Steve Gaskell - Challenge Coach

Steve Gaskell - Challenge Coach Award Winning Executive & Business Coach★Helping High Growth Companies★Employee Engagement Expert★Trainer★Speaker

I am a certified High-Performance Business Coach, providing business help, business advice, business coaching and mentoring services to managing directors, executives and teams.

10/09/2026

On World Su***de Prevention Day, learn the 'Five and Twenty' metaphor from military operations applied to mental resilience. Check yourself (5-meter check) and check on others (20-meter check). It's about looking inward and reaching outward.

09/09/2026

Most CEOs are struggling in the room and nobody is saying a word.

Not because nobody can see it.

Because nobody knows how to surface it without making it worse.

As a coach my job is to say what I see and seek permission to do just that.

Sometimes that means working through it before we even walk in the room.

Sometimes it means taking a moment mid-session and asking the right question of the right person.

Not shining a big light on it. Not putting anyone on the spot.

Just creating the space for the conversation that needed to happen.

Because the most isolated leaders are not the ones nobody talks to.

They are the ones everyone talks around.

👇 Who in your world is creating that space for you?

07/09/2026

It is not.

The moment you put someone back in their box, you lose them. Not just for that meeting. For good.
And they were a valued member of your team.

The leaders who genuinely get this do something completely different. They nip the behaviour in the bud with such skill, such humility and such precision that a light goes on instead of a door closing.

Suddenly it is not a shutdown. It is a moment of realisation.

That is a skill. And it is one of the rarest I see at senior level.

How often are you losing your best voices not to resignation but to silence?

03/09/2026

Join us on September 22nd for a unique veterans in business networking event at the Tower of London. It's an environment built by veterans, for veterans, fostering a common language and shared opportunities. Come connect, share best practices, and expand your network.

03/09/2026

A former commanding officer. And a CEO of a large, complex business.

They are 2 different worlds, but it's the same quality.

Empathy.

This lets you walk into a room where egos are clashing and pressure is building. It helps you bring the temperature down without saying a word.

And here is what made both of them exceptional.

Sometimes the pressure in the room was not even theirs, It was usually somebody else's. And they still held it.

Some of that is trainable. But some of it only comes from having gone through the hard yards.

From the moments where everything was on the line and they held their state anyway.

That is what creates strategic clarity under pressure: the calmest voice in the room.

👇 Who is the most composed leader you have ever been in a room with?

02/09/2026

This is simply out of mastery.

If you want to stand out as a leader, start to walk into a charged room and bring the temperature down without anyone knowing how you did it.

This conveys real authority, and it is trainable.

Who in your organisation has that natural calming presence, and are you actively developing it?

01/09/2026

This is because of what happened the last time they said something.

Someone speaks up, then gets shut down put back in their box.

Then you hear nothing from them again.

The worst part is, they were a valued member of the team.

Great leaders do something different. They nip the behaviour in the bud, but with such skill and precision that nobody feels silenced.

That takes humility, empathy and it is one of the rarest leadership skills I see at senior level.

Your succession pipeline needs to create the conditions where the right people want to step up.

How often are you losing your best people to silence?

31/08/2026

No uniform. No cap badge. No rank.

In the military, everything about how you were received was communicated before you opened your mouth. Your rank said it all.

In business? A CEO could walk through the door right now and nobody would know.
That was my reality on day one of civilian life.

And the transition was not about status. It was about recognising that the mechanism for getting things done had completely changed.

No orders. No command authority. No badge that said Steve Gaskell just walked in the room.

Just me. And the slow, deliberate work of building credibility through experience, knowledge and relationships.

For me, that recognition made the transition manageable. I had seen it coming and prepared for it.

But for many veterans leaving the military, that moment is genuinely isolating.

You go from an environment where your place, your purpose and your authority are crystal clear, to one where nobody knows you, nobody owes you anything and you have to start again from scratch.

That is not just a career transition. That is an identity one.

And it is one of the loneliest roads a leader can walk.

Have you ever walked into a new environment where nobody recognised what you brought, and how did you find your footing?

31/08/2026

Tired of awkward networking events? The RUN (Really Useful Networking) is changing the game. Connect with like-minded individuals in a fun, supportive environment. Now launching Veterans RUNs across the UK, including upcoming events in London's Tower of London!

29/08/2026

Founders. MDs. CEOs all in panic.

Contracts at risk, teams to look after, stakeholders to manage, and then the world stopped on top of all of it.

Most of the pressure I see leaders under comes back to one thing: money.

And money triggers our freeze, flight and fight response. The same wiring that makes you leap back from a bus. Except instead of a bus it is a cash flow crisis or a lost contract.

When that fires, panic takes over.

And every decision made from that place compounds the pressure.

The work I did through COVID came back to one thing every single time.

Take a moment, because you cannot create clarity from a place of panic.

What is your process for finding clarity when the pressure peaks?

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Victoria Gardens House, Albany Street
Newton Abbot
TQ122AN

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Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 12pm

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