About us
About us
SMG is Australia’s premier leadership development advisor. Since 1998, we’ve partnered with exceptional talent to elevate leadership skills and unlock organisational potential.
Richard is one of the few executive coaches to combine more than 30 years of experience in C-suite leadership, including CEO, CFO, COO, and GM roles, with international coaching accreditations that bring both rigour and depth to his work with leaders.
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Expertise
30+ years experience
Chartered Accountant
Certified International Coach
Certified International Team Coach
Experience and background
Richard supports leaders to take charge of their futures and fulfil their true potential. In doing so, he helps enrich both their own lives and those of the people they influence. In practice, the value he brings comes from the combination of his commercial, executive, international and coaching experience.
Over his career, Richard has worked across investment banking, private banking, and financial and professional services. His experience spans start-ups through to complex, highly regulated, multi-jurisdictional businesses. In addition, CEO and board roles across South Africa, the UK, New Zealand and Australia have given him a deep understanding of what it takes to adapt to new environments, engage across cultures and build sustainable organisations.
As a certified coach, Richard is accredited as a Certified International Coach (2014) and a Certified International Team Coach (2017). He combines his business background with strong theoretical and practical coaching capability to support senior leaders under pressure. As a result, leaders are better equipped to lead effectively in increasingly complex environments.
Throughout his executive career, Richard has coached and mentored direct reports and worked with teams to achieve high performance. He has also contributed to formal mentoring programs. Together, these experiences have given him deep insight into individual motivation and how leaders can achieve personal goals while contributing meaningfully to organisational success.
Richard's approach
Richard works with existing and aspiring leaders who have an identified challenge or development need, have been recently promoted, have taken on new responsibilities, or are contemplating a career change. He has found that one-to-one coaching helps clients achieve alignment between their personal and business objectives.
His work with leadership teams, whose performance depends on successfully combining different skills, experiences, and personalities, is informed by his commercial background and his belief that organisations prosper when led by high-performing teams. Throughout his executive career, Richard has also contributed to voluntary coaching and mentoring programs, which have given him further insight into the motivators of diverse groups of individuals and how to be an effective contributor to their success.
Qualifications and memberships
- Bachelor of Commerce, University of the Witwatersrand
- Bachelor of Accountancy, University of the Witwatersrand
- Chartered Accountant, Chartered Accountants South Africa (1981) and Australia (1991)
- Certified International Coach, International Coaching Community, 2014
- Certified International Team Coach, International Coaching Community, 2017
Personal insights
Richard and his family live in Sydney. He is a keen golfer, tennis player and music lover with an (as yet) unfulfilled ambition to be a half-decent pianist.
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