Uncover your strengths. Navigate your own success. Lead with impact.
Uncover your strengths. Navigate your own success. Lead with impact. Uncover your strengths. Navigate your own success. Lead with impact. Uncover your strengths. Navigate your own success. Lead with impact.
Embark on your journey towards presence, potency, authenticity, and resilience in leadership through our executive coaching and leadership programmes, designed to enhance team development.
Uncover your strengths. Navigate your own success. Lead with impact.
Uncover your strengths. Navigate your own success. Lead with impact. Uncover your strengths. Navigate your own success. Lead with impact. Uncover your strengths. Navigate your own success. Lead with impact.
Embark on your journey towards presence, potency, authenticity, and resilience in leadership through our executive coaching and leadership programmes, designed to enhance team development.
I'm Rachel Hughes, an executive and team coach as well as a leadership development consultant dedicated to helping people reach their full potential. With 30 years in the maritime industry across various roles—from the Royal Navy to port owner, and in global shipping companies, leading both small specialized and large globally distributed teams—I understand the unique leadership challenges firsthand. As a parent to three teenagers and caretaker of a small menagerie of cats, dogs, and a lizard, I bring a personal touch to my work. My passion for adventure travel, particularly hiking and swimming in breathtaking locations with expansive skies and mountains, fuels my desire for exploration.
In my executive coaching, I create a supportive space where we collaboratively work to overcome obstacles and build your confidence. This coaching is not just about theory—it’s about transformation. Together, we turn ambition into action and reflection into growth, particularly through tailored leadership programmes.
I have a special passion for helping women leaders advance in male-dominated fields, having navigated similar paths myself.
What sets me apart is my unique combination of real-world leadership and life experience, paired with a warm, personal approach to coaching, all backed by extensive training. I genuinely care about your growth and success. I trained at Henley Business School (Professional Certificate in Executive Coaching), I am an EMCC Senior Practitioner and a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership, and I regularly engage in supervision and CPD to enhance my skills in developing individuals and teams.
Empowering Leaders
Oceanus Leadership Development offers tailored leadership and team coaching designed to support you & your team to meet your unique career goals and fulfil your collective and individual potential. We offer bespoke team development programmes, to accelerate performance and engagement.
Take your leadership to the next level with our executive coaching services. Oceanus Leadership Development helps you uncover insights and strategies that empower you to make impactful decisions, increase your executive presence, and enhance your professional impact.
Enhance teamwork and collaboration through our customised team-performance activities. We create engaging experiences that strengthen relationships and help foster a positive work environment for you and your team. We can also support teams with whole team and individual coaching to help embed the behaviours and ways of working while will deliver a high performance culture.
In addition, we work in partnership with The Bureau Consultancy to develop bespoke, high impact simulations related to your industry, to really accelerate team forming and performing.
Most leadership development gives you frameworks and concepts. What it rarely gies you is the chance to find out how you actually react and perform when the stakes are high, before a real crisis forces that lesson.
The HO Leadership Academy is different. A joint initiative between Oceanus Leadership Development and The Bureau Consultancy, it combines the depth of training and coaching with pressured scenarios drawn from real high-stakes environments. The result is leadership development which doesn't just build capability, but tests it.
Leaders are promoted for subject matter or technical excellence and then left to figure out leadership. Traditional programmes teach frameworks and concepts. But knowing a framework and knowing how you will perform under pressure are two very different things.
25+ years in corporate leadership across the maritime industry and beyond. Specialises in organisational design, individual and team development, and building high-performing cultures.
Rachel builds the foundations.
Marcus Oldroyd
30+ years as a Crisis & Hostage Negotiator in UK policing and elite military operations. His Pressure-to-Presence approach teaches leaders to generate calm authority under stress.
Marcus exposes the blind spots.
What You'll Leave With
Composure under pressure: learn to regulate emotion and make clear decisions when stakes are high
• Better decisions with less information: develop the capability to lead with incomplete data
• Blind spots surfaced: discover how your decisions, language and behaviour influence outcomes before a crisis forces the lesson
• Calm authority: generate confidence in others without pushing harder under stress
• Confidence in complexity: build genuine capability to handle evolving, ambiguous demands
• Insight that sticks: because your learning is tested, not just understood in a workshop
For those new to leadership or managing small functional teams. Foundational concepts delivered clearly, with activities designed to build confidence and self-awareness.
Track 2: Leadership Accelerator
For mid level leaders and managers with larger teams, multiple reporting layers, or cross-functional and c
Track 1: Leadership Fundamentals
For those new to leadership or managing small functional teams. Foundational concepts delivered clearly, with activities designed to build confidence and self-awareness.
Track 2: Leadership Accelerator
For mid level leaders and managers with larger teams, multiple reporting layers, or cross-functional and cross-geography responsibility. Concepts go deeper; activities reflect greater complexity.
Track 3: Leadership Velocity
For experienced leaders honing their skills or preparing for executive or board-level roles . Concepts explored with executive nuance; activities designed to pressure-test leadership at the highest stakes.
Eight Modules. Eight Shifts in How You Lead
Eight Modules. Eight Shifts in How You Lead
Eight Modules. Eight Shifts in How You Lead
Each module is designed and delivered by Rachel and Marcus together — combining coaching expertise with pressured scenarios. Concepts are introduced, then immediately tested through activity.
01 Become a more aware, emotionally literate leader whose self-knowledge builds trust with those around them.
02 Navigate towards win-win outc
Each module is designed and delivered by Rachel and Marcus together — combining coaching expertise with pressured scenarios. Concepts are introduced, then immediately tested through activity.
01 Become a more aware, emotionally literate leader whose self-knowledge builds trust with those around them.
02 Navigate towards win-win outcomes and consistently achieve better results through empathetic, skilled negotiation.
03 Understand and harness the motivations driving your team to facilitate both individual and group success.
04 Empower your team by delegating outcomes — not tasks — and build real capability around you.
05 Become more comfortable and confident working with healthy conflict to achieve better outcomes.
06 Stress-test your leadership under pressure and build the operating resilience to lead at your best when it counts.
07 Become a leader who takes others on the emotional journey of change — not just manages the process.
08 Define your own success & develop effective prioritisation and capacity management to optimise healthy, sustainable performance.
Programme Structure & Delivery
Eight Modules. Eight Shifts in How You Lead
Programme Structure & Delivery
Module Structure
Concept Introduction: Rachel & Marcus introduce the topic: the theory, the model, the research behind it through their lens and perspective.
Application: The group works with the concept in the context of real leadership challenges they’re facing.
Practice under pressure: Marcus & Rachel bring the pressure. Stress scena
Module Structure
Concept Introduction: Rachel & Marcus introduce the topic: the theory, the model, the research behind it through their lens and perspective.
Application: The group works with the concept in the context of real leadership challenges they’re facing.
Practice under pressure: Marcus & Rachel bring the pressure. Stress scenarios, observations and live feedback reveal how you actually respond.
Reflection & Commitment: Each session closes with a concrete personal commitment - something you take back into your role.
8 modules delivered weekly online.
Cohorts of 8-16 participants
Module 1 is 90 minutes, Modules 2-8 are 75 minutes in duration
A trusted partnership that fosters self-reflection and growth.
A safe space for individuals to explore challenges and ambitions.
A facilitation of insights rather than direct instruction.
Action-oriented, helping individuals set goals and make strategic progress.
Highly personalized, tailored to the individual’s leadership style and aspirations.
Therapy or counselling—it is not about addressing deep psychological issues.
Consulting—coaches do not prescribe solutions but help clients uncover their own answers.
Mentoring—it does not rely on the coach sharing their experiences to guide the client.
Training—it is not a heavily structured curriculum but rather an adaptive process based on the client’s specific needs.
Directive—coaching does not tell people what to do but empowers them to find their own path.
Coaching is more than a professional tool—it’s a deeply human experience. Meaningful transformation happens when people feel truly seen, heard, and supported, within a partnership. Our approach is built on trust, empathy, and honest dialogue, creating a safe space for clients to explore their ambitions, challenge self-imposed limits, and unlock their full potential.
Effective coaching isn’t just about insights—it’s about action. Our role is to help leaders gain clarity, build confidence, and step forward with tangible strategies that create lasting impact for them personally, and for others.
Leadership Development: strengthening presence, decision-making, and team influence.
Strategic Thinking – Developing long-term vision and problem-solving abilities.
Effective Communication – Enhancing clarity, persuasion, and executive presence in conversations and presentations.
Career transitions: returning to work after parental or sick leave; planning for retirement; change of sector or industry
Career Growth and Advancement: Identifying opportunities for progression and personal fulfillment. Clarifying your goals and creating plans to achieve them
New to Leadership: Strengthening leadership presence, decision-making, and team influence. Learning to lead teams effectively and with confidence
Confidence and resilience: Building confidence, managing imposter syndrome and dealing with setbacks
Emotional Intelligence: Cultivating self-awareness, empathy, and interpersonal skills.
Managing Change: Handling organizational transitions and leading teams through uncertainty with resilience.
Work-Life Balance: Managing stress and achieving greater equilibrium between professional and personal life.
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