NATURAL DIRECTION - Key Persons


Andrew Cocker

Job Titles:
  • Performance
Andrew's role sees him apply his knowledge of leadership, teamwork and performance to create learnable insights for clients across a range of industries including finance, professional services, construction, energy and pharmaceuticals. His valuable expertise helps clients with everything from attracting new business, to cost saving, resilience and agility. Andrew's on-the-ground experience in sales, projects and marketing gives him an invaluable understanding of how to drive change within an organisation. With 10 years experience in Latin American markets, Andrew is fluent in Spanish and intimately familiar with key markets across the region.

Colin Hiles

Job Titles:
  • Performance
Colin is an expert in improving leadership capability, developing high performing teams and rolling out cultural change initiatives at large organisations. He specialises in helping clients gain alignment and commitment between organisational and individual levels, to ensure companies can continue to grow in an ever-changing environment. As an experienced executive coach and specialist in the psychology of change, Colin supports senior executives across all industries in the public and private sectors to achieve changes in mindset. He has delivered services throughout Europe and North America to clients such as HSBC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, NHS, Vodafone, GSK and KPMG.

Elissa Telfer

Job Titles:
  • Performance
Elissa delivers training and coaching in the areas of leadership, pitching, presenting, influencing, sales and negotiation skills. She is a graduate of universities in England and Australia, holding a BSc(hons) in Psychology and a BA in Communication. The majority of Elissa's time is spent with financial services clients such as Lloyd's, J.P.Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Barclays. Elissa brings a psychologist's perspective to coaching and training, with a view to helping others understand their own behaviours and how they can most effectively adapt their leadership and communication to achieve their desired outcomes.

Fiona Booker

Job Titles:
  • Business Development
Fiona uses her understanding of Natural Direction's clients and their businesses to grow and develop relationships between organisations. With a background in sales and business development stretching back to 1985, Fiona's in-depth knowledge helps Natural Direction to build trust and define the best working practices for future success. Fiona's vast and varied experience has seen her work with global brands in industries such as aerospace/defence, rail transport and smartphone technology, and this allows her to offer insight into the business needs of clients across all sectors.

Ian Mackenzie

Job Titles:
  • Performance
Ian has worked with client facing teams and individuals to improve results through better pitching and presenting of proposals. He develops deeper client relationships, better negotiation of terms, improved client service and new business development.

Jim Steele

Job Titles:
  • Performance
Jim's role sees him working with clients such as Deloitte, Pirelli and Atos on everything from conference content design and delivery, to leadership development and performance coaching. With over 25 years experience in his field, Jim is able to help clients reach new heights and achieve extraordinary results. Through his work with Natural Direction, Jim has worked on programmes including; High Performing Teams - tapping into the talents and potential of existing teams; Resilience by Design - creating certainty in an uncertain world; and Communicating for Impact - creating consistently authentic and impactful interactions.

Lisa Ryan

Job Titles:
  • Consultant
Lisa works in partnership with a range of clients to shape and manage the design, execution and measurement of all change and larger scale development programmes. She provides consultancy support for change programmes including diagnostics, interviews, engagement approach design, programme planning, communication strategy, development of tools, toolkits and resources. Lisa's role sees her managing key client relationships with globally recognised brands such as Heathrow, Deloitte, Pirelli among others. Before joining the team at Natural Direction, she worked as learning and development manager for Ernst & Young where she gained a valuable client-side perspective on change and development programmes.

Martin Coburn - Founder

Job Titles:
  • Founding Director
  • Founder and
As the founding director of Natural Direction, Martin leads a team of training consultants and performance coaches who ignite the strengths of individuals and businesses. He has been developing strong business leaders and strong leading businesses for the last 20 years; designing and delivering high impact leadership, culture change and communication programmes across a range of sectors in the UK, Middle East and US. Martin's work has influenced thousands of leaders - helping them to be more inspiring, motivating and engaging, and helping their organisations to grow, be more productive and resilient.

Oliver Medill

Job Titles:
  • Performance
Oliver is a keynote speaker and workshop facilitator with extensive expertise in areas including mindset, change, communication, engagement and leadership. His role sees him working with clients such as Deloitte and Atos to help leaders better understand both themselves and their teams, driving them on to achieve the best possible results. Before entering the mentoring industry and joining Natural Direction, Oliver worked as an actor for 10 years and this experience continues to inform his work with leaders across different sectors.

Paul Dalton

Job Titles:
  • Performance
Paul is responsible for facilitating leadership training and events for Natural Direction's clients, including the delivery of multi-day classroom-based group work, keynote speeches and conference facilitation. Paul's extensive knowledge of the mindset and behaviours required for strong leadership have made him a vital part of programmes for clients including EON, Bombardier, ATOS and Deloitte.

Susie O'Gorman

Job Titles:
  • Performance
Susie's highly commercial background, coupled with her 25 years of personal development and executive coaching work allow her to bring a wealth of experience and pragmatism to each project. Her focus is in personal and business performance improvement and helping clients such as Deloitte, Credit Suisse, Barclays, and JP Morgan to achieve a sustainable difference in their businesses. In addition to being an NLP Master, She is MBTI accredited and uses a range of psychometric tests along with other tools to deliver sustained change.