Goode Work
Strategy, coaching and consulting that helps people do good work.
I'm Lucy Goode. I'm a business psychologist, brand strategist and executive coach. I combine those three complicated titles in as simple a way as possible to help leaders and their teams do good work.
Brand strategy
Most of my clients are small- to medium-sized businesses built on specialist expertise. But when you know your subject inside out, it can be surprisingly hard to explain what you do and why clients should choose you.
Working it out usually means getting clear on your positioning and messaging, how your services fit together and how you want to sound. And because I'm also a business psychologist, I'm always thinking about what the brand will mean day to day for your team, working with you to connect your brand and your culture.
Consulting
I help leaders and their teams tackle the things that get in the way of good work, from why people are leaving or struggling to work together to whether their training's doing what it needs to.
The first step is always to make sure the problem is what we think it is. I dig into any data you already have and design new research if there are gaps. Once we're clear on the issue, we develop a plan and agree how we'll measure success. I then work alongside you as you put it into practice, adjusting as we go.
Coaching
One client described me as their "back-up brain". In practice, I'm a thinking partner to senior people who rarely have the time and space to think beyond the day-to-day, let alone consider their own development.
They might be feeling lonely and overwhelmed in a leadership role, stuck on how to manage a complicated situation at work or thinking about changing career altogether.
Clients
Recent and current clients include Publicis Media, Journey Further, Gaingels, Inc., Pimloc, IHS Towers, Indemnity, Naked Ideas, the IPA, the University of Cambridge and individual career and leadership coaching clients in the UK, Europe, Canada and the US.
Training, qualifications & professional memberships
I'm a certified coach with a Diploma in Coaching (ICE, University of Cambridge) and an MSc in Organisational Psychology (Birkbeck, University of London). I'm on the British Psychological Society's register of psychometric test users and am certified to use a number of personality assessments, which I use for candidate selection, individual coaching and team development. I'm a member of the Association for Coaching and the Association for Business Psychology, and abide by their Codes of Ethics.
Your guidance has helped me reflect more deeply on my leadership journey, strengthen my executive presence, and grow in confidence. I particularly value what you helped me discover around strategic visibility, influencing and finding effective ways to get the work done and, perhaps most importantly, learning to trust my own instincts as a leader again.
Products and services
Executive and Leadership Coaching
Coaching
Most of my clients are senior people who want to feel more confident and clear in the work they do. They might be feeling lonely and overwhelmed in a leadership role, getting stuck on how to manage a complicated situation at work, or thinking about changing career altogether.
My approach
The longer I do this, the more I’m convinced that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to coaching. Instead, I draw on a wide range of evidence-based, psychologically informed approaches to design a programme around the person I’m working with.
The first step is a 30-minute chat to explore what you’re looking for, how I can help, what a programme might look like, and how much it would cost.
Get in touch
If we find that I’m not the right coach for you (or if you’d like to shop around a bit, which I always recommend), I’m very happy to recommend other people, too.
Leadership Coaching
One client described me as their “back-up brain”. In practice, I’m a thinking partner to senior people who rarely have the time and space to think beyond the day-to-day, let alone consider their own development.
I’ve worked with some of my clients for many years: we always keep the idea of who they are as a leader (and how they want to evolve) in mind, using our sessions to tackle live issues and experiment with different ways of “doing leadership”.
How it works:
Programmes usually take the form of rolling 6- or 12-month engagements, meeting once a month with the odd email or call in between.
Career Coaching
Career coaching helps people work out what they’d really like to do all day, and provides practical support on how to make it happen.
Along with specialist career coaching, I draw on my experience as a headhunter to advise on things like CVs, LinkedIn, and how to frame your story, skills and competencies. (If you want a head start, I wrote the IPA’s Career Transition Toolkit, which you can download here.)
Most of the work I do is with senior people, so if you’re earlier on in your career and need support, give me a shout and I’ll suggest other excellent people.
How it works:
Most people have four sessions. I combine one-to-one coaching with work between sessions, and often use psychometric testing and personality assessments to give extra insight into strengths, risks, values and drivers at work.
Team Coaching & Development
For team coaching and development, I work with The Optimists. Get in touch if you’d like to find out more.
Consulting
Working with organisations
You might be planning a leadership programme, reviewing your recruitment process, or considering whether your culture enables people to do their best work. You may already have a clear brief, or we may need to investigate before deciding what's going to help.
As a business psychologist, I provide support with:
- Diagnostics: analysing existing data, including engagement surveys, sales results and staff turnover, to identify patterns and explore possible explanations. Where there are gaps, I design further research to inform recommendations.
- Culture: understanding people’s experience of working in your organisation, how it relates to your stated values and brand, and how working practices affect performance and wellbeing. We use those findings to identify where change is needed.
- Training and development: assessing development needs, agreeing learning objectives and designing programmes that help people apply what they learn in their work.
Recruitment and assessment: defining the requirements of a role and reviewing how candidates are assessed and selected against them.
These areas often overlap. We use the findings to agree priorities, design interventions and establish how to measure progress. I can then support implementation, evaluate the results and recommend adjustments.
Psychometric tools and assessments
I use a range of assessments for recruitment, onboarding, coaching and team development. I can help you choose the right tools for what you want to do, explain what the results can and can’t tell you, and make sure they’re used responsibly.
If you already use assessments, we can look at whether they’re right for what you’re doing.
For some projects, I work with other expert consultants. Between us, we’re qualified to use more than 15 tools and instruments, and all of us are on the British Psychological Society’s Register of Qualifed Test Users, so you’re in safe hands.
Brand Strategy
Most of my clients are small- to medium-size firms and consultancies built on specialist expertise. When you know your subject inside out, it can be surprisingly hard to explain what you do and why clients should choose you.
Working it out usually means getting clear on your positioning and messaging, how the services fit together and how you want to sound.
Because I’m an organisational psychologist, I’m always thinking about what the brand will mean on the ground: what your stated values or principles actually ask people to do day to day, and whether they’re explained in a way everyone can understand.
There are no 100-page decks of frameworks. Instead, you get practical tools, like tone of voice guidelines that help people write in a clear, recognisable voice, and guidance on narrative and messaging. (If you’re looking for a full brand refresh, I also work with designers who can develop your visual identity.)
For those who want to take it further, I also help develop the behaviours and processes that put the brand into practice across the organisation. I work with you to identify what’s needed, design interventions and agree how to measure progress, providing support as you put the plan into action.