Howarth Bishopp
Coaching CTOs through the shift to strategic executive.
Howarth Bishopp works with purpose driven companies to develop world-class leaders. The organisations we work with care deeply about their people, recognising that they are their greatest asset and invest in their leaders to create an environment where everyone can thrive and innovate.
Howarth Bishopp is a combination of family names from Ben's ancestors, representing the beliefs and values that have shaped him, and continue to shape the company.
Our Coaching Philosophy
Our coaching philosophy is what sets us apart from many others:
We strongly believes that context shapes who a person is, and that they can choose to shape their context. While many coaches treat context as a second-class citizen and focus on mindset, we treat both as equally important.
We also believe that coaching is far more valuable and powerful when the relationship is an active partnership. Many coaches attempt to manage themselves into neutrality and act only as a mirror. Instead, your coach thinks alongside you, not for you, but with you to help uncover blindspots and surface patterns that you don’t see.
About Ben Cook
Ben is a Cambridge Certified and Association for Coaching Accredited Executive Coach, with an MBA specialising in strategy. He’s also a Chartered Engineer, Chartered Manager, and Fellow of the CMI.
With more than a decade of experience in Engineering & Technology, including senior leadership positions at Siemens & Redgate, Ben’s approach to coaching is grounded in real-world experience and he commits to only use evidence based approaches.
Helping others develop their leadership is core to who Ben is. Alongside his work at Howarth Bishopp, he's a scout leader, helping younger generations develop self and team leadership skills that are hard to build at home and school. He also volunteers for the Institute of Engineering and Technology as a Professional Registration Advisor, helping engineers prepare to apply for chartership.
I used to prioritise getting things done as quickly as possible, treating relationships as a means to an end rather than something worth investing in for their own sake. Ben helped me see that the outcomes I cared about most, the strategic ones, couldn't be rushed. They needed genuine human connection and reciprocity to succeed, built over time rather than transacted in the moment. That shift changed how I show up with my team, my peers, and my board. I listen more, I'm more present in conversations, and people respond to me differently as a result. It's reshaped not just how I lead as a CTO, but how I communicate day to day.
Products and services
CTO Coaching
Many CTOs in startups and scaleups are technically brilliant but are yet to make the shift into behaving like an executive. In the early days this is what was needed, they managed an engineering department with a handful of engineers in and understood the codebase inside-out.
But this doesn't scale.
As the company grows, it needs a CTO that creates the conditions for teams to take ownership, co-operate affectively, and deliver high quality valuable products to customers. Engineering needs to shift from relying on the CTO for help writing the code, to believing in their strategic vision. The CTO needs to speak the same language as the rest of the exec team and the board, focusing on customer value enabled through technology over technical jargon.
If this sounds like your CTO, email [email protected] for a discrete, confidential discussion.