Lisa Sofianos

Lisa Sofianos is a senior associate and coach at Advance HE, and co-facilitates Advance HE’s Strategic Leadership Programme along with a number of other open and bespoke senior HE leadership programmes. She works internationally and across all sectors in the fields of organisational development, change leadership, strategic leadership and authentic leadership. 

Lisa is a business author, creative thinker and international consultant in leadership and organisational development. She was a founder of, and has been a director at Robin Ryde Consulting Ltd since 2008, and has worked with clients in both the private and public sectors in the UK, and across the rest of the world.

She works with businesses to raise levels of employee engagement and increase organisational agility and innovation in response to the rapid change and volatility that characterises the modern business environment. She is also a presenter and coach for the Clore Social Leadership Fellowship (a prestigious development programme for leaders working to make a positive impact in society) and a trainer with the Civil Service College.

Lisa is a qualified coach with over a thousand hours coaching leaders across all sectors.  She offers person-centred classical coaching as well as the opportunity to work on specific organisational leadership challenges and is equally comfortable using tools and models from psychology to Organisational Development.  Typical coaching themes include; leadership identity and imposter syndrome, quieting the inner critic, authentic leadership, challenging working relationships, intractable challenges, strategy design and change management.

Her book, ‘Creating Authentic Organisations: Bringing Meaning and Engagement Back to Work’, which she co-authored with Robin Ryde, was published in October 2014 by Kogan Page. The book makes the compelling argument for the positive impact of individual authenticity on businesses and sets out the management task of creating the conditions to allow employees to fulfil their roles with greater authenticity. Lisa was also the main researcher for ‘Never Mind the Bosses; Hastening the Death of Deference for Business Success’, authored by Robin Ryde, which was published by Wiley in 2012.