For LGBTQ+ founders, executives & leaders
Most executive coaching addresses what you do: your habits, your calendar, your presentation style. I work with who you are, and the systemic pressures that shaped you.
01 · The Identity Tax
Many LGBTQ+ leaders carry what I call the Identity Tax: the ongoing, invisible labour of deciding how much of yourself to reveal in rooms that were not built with you in mind.
It shows up as hypervigilance before difficult meetings, over-preparation to pre-empt questions nobody should be asking, and a specific kind of exhaustion that a good holiday does not fix.
Standard leadership development rarely names this cost, let alone addresses it. I built my coaching practice because I saw senior LGBTQ+ professionals doing excellent, high-pressure work while quietly managing a second job: managing their own visibility.
02 · Who I work with
I mostly work with founders, leaders and executives, many of them LGBTQ+. You may recognise the signs: success that does not feel like relief, decisions made from old survival patterns rather than present judgement, or a nagging sense that your professional self and your actual self are not the same person.
03 · How this is different
That order matters. Instead of a toolkit of leadership frameworks, we work with the actual mechanics of how you think, decide and relate under pressure, then apply that understanding directly to your leadership.
Coaching with real clinical depth behind it, not therapy language borrowed for effect.
Two ways to start
Bespoke one-to-one coaching, typically 90 to 120 minute sessions every two to four weeks over four to six months. Begins with a free Strategy Session.
Explore coachingSingle session · £375One 90-minute working session on one recurring pattern, with a written Diagnostic Map within 48 hours naming the mechanism and your next moves.
Explore the DiagnosticExecutive Depth
Why the most reliable leaders are the ones whose organisations keep running when they go offline, with two exercises to stop being a single point of failure.
Approvals, sign-offs and standing meetings that route through you can quietly protect you more than the work. A simple test for each one, with two exercises to map your process load.
What keeps leaders reachable at every hour? Three myths, from "responsiveness equals commitment" to "my team expects it", with exercises to test which availability is needed and which is habit.
Justin Clark offers executive and leadership coaching for founders, executives and senior leaders, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ leaders. He is a UK-based coach and psychotherapist who works with clients online. His main offer is ongoing one-to-one coaching that works with how you lead and with the pressures that shaped it, including code-switching and identity labour. Coaching begins with a free, no-obligation Strategy Session. For an expert read on one specific issue, the System Diagnostic is a single 90-minute session (£375) with a written Diagnostic Map within 48 hours. He also offers psychotherapy and clinical supervision, and writes Executive Depth, a newsletter on leadership, identity and the psychology of high performance.
A coach with psychotherapy training can work with the patterns underneath behaviour as well as the behaviour itself. Many capable leaders already know what they would like to do differently; what gets in the way tends to be older, such as over-functioning, a strong need for control, or the effort of managing how others see you. Psychotherapy training also brings rigorous ethical standards, regular clinical supervision and a clear sense of where coaching ends and therapy begins.
Start with credentials: accreditation from a recognised body such as the EMCC or ICF, and regular supervision. Then look at relevant experience with leaders at your level and in situations like yours. Consider approach, whether skills-focused or also working with the patterns behind how you lead. Finally, fit matters: a first conversation should leave you feeling understood and able to speak openly.
Every engagement begins with a free, no-obligation Strategy Session: a chance to look at what you are working with and whether we are a good fit.