I help Third Sector organisations, leaders and managers get underneath recurring people and leadership challenges, strengthen leadership and create more sustainable ways of working.
Leaders and managers are being asked to deliver more with less, support increasingly complex teams and keep organisations moving forward in challenging environments.
The pressure can be relentless.
But when good people are leaving, sickness absence is rising, recruitment is getting harder, or managers and teams are constantly stretched, we need to look beyond the problem immediately in front of us.
What’s really going on here?
And what needs to change?
Drawing on 35 years in HR, including 28 years in the Third Sector, I help leaders and organisations step back, join the dots and develop practical responses to the people and leadership challenges they're facing.

Creating space for leaders to step back, think clearly and work through the realities of leadership, pressure, change and responsibility.
Whether you're navigating a difficult decision, leading through change, feeling stretched, questioning your confidence or simply need space to think, coaching gives you time to make sense of what's happening and decide what you want to do next.
Ideal for:

Practical development that helps managers and leaders build the confidence, understanding and skills to lead people well, particularly when things are difficult.
Popular topics include:

Drawing on 35 years of HR experience, including 28 years in the Third Sector, I help organisations get underneath recurring people challenges, understand what may be driving them and work out what needs to change.
Support may include:
People shouldn’t have to break before something changes.
Too often, we become curious when somebody reaches crisis point. When they go off sick, disengage, resign or say they simply can't keep doing this.
But the warning signs may have been there much earlier.
Passion for a cause is not an unlimited organisational resource.
People in the Third Sector will often carry more because they care deeply about the work they do and the people they serve. That commitment is one of the sector's greatest strengths.
But it cannot become a substitute for sustainable workloads, good management, strong leadership and healthy ways of working.
The Third Sector cannot build its future on the goodwill and self-sacrifice of the people who work in it.
I'm Sarah Bickerstaff, an Executive Coach and HR Consultant with 35 years of HR experience, including 28 years in the Third Sector.
I've worked at senior HR leadership level and understand the realities organisations and leaders face when they are balancing people, resources, increasing demand, organisational change and the mission they're there to deliver.
My work brings together strategic HR expertise, executive coaching, leadership development and specialist burnout-informed practice.
That combination helps me look at challenges from more than one perspective: the individual, the manager, the leader and the organisation.
I don't believe in reaching automatically for a solution before understanding the problem.
I'm interested in what's really going on, what may be sitting underneath it and what actually needs to change.
Whether you're looking for individual Executive Coaching, practical Leadership Development or Strategic People Support for your organisation, let's start with what's happening now.
You don't need to have diagnosed the problem or know which solution you need.
We can start by understanding what's really going on and what might need to change.