Ali Stewart Shares The Secrets Of Building High-Impact Leaders And Why We Need Them

If you’ve ever wrangled with feeling uneasy about leadership as a woman, read on to feel empowered, motivated and inspired to take a leap of faith into effective leadership. Ali Stewart has carved out her successful career despite life’s ups and downs along the way – and it's her passion for teaching that led her into coaching, a career she can’t ever imagine retiring from.

Find out how she balances business with life and why stepping away, even for a short walk, can be just the tonic.

The Early Years
I had an ambitious brother, and being a quiet girl, there were no great expectations on me, which certainly removed any pressure, but there was no challenge either. I was also quite poorly in my later teenage years, and when I was due to go to teacher training college, I wasn’t able to.

Teaching had been what I wanted to do, but it wasn’t to be at that time, so I studied secretarial, business and admin instead, but it left me feeling it wasn’t enough. I’d always wanted a baby and knew I would grow up and have a baby called Katy. Katy came along in 1988 after I had married, but the marriage ended 17 months later, and I found myself a single mum, needing a job to provide for her.

In 1990, I saw a job advertised with Dr Derek Biddle, a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and HR Professional, who needed someone to support him in his work. We set up a management consultancy together, and before we even had furniture in our new office in Salisbury, a large client who had worked with Derek before slapped a substantial cheque in my hand and asked us to start delivering leadership training to his people.

Derek began talking, and I began typing so we could get the training course written down and in some sort of order. What emerged was a brilliant piece of work on how to lead and develop high performance, which we later turned into a book. Now in its third iteration – The Liberator achieved Amazon #1 when we launched it on 10 September 2024.

Back in that time with Derek, he would go into large, well-known businesses to diagnose and identify problems; then, our trainers would deliver the training, which involved psychometric tools. Although my job was doing all the administrative and company secretarial tasks, I was very interested in these tools, and Derek spotted in me a talent for understanding people and working with psychometrics. He sent me off to the British Psychological Society to be accredited with a range of tools, and that’s where my training and steps into coaching began.

Many years later, Derek, who is now 87, was retiring and so I opened my own business on 1 July 2004. I knew it was the right thing to do, but it was still a scary time! By then I had married again and had a very supportive husband, and that does make all the difference when someone is behind you! And we’ve been married now for more than 30 years.

Ambition to Build
I’d always wanted to teach, and this is exactly what I’ve done throughout my career. I was coaching before coaching was a profession, and I have continued to teach people about themselves, coaching and mentoring senior leaders and their businesses.

In those early years of running my business, I do remember one crisp winter’s day when I wasn’t sure where the next order was going to come from and was at a fairly low ebb. I took a break and went off to the Mercedes garage. My dream car was a sleek little SLK, and I took one out for a test drive. But I didn’t have the money for it then – I told the salesman I would be back. When I arrived back at the office, there
was an enquiry in my inbox about a large contract. I had the vision for it, and it started to happen.

I did eventually get the Merc, thanks to my oldest son (who was 10 years old in 2004 when I set up) becoming a car salesman. He knew my dream and helped me get my first SLK in about 2012 – it was a strategic and emotional moment for us both.

Leadership with Heart

Small business owner leadership starts with the person, and we use a fabulous personality tool before any leadership coaching or training takes place. We always work with the team – because leadership requires a holistic approach – leaders can’t work alone, they have to have a team around them. However, most leaders are in post because of their skill or specialism and not because they know how to lead.
For example, we worked with one company that had a high staff turnover rate, which was costing them £35,000 a year in recruitment. The traditional old male CEO had just left, and the Finance Director took up the reigns. She thought she was just caretaking until they found a new CEO, and things were a bit of a mess. Along with high recruitment, their teams were working in silos, alongside high sickness and
absenteeism. Our intervention helped elevate the ‘stand-in’ CEO to CEO, halve the sickness and absenteeism, they were 20% more productive, without any increase in cost, and their annual recruitment spend reduced to £7000.

A healthier, happier workplace was the outcome, where areas to change were identified and worked on. Together, we won a National Training Award. Interestingly, the day after this company invested in the training with me in 2008, the financial crash happened. Many companies, at that time, cancelled all training, but this one kept going, for which I was truly thankful, and so were they. They would not have survived the financial crisis had they kept going as they were. And this was all down to the vision of the brilliant new female CEO, who embraced and embodied the Liberated Leader.