Matt Shelley

BSc. (Hons) CEng MICE MBA DipM

Practice and Passion

Matt is a stakeholder coach and coach supervisor, with a passion for the power and potential that coaching has to benefit individuals, organisations and society. Matt works with executives in positions involving complex, sensitive stakeholder and political relations. He has 15 years experience in the fields of leadership participation and coaching and 8 years corporate and entrepreneurial experience. He is a co-founder and owner of the Sandton Coaching Centre. He has over 1000 hours of facilitating leadership participation and coaching executives in multiple contexts.

Matt has coached clients in the financial, media, NGO, education, government, distribution and transport, construction, chemicals and manufacturing sectors. His clients include Investec, CIPRO, DTI, Transnet FR, Imperial, Omnia, Lapdesk, Clinix, Old Eds Society, US Peace Corps, SASSA, TNPA and ABSA. As an entrepreneur Matt, has run his own contracting business and he has worked as a consultant, researcher, internal coach and project manager for Sir Owen Williams and Partners, WS Atkins, Tarmac, the University of Bath, and The Economist. Matt is on the Resolve and Investec Coaching Panels.

Role in the Profession

Matt is National Chair of the COMENSA (Coaches and Mentors of South Africa) Ethics Portfolio Committee and is active in the development of standards through his roles in the Membership Criteria Committee and the Coach Educators and Trainers Association of South Africa. Matt believes that the role of an Ethics Committee extends to acting as change agent in the establishment of the profession nationally and the functioning of the market in coaching.

Coaching Supervision

Ethics and Competence are Symbiotic Twins

As a coach supervisor Matt works with the three main elements of supervision: development of the coach, support for the coach and accountability by the coach. Matt approaches this from the perspective that integrity and active applied ethics is fundamentally empowering and liberating and that ‘ethics and competence’ are symbiotic twins.

Matt applies the philosophy and methods of supervision to organisational and system transformation. The cross over between supervision and collaborative forms of inquiry provide a natural bridge between the practice and philosophy of coaching and the way leaders develop their organisations. As with coaching this approach moves from reliance on the expert – the consultancy frame - to the ability of the executive themselves to lead and facilitate a collaborative form of organizational change – the participancy frame. This type of leadership requires an exceptional attunement to the power of integrity for effective results.

This journey began for Matt when he was involved in a two year research project at Bath University School of Management, funded by Rio Tinto, BHP and Anglo American, which aimed to address the quality of social impact assessment at mining project sites. This research explored the value of management, stakeholder and community participation and management leadership style in the effectiveness of mining company governance. The focus was on combining the use of various modes of inquiry: Action Inquiry, Co-operative Inquiry and Participatory Action Research.

Qualifications and Coach Training

Matt has training and qualifications from five different coaching and leadership trainings in London and Johannesburg, together with a wealth of business experience and innovative practitioner research in the field of community participation and corporate stakeholder engagement. He achieved Chartered Status at the Institution of Civil Engineers in the UK in 1991 and completed the full time MBA at Cranfield School of Management in 1994.

Coaching and Leadership Qualifications

2008, Core Curriculum Co-Active Coaching, CTI, Joburg
2006, Certificate in Coaching Skills – The Coaching Centre, Cape Town
1997, Introduction to the Forum Leaders Programme, Landmark Education, London
2009, Leadership Programme Level I, Mankind Project
1998, Various Workshops (including supervision), Spectrum Psychotherapy, London
1995, Co-operative Inquiry Participatory Research Methodology, Bath University
1994, Personal Awareness Modules, MBA Cranfield School of Management
(3rd in Wall Street Journal Global Ranking)

Coaching Approach

Matt follows a humanistic and integrative, client lead, Gestalt approach to coaching. This is based in experiential training mainly from Landmark Education and Spectrum. This was boosted and reinvigorated by the Co-active coach training which applies the same philosophy: Client is naturally creative resourceful and whole: Humanistic, Dancing in the moment: Gestalt, Coach the client’s whole life: Gestalt, and Agenda comes from the client: client centred; all with an experiential learning method. Matt uses a style that is challenging, active and in the moment. As one client put it: ‘Coaching with Matt is not for the faint hearted’.