps us honest and helps us improve.
We won't recommend a 16-week program when a two-hour conversation between a leader and their team would solve the problem. We've talked clients out of engagements when the issue turned out to be structural rather than developmental. If the real problem is that a role is designed badly or that two departments have conflicting KPIs, coaching won't fix it, and we'll say so.
Five people, each with a background in operational leadership before moving into coaching and facilitation.
Founder and executive coach
15 years in operations management before founding Focus In Leadership. ICF PCC credential. Rachel works primarily with senior leaders in manufacturing, logistics and professional services. She designed the emerging leaders curriculum and leads our diagnostic assessments.
Executive coach
Former regional general manager in financial services. Marcus spent 12 years managing teams of 40 to 200 people across three states. He coaches executives who are managing through growth, restructure or succession transitions. ICF PCC credential.
Facilitator and coach
Sophie joined in 2020 after eight years as a people and culture manager in the technology sector. She facilitates most of our team workshops and co-delivers the emerging leaders program. Her particular focus is feedback culture and psychological safety.
Executive coach
David was a head of engineering at two mining services companies before retraining as a coach. He works with leaders in technical and operational roles who need to shift from problem-solving mode to people-leadership mode. ICF ACC credential, currently completing PCC hours.
Since 2016 we have worked across multiple industries and states. Here are some numbers from our internal tracking.
340+
Individuals coached
120+
Team workshops delivered
78%
Manager-reported improvement rate
9
Years in practice
Want to talk about your leadership challenges? Get in touch