Caroline Gourlay

Caroline Gourlay – IFT Specialist 

Caroline Gourlay is the first Business Psychologist to become an associate member of the IFT. She is a Chartered Psychologist with over 20 years' consultancy experience in the public, private and voluntary sectors. Her primary professional focus is on leadership. The main services she offers are leadership coaching, leadership team coaching and the in-depth profiling of people for senior leadership roles. She has coached on leadership programmes at Said Business School, Oxford University and worked with scale-up businesses as a leadership expert via Business West/Innovate UK. Although she has worked with very senior leaders in FTSE 100 companies, her main focus is on mid-sized, owner-managed businesses, including family businesses, and professional services firms.  

Caroline believes very strongly that psychologists have an important role to play in the turnaround space, advising on issues such as leadership, team development, resilience and well-being. She would like to be at the vanguard of raising the profile of her profession within the turnaround community. Her vision is for it to become as routine to engage a psychologist on a turnaround project as it is to engage a lawyer. She has produced a Turnaround Leadership Diagnostic Tool for the IFT.

Caroline has advised turnaround firms on leadership and client engagement issues and been engaged by independent members to work with senior leaders in businesses they have turned around. She is an IFT committee member for Wales and the West and was instrumental in developing the Next Gen programme there. She also sits on the IFT Professional Development and Education Committee. She has spoken at the IFT national conference and at local CPD sessions on leadership in turnaround.