Gillian McDonald is a highly regarded executive coach. Gillian uses her strong background in strategy and business development together with her recognised coaching abilities to assist clients to quickly reach their business goals. Gillian has coached executives and senior staff members in the legal, accounting, finance, telecommunications and health industries to exceptional results in their personal and professional lives. Gillian empathises with her clients. She has over fifteen years experience as a part of executive and senior management teams primarily in the areas of strategy, business development and business management.

With specialist knowledge of both the accounting and legal services industries, Gillian is very familiar with the workings of partnerships and the specific challenges of these two dynamic environments. She has a great appreciation of the challenges in building a practice in these highly network driven environments. Gillian worked for one of Australia’s top legal firms for six years, firstly as Director of Business Development and Marketing, and later heading up the Strategy function. She is also a qualified accountant and has worked in a professional capacity at one of the Big Four accounting firms. Gillian’s extensive knowledge of the professional services arena enables her to quickly navigate issues and work with individuals and teams to achieve desired people and business transformation.

She has a particular passion for working with emerging leaders or partners presented with a new challenge, developing their full potential through coaching. Gillian works as a coach at one of Australia’s top banks, is on the coaching panel for a top accounting firm and coaches partnership candidates for an Australian legal firm. Gillian is accredited in the powerful iWAM (inventory of work attitudes and motivators) profiling and performance modelling tool and she has used this to create outstanding cohesion, communication and improved performance within leadership teams.

Gillian has worked on the merger of two major Australian telecommunications companies, supporting senior managers and executives through coaching, as they moved on to other roles and other companies. She has also been heavily involved with Victorian Government’s LINK program, being one of the two coaches appointed to work alongside future leaders of Victoria’s hospitals for a one year pilot program. This was a highly successful program and the new Victorian Liberal Government has reinvested in the program in 2011. Again, Gillian is one of the lead coaches on this leadership acceleration program.

Gillian’s love of learning sees her combine theory with experience in assisting others make their journey so much more rewarding.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor of Business (Accounting)
• Post-graduate qualifications in Business Administration and Strategic Foresight
• ASFA qualifications in Superannuation
• Certificate in Advanced Training Skills
• Qualified NLP Practitioner,
• Advanced Practitioner in iWAM
• Diploma of Coaching from Australia’s top coaching school, The Coaching Institute.
• Associate Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation.