Gary Bishop

Gary Bishop

“I’m passionate about supporting leaders to discover their best selves, grow and achieve outstanding results.”

Background

Gary has been leading teams, projects and organisations for over 30 years, starting out in industry then community work in Brighton before moving to Manchester where he lived and worked in one of Britain’s toughest neighbourhoods building community and initiating change for 12 years. Over the last 30 years Gary has held multiple governance and senior leadership roles including CEO for two organisations which he has helped to design and build from scratch: first a charity called Justlife in 2010, then Arch Healthcare 6 years later. As a coach Gary is dedicated to helping leaders to discover the best within themselves in order to achieve more than they think is possible.  He is a member of the Association of Coaches and has over 20 years’ experience of having professional conversations and coaching.

Qualifications

2023 – Diploma in Transformational Coaching / European Mentoring & Coaching Council 

2010-2012 – MA in Business Administration (MBA) / Durham University Business School

2007 – Diploma in Executive Coaching / Manchester University

Examples of recent work

As a founder CEO, Gary’s responsibilities have spanned organisational development, operational management, governance and coaching high performance teams whilst overseeing core business functions such as finance, strategy, HR, communications and fundraising.  Providing effective leadership across all these disciplines has taught Gary a great deal about building successful teams and organisations.  As a coach and facilitator, he has had opportunities to work with individuals and teams to develop new partnerships, integrate teams during mergers and support the development of organisational strategies. Primarily his work is focussed on leadership development through coaching.

Examples of coaching

  • Coached a leader transitioning to a new role as CEO of a successful company.  Supported her to navigate challenges faced by first-time CEOs, helping to resolve key difficulties and thrive as a leader.
  • Provided developmental support to the owner of a small but highly successful media company.  Enabled him to envision growth, develop strategy and handle rising pressures around the business by focussing on organisation structure, workforce development, managing anxiety and accountability.  
  • Facilitated whole board of a newly formed Primary Care Network to enhance their engagement with board responsibilities and support leadership within their own practices. Involved 1:1 coaching sessions with GPs and practice managers as well as working with the whole group together.
Waverley Learning are very vested in what they’re doing, very committed. They’re dynamic individually and collectively, they are 100% invested to the learners when they go into a program, it really is a sense of ownership of the experience that I don’t necessarily always see with every other vendor or learning partner that we use.
Lisa Smisek - Director of Learning, Kearney
There’s a credibility and a humility that you just sense when you’re engaging with Waverley Learning. I’m personally very drawn to that.
Karen Brown - Director of People and Talent, Tearfund
It is the extent to which Waverley Learning understood all the requirements, the innovation that they brought, the talent they brought. Their whole style takes the frantic pace at which we work out of the equation, the messages comes through really clearly. They’ve tuned into the challenges of our organization and made observations that have given us added value. It’s always based on our needs.
Alison Maher - Head of Learning, GWR
Their Developing Skills course consistently gets the best feedback of any standard developmental course that we offer. They’re clearly doing something right in terms of engagement, for those individuals to realise their own development within that situation. Waverley Learning listen to what’s going on, the chats that they’re having with my colleagues. They’re able to play that back, this is what’s going on in your business. As an organization, they provide great insight into to us.
John Probert - Director, Mercer
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