Lead with confidence.
Perform with resilience.
Build with purpose.
Leadership at this level is different.
You’ve already built a successful career. You’re experienced, capable and used to carrying responsibility. You don’t need someone to teach you how to lead.
But you may be asking yourself what kind of leader you want to be next.
You may be preparing for your next role, greater responsibility or executive leadership, and want to make sure that your capability, confidence and leadership presence grow with your ambition.
SummitMind is for leaders who want more from their leadership, without losing themselves in the process.
I bring an unusual combination of lived leadership experience and advanced coaching practice.
My career spans teaching and outdoor education alongside 27 years in policing, including 12 years in senior leadership and 7 years at chief officer level across two police forces. I’ve led when the stakes were high; as a homicide detective, strategic firearms and extreme-threat commander, and at executive level with responsibility for organisational performance, standards and improvement.
Today, I combine that experience with my work as a Paseda360® Advanced Practitioner Coach and training in Positive Psychology. My coaching draws on evidence-informed approaches and neuroscience-informed techniques, including Havening® and the Limitless Light Technique®, which can help address some of the deeper patterns and unhelpful responses that insight and determination alone may not shift.
It means we can work at more than one level: how you lead, how you perform under pressure, what may be holding you back, and who you want to become next.
The aim isn't to create a different version of you. It is to help you understand yourself more deeply, build confidence in what you bring, perform sustainably, and become increasingly intentional about the leader you choose to be.
Whether your next step is greater impact in your current role, developing your team, promotion, executive leadership or something beyond your current career, SummitMind© provides the experience, challenge and support to help you move towards it with confidence and purpose.
“Confidence doesn’t always keep pace with experience.”
“Calm, grounded, practical… Dave helped me trace a long-standing pattern of self-doubt to its roots and turn it into something I can now use.”
David Howell
Founder & Director, Able and Rush (People Solutions) Ltd
Coaching for Leaders
Where are you now?
SummitMind© coaching meets you where you are and helps you move purposefully towards where you want to be.
Be Your Best Boss
Lead with confidence.
Build greater self-awareness, self-belief and self-trust, understand how you show up under pressure, and become more intentional about the leader you want to be.
Bounce Forward
Perform with resilience.
Build the capacity, resilience and habits to manage pressure, protect your energy and sustain high performance without losing yourself along the way.
Build Beyond
Build with purpose.
Get clear about what you really want, overcome what is holding you back and make purposeful progress towards your next role, ambition or chapter.
Leadership for Organisations
Collective development for leaders, teams and organisations
Helping organisations develop healthier leadership practice, stronger teams and sustainable high performance.
Leadership Calibration
Leading Well Under Pressure
A practical development day helping leaders align who they intend to be with how others experience them, especially when pressure is high.
For up to 16 participants | One day or two half-days
Leadership Team Unlocked
Turn the conversations you are not having into progress you can see.
A facilitated 3½ hour workshop that helps leadership teams surface unspoken tensions, understand their impact and create a collectively owned route forward.
Leadership Partnership
A development approach built around your organisation and your leadership challenges
A bespoke combination of leadership insight, workshops, team facilitation and coaching, designed to strengthen confidence, behaviour and sustainable performance.
Leadership Under Pressure Keynote
How to retain your edge; and land your leadership well.
An engaging, thought-provoking keynote exploring what pressure does to leaders, how it changes behaviour and why good intentions do not always create a positive impact.
Drawing on real executive experience, leadership research and the Eight Silent Behaviours, Dave helps audiences recognise what happens when pressure rises, and how leaders can remain confident, accountable, human and focused on performance.
Keynotes and interactive talks tailored to your audience
Start with a conversation
Not sure which coaching pathway is right for you? Book a free 30-minute Discovery Call to explore where you are now, where you’d like to be, and what might help you move forward.
Equally if you’d like to explore leadership development programmes, book a call to discuss bespoke packages that would suit your organisation and your challenges.
There’s no obligation and no hard sell, simply an opportunity to talk, ask questions and see whether SummitMind© is the right fit for you.
Experience. Insight. Application.
Real-world leadership experience. Professional coaching and development. Practical approaches you can use when it matters.
SummitMind© combines extensive senior leadership experience with professional coaching, evidence-informed approaches and a practical understanding of what it means to lead when the stakes are high.
My approach has been shaped by more than 30 years of public service, including executive leadership, strategic command, organisational change, leadership development and working with people and teams through periods of significant pressure and uncertainty.
That experience is combined with professional coaching practice and an understanding of the psychology and neuroscience that influence how we think, behave and perform; particularly when pressure increases.
The result is coaching and development activity that goes beyond conversation. It helps you understand what is happening, why it is happening, and what you can do differently.
Let’s Connect
Whether you’re interested in individual coaching, leadership development for your organisation, or simply want to explore whether SummitMind© could help, I’d be pleased to hear from you.
Tell me a little about where you are now, what you’re looking to achieve, and what you’d like to be different. I’ll come back to you personally and we can decide the best next step.
No hard sell. No obligation. Just a conversation about what might help you move forward.
Dave Thorne