Successful, Sustained Impact
Empowering people and educational organisations to think differently and harness their human advantage
"...the changes Alex empowered us to make have revolutionised our approach and resulted in a significant increase in what our students are achieving in just a few months."
Holly G Trust Lead for Maths
Coaching
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Executive coaching
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Leadership coaching
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Team coaching
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Career coaching
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Parent coaching
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Family development coaching
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Community cohesion coaching
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Young person coaching (ages 11-24)
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Child coaching (ages 5-10)
Consultancy
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Leadership advisory
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Executive team facilitation
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Business strategy workshops
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Organisational change
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Trust and culture assessment and development
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Leadership development
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Board and governance advisory
Training
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Special educational needs
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Curriculum strategy and development
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Inclusive and adaptive teaching
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Inclusion
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Leadership masterclasses
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Keynote speaking
About Alex Wickson
Empowering High Performance through Thinking Differently
I’ve spent the last 25 years working in education, from a voluntary support worker in an educational charity, to a Trust Lead for Teaching across 27 schools, as well as working with Oxford University Future of the Mind to develop key insights into Neuroscience within Education.
I am a lifelong learner, a leader of learning, and a catalyst for extraordinary performance and sustainability.
My mission is simple: to help you challenge the status quo, rewrite your personal narratives, and unlock new levels of success. Purpose over pressure
True growth doesn’t come from just accumulating knowledge: it happens when knowledge is put into action with clarity, precision and truly understanding the relationships we hold with others. Together, we won’t just pursue success; we will dissect it, understand exactly what this looks like in your context, and build a roadmap to recreate it purposefully.
My Philosophy: Subtle Shifts, Extraordinary Results
High performance isn’t about overhaul; it’s about intentionality. I believe in pursuing continuous improvement in numerous small areas, making subtle yet pivotal changes when and where it really matters.
To thrive in complexity, we must become masters of subtraction. I am here to help you:
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Ascertain your leadership superpower and map your journey with intentionality
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Understand the power of unlearning and embrace uncertainty with resilience
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Become a mastermind of communication while driving safe, human and thoughtful organisational transformation
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Rethink, unlearn, and rewrite narratives to achieve inspired, empowered and sustainable breakthrough moments
Who I Am
I believe in the power of individuals. As a senior executive, coach and consultant, I continue to lead with empathy, vulnerability, and a relentless focus on human connection and capability. Having consistently driven high performance across schools, Trusts and diverse organisations, I bring a wealth of lived experiences - and I want to share and learn from yours, too.
If you work with me, you can expect an approach that is:
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Candid & Honest: Direct feedback wrapped in genuine care
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Authentic & Value-Aligned: Consistently focused on clarity and your ultimate goals
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Deeply Curious: Always seeking a unique perspective to solve your toughest challenges
Let’s stop managing complexity. Let's start driving transformation with purpose, clarity and by harnessing the power of our human connection.
Rapid transformation of student outcomes
Alex is simply an outstanding educator. Her natural aptitude means that she ‘gets’ what is needed to improve every school that she goes into, very quickly, and with exceptional results every time.
The range of Alex’s experience across leadership, T&L, curriculum and pastoral matters mean that she is able to help every school develop in the area that it needs to, no matter the starting point or complexity.
As an expert communicator, Alex is able to work exceptionally well with leaders, colleagues and students. She very quickly establishes strong, trusting and powerful relationships, which enables her to work effectively to improve the school and support the leadership within. to sustain their own success, clearly and with human candor.
I cannot recommend Alex’s work highly enough - she is a star!’
G Morrison. Director of Secondary Education
A large Multi-Academy Trust in South West England
Empowering sustainable and successful senior leadership
Alex brought fantastic expertise to teaching and learning initiatives, with a particular focus on supporting a core subject area at my school.
As a pedagogy and curriculum expert, Alex worked closely alongside me to support faculty staff. Her impact was felt most across three key areas:
Strategic and implementation sounding board: She provided a brilliant collaborative space for me to talk through teaching, learning, and CPD ideas. Her input helped me refine my own thoughts and bring clarity to our implementation plans
Diagnosing student learning challenges in lessons: During our joint lesson visits, her insights were incredibly sharp. She excelled at identifying specific barriers to learning and suggesting highly effective, practical instructional strategies to boost classroom impact, quickly and simply - no gimmicks and utilising current strategies where appropriate
Empowering middle leaders and teams: She acted as a highly-supportive mentor to a middle leader, dedicating time to build their professional confidence and refine their skills, thus supporting the sustainable, rapid turnaround of a core department.
Alex’s work effectively complemented the dedication of teams. She provided invaluable momentum and resource insights to help elevate teaching quality. The was reflected in a significant increase in the departments exams outcomes.
I highly recommend Alex as a trusting insightful, experienced and empowering colleague.
J Edwards. Assistant Headteacher: Quality of Education
A large Secondary School in the West of England
Coaching: Empowering sustainable and successful middle leadership and personal growth
Working with Alex has brought about significant personal growth and yielded several benefits for me, both personally and professionally.
Through asking the right questions, at the right time, Alex has helped me to unpick and therefore develop various aspects of my leadership practice, including better understanding my values and attitudes. Her coaching has helped me to reflect and define what is truly important to me personally and professionally, as well as others' perception of me. It has also improved my confidence to provide 'radical candour' and enabled me to act and then personally detach from situations and circumstances in order to prioritise my own wellbeing.
TS. Head of Science
A large Secondary School in the South West of England
Case Studies: Driving Success & High Performance
Explore how our coaching, training and consultancy services have empowered leaders and organisations to rethink their approach and achieve extraordinary results
Executive coaching that drives personal, and organisational change
I worked with Alex over 6 sessions and I started the process a little unsure of what I 'needed' from it.
However, Alex thoughtfully created the opportunity for me to reflect on my own leadership journey and challenged me to explore my leadership behaviours and assumptions.
After being a senior leader for a number of years, investing in coaching and the space to interrogate my ideas with an experienced, insightful professional such as Alex has been thoroughly worthwhile. It has supported me to think - and act differently. Especially understanding the power of unlearning: it is vital as a leader to ensure we think and reflect deeply, to ensure we connect and empower our teams to perform highly and sustainably.
I am looking forward to our next block of sessions to fully explore the power of my human advantage and high performance. I highly recommend Alex!
K Aaron. Director of Inclusion
A large Multi-Academy Trust in South West England
Empowering sustainable and successful trust leadership
Alex has provided me a wealth of support and guidance this year. She helped me to identify the underpinning issues that were holding a department back and create a robust implementation strategy to tackle these quickly, and sustainably. This could've been tricky as the department was in a challenging position in terms of progress and outcomes. However, Alex was curious, thoughtful, clear, candid, and kind throughout the process, ensuring the whole team understood what what was happening, as well as the why - thus empowering them to be a vital part of the process. Definitely not a done to.
Alex supported us all via individual and team meetings and coaching to explore, challenge and trial ways to secure sustainable change that actually makes a difference, such as key QA processes, codification and subject specific training.
With this support, the changes we have made have revolutionised the quantity and quality of work our students complete in lessons, prompting a positive change in mindset from the department, ensuring the team and I could continue with these initial changes, impact fully. The progress of all students has also been significantly impacted, with an increase of 10%-20% in key groups and across the cohort.
Alongside this Alex has been a huge help to me in terms of leadership capacity and performing highly. Her coaching and guidance has ensured I stick to my professional goals and to ensure QA is purposeful, so that action is taken where necessary to initiate long term success. I now know how to be a sustainable, efficient proactive and productive trust leader. I feel more confident in sharing my vision with my teams and am able to hold others to account to ensure that targets are met. I cannot recommend Alex enough!
H Gibbons. Trust Maths Lead
A large Multi Academy Trust in the North of England
Coaching: Driving sustainable and successful middle leadership
Working with Alex has been great this year. Beyond building genuine self-confidence, our sessions helped me get clear on my values and start actively shaping the kind of leader I want to become.
Alex gives you the tools and perspective to think deeply about topics that I never would have before. This has enabled me to gain genuine self-confidence, the ability to speak up more in key moments, and having trust in my decisions.
I am looking forward to continuing our coaching partnership in the autumn to drive even higher performance and sustainable change.
I would recommend her coaching to everyone!
P Holyday. Head of Maths
A large Secondary School in the South West of England
Connect with me
alexwickson@gmail.com
Phone
+44 (0) 7708 957 161
Office
24 Stanley Road, Bristol, BS6 6NW