Gabriella (Gabby) Horak · Executive coach and team facilitator · Sydney
Is your leadership team one team, or six people protecting six budgets?
I work with leadership teams full of great people: teams still finding their way as one team, and teams already performing who want to be better across the board. When things get complicated, that's when I'm most useful.
2,000+senior leaders, one to one and in their teams
150+organisations
Over 20 years I've stood in rooms with tens of thousands of leaders and their teams across more than 15 industries, at conferences, offsites and group programs.
Gabby has not just been a coach; she's been my unwavering cheerleader, a trusted sounding board, a formidable challenger, and a confidant.
How I work
Where do you want to start?
Leaders often come to me thinking the problem is their team. Usually it starts with them, and then the team. So I work on both, and you can start with either.
I work with excellent leaders who care about their people and want to get better. They still have hard problems and things to fine-tune, and they're open to working on themselves. That's who I do my best work with.
Leadership team alignment
Half-day and full-day sessions at your offsite or leadership conference. Your team leaves with a charter they wrote and will use.
Everyone's working hard. So why isn't your team pulling in the same direction?
It happens to great teams too. Strong people, a solid strategy, and somewhere along the way the team stopped pulling the same way. That's rarely about talent.
What I hear from leadership teams:
"We're working hard, but we're not pulling in the same direction."
"Strategy keeps getting crowded out by firefighting."
"The offsite was great. Then it got busy and the routines were the first thing cancelled."
"Nobody really pushes back in the room anymore."
Unaligned team
The team has simply never been aligned. A new leader, a new team, a merger or a restructure. It's a gap, not a wound, so you build it once, deliberately.
Misaligned team
Everyone is aligned, just to different things. More effort makes it worse, because you can't out-work being pointed in the wrong direction. You surface what's buried and reset the direction together.
High-performing team
Already aligned, already delivering, and wanting to be better across the board. We sharpen how you decide, challenge each other and lead the layer below.
Unaligned needs building. Misaligned needs resetting. Treating one like the other is why good interventions go nowhere.
What a half day looks like
The running order I use with leadership teams. Three and a half hours, morning tea included. Every session is designed around your team, so this changes, but the bones stay.
Full days and offsites
A full day goes further. I meet each leader one to one beforehand, so the day is built around the real issues rather than assumptions. Then the charter, your big rocks for the next 90 days, and the trade-offs you'll hold each other to. You get a written summary of outcomes, agreements and actions within ten business days.
Leadership conferences
I facilitate sessions inside your event, from a leadership team of six to a packed conference room. Everyone leaves with something written down that they've committed to.
Welcome and objectives
Name tentsA quick way to build trust before anyone talks about work.
Morning teaAt the hour mark, on purpose.
How you workYour own style and what drives it, using a validated behavioural profile.
How you work togetherHow the styles on this team land on each other, where communication gets stuck, and the team's overall culture.
Team charter, first actionsWhat do we want this team to be known for?
Close and next stepsWhat we'll do differently from Monday, and how it flows into your regular meetings.
The offsite landed really well, and a big part of that was the way you facilitated the day. You created a great balance between keeping us moving and giving people space to have honest conversations and contribute.
Fast forward a few weeks and there is still a noticeable buzz running through the organisation, and Gabriella's individual follow up with participants has been both tailored and timely.
Planning an offsite, a leadership day or a conference session? Tell me about your team.
What if every leader on your team had a coach, and so did the team?
I coach each member of the leadership team one to one, so they grow as leaders in their own right, and I bring them together as a team, so they grow as peers.
The one-to-ones are where people get honest about what's getting in their way. The team sessions are where they sort it out with each other. The team charter holds it all together.
One-to-one coaching for every member of the leadership team, including the leader.
Team sessions to work through what's coming up, as a team.
Your team charter as the thread through all of it.
Through her coaching, our team has developed trust and mutual respect, which has fundamentally changed how we collaborate. Our discussions have become more dynamic and productive, with a healthy level of challenge and rigorous debate. If you're leading an organisation and find that decision-making is slow or discussions tend to lose focus, I highly recommend working with a team coach.
Want to talk about coaching your whole leadership team?
It's lonely at the top. Your partner and your friends don't really get it, and you can't say it all to your team. I'm the person leaders think out loud with. Some have been with me for more than five years.
I get operations, business strategy and the commercial side, and I get behaviour and language. So I help you see things differently, get ready for the Chair, the CEO or your boss, and show up well with your peers and your direct reports.
I coach weekly, online. At a stretch we go fortnightly. Never monthly, on purpose: a month is too long between sessions when things are moving. When things get tough, you can call me outside our sessions: to sound board before a commercial conversation, to debrief after one, or to talk through how you're feeling.
I also keep reminding you who you are, what you stand for, what you're working towards and the fundamentals of leadership, so you stay consistent when the pressure's on. That's the Leadership Framework underneath it all: Clarity, Consistency and Connection.
What leaders bring to our sessions:
Going for a bigger role, a promotion or a pay rise, inside your organisation or out of it.
Stepping into a bigger role, and leading people who used to be peers.
Leading a team through a restructure, a merger or a tough quarter.
How you're read at a senior level, and closing the gap.
The conversations you've been putting off.
Your values, and what you want to be known for as a leader.
Weekly, one hour, online. Fortnightly at a stretch. Never monthly, on purpose.
Call me between sessions when things are tough, before or after the big conversations.
Six weeks minimum. A few spots each quarter.
Company-funded intensives of 12, 18 or 24 sessions, with outcomes agreed up front with you and whoever is backing the coaching, usually your manager.
Paying for it yourself? I have six and twelve session packages for that too.
She stands head and shoulders above many of the coaches I have worked with throughout my career. You will not be disappointed by her genuine insight, commercial nous, passion, enthusiasm and unfailing positivity.
Our work together surfaced the gap between how I operate and how I'm read at a senior level, then gave me a practical way to close it.
And in an email afterwards: "You made it easy to be open, and your encouragement meant a lot. It's definitely something LLM AI can't replace!"
I've had the privilege of working with several exceptional coaches throughout my career, but my experience was truly transformative when I had the opportunity to collaborate with Gabby. Gabby's coaching approach is not one-size-fits-all.
Six years ago I started coaching one of their Directors. Since then, two leaders from that team have stepped up into the same role, and I've coached each of them through the move along with their teams, so the business had leaders ready when the seat opened up.
Alongside that, I designed a client culture alignment program for them that's still running today. And when leaders from that team move on to new organisations, many of them ask me to keep coaching them in their new roles.
A technology services executive team
18 months of team coaching with an executive team whose chairman was, in his words, initially sceptical about the softer side of management.
The result, again in his words: trust and mutual respect, more dynamic and productive discussions, and a healthy level of challenge and rigorous debate.
Leadership programs
Your leaders went on the program. What changed on Monday?
Some organisations need more than a day. I've designed hundreds of programs over twenty years, each one built around the leaders in it and what's actually going on in the business, so the learning shows up in how people lead.
A few recent shapes:
An eight-month program across leading self, leading others and leading the business, run in small learning pods with short videos and worksheets between sessions.
An executive team program built on one-to-one interviews and direct-report surveys.
Team alignment days built into an organisation's own emerging leaders program.
Mentoring and graduate programs, with guides for mentors and mentees.
We experienced a few internal hiccups that endangered the engagement and momentum we had worked hard to build with a Leadership Development Program and reached out to Gab for help. Within minutes, Gab was on the phone with us, scoping out our requirements and making recommendations on how we could best deliver our program.
The Leadership Framework
Underneath my coaching, team work and programs. Three pillars, Clarity, Consistency and Connection, with three parts each. Most leaders have built three or four of the nine.
For the leaders who can't work with me one to one, this is where to start. The Leadership Impact Accelerator runs live in a small group of eight, or self-paced, alongside the tools I use with senior leaders.
I'm an authorised Australian distributor for Everything DiSC, with 700+ leaders profiled in depth. Large corporate groups and government organisations have me as their preferred Everything DiSC supplier for every new leader joining their leadership teams. They come back for my reports, my experience and my turnaround, and because I link every profile to leadership success and team alignment. Every leader I coach one to one does their DiSC with me, and so does everyone in the Leadership Impact Accelerator. Wiley's Everything DiSC, with forty years of research behind it. Not a generic DISC test. By enquiry. More about Everything DiSC
About me
I've wanted to do this since I was five.
I'm Gabriella, and almost everyone calls me Gabby. I used to line up my toys and teach them to read and write. At 19, my boyfriend's mum came home with a whopping big training manual and I found out teaching adults was a job. That was it for me.
I came up through call centres, was promoted early, mentored well, and loved sharing what I learnt. AMP gave me a chance as Orientation Program Manager, with heaps of enthusiasm and a lot to learn. That's where I learnt to carry a room.
Then came years as a trainer and facilitator across Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific, my own business from 2004, and What's Your Edge? from 2016. Today I'm also the founder of Leaders Impact, where my tools and programs live.
I'm practical, I bring a lot of energy into a room, and I keep it real. You'll walk out with something you can use on Monday.
The compliment I hope for isn't "that was impressive". It's "I feel clearer".
My Differentiating Values
GenerosityEnthusiasmCommitment
Some of the organisations I've worked with
BoralQantasSercoWestpacCoatesPwCInsurance Commission of Western AustraliaSGH (Seven Group Holdings)SamsungAudiVodafoneSt.George BankWesTracAMPAlliance SIVertoNSW Department of Premier and CabinetJemenaAdbriVMwareFletcher BuildingDownerBrookfieldWSPAccorTabcorpSupercarsRed CrossCricket NSWMarriott
What leaders say
What leaders say after working with me
I'm really finding it really useful for clarity. It's given me a bit of a boost, and I'm looking more strategically, and feeling more excited about future possibilities.
The team have come together and they're bouncing ideas off each other. They're reaching out to each other on a much more regular basis. That's a really, really good change in the last month.
I've grown a lot. In my review, on my leadership, my growth and my learning, I've marked myself above expectations on all three. And I would never do that.
I don't think I completely understood the leadership framework thing at first. I get it now. It's not as esoteric as I thought it was. It's functional.
Questions leaders ask me
Frequently asked questions
What is leadership team alignment?
Leadership team alignment is when a leadership team agrees on what matters most, how they'll work together and how they'll hold each other to it. I run it as a half-day or full-day session, often at an offsite, and the team leaves with a team charter they wrote themselves.
How is team alignment different from a team-building day?
A team-building day is about getting on well for a day. Team alignment is about how the team decides, disagrees and delivers after the day, so it ends with a written team charter and first actions the team takes back into its regular meetings.
How do I know if my leadership team is unaligned or misaligned?
An unaligned team has never been aligned, often after a new leader, a restructure or a merger, and it needs building once, deliberately. A misaligned team is aligned to different things, effort makes it worse, and it needs the buried disagreement surfaced and the direction reset together.
What does a team coach do?
A team coach works with the whole leadership team over time rather than one person. I coach each member of the team one to one and bring them together for team sessions, so they grow as leaders and as peers, with the team charter as the thread through it all.
How long does executive coaching take?
I coach weekly, online, one hour at a time, with a six-week minimum. At a stretch we go fortnightly. Never monthly, on purpose, because a month is too long between sessions. When things are tough you can call me between sessions too. Company-funded intensives run for 12, 18 or 24 sessions with outcomes agreed up front, and some leaders have worked with me for more than five years.
What is a Leadership Framework?
A Leadership Framework is a clear, written picture of how you lead: what you stand for, how you stay steady under pressure, and how you bring people with you. Mine has three pillars, Clarity, Consistency and Connection, with three parts each, and most leaders have built three or four of the nine. It sits underneath all my coaching, and you can start building yours with the free tools at Leaders Impact.
Can I work on my leadership without a coach?
Yes. Leaders Impact, which I founded, has the Leadership Framework, the Leadership Impact Accelerator and practical tools you can use on your own or in a small group. It's where to start if you can't work with me one to one, or want to do some of the work between sessions. Start at leadersimpact.com.au.
Do you use Everything DiSC?
Yes. I'm an authorised Australian distributor for Everything DiSC and it's part of most team days, because it gives a team a shared language for how each person works. It's also available on its own by enquiry.
Where do you work?
I'm Gabby Horak, based in Sydney. Executive coaching is online, so it works wherever you are. Team alignment days and offsites are in person across Australia, and I travel for the right team too, across New Zealand and Asia Pacific, and including the UK, Europe and the US.
Do you work with teams that are already performing well?
Yes. Some of my favourite work is with teams that are aligned and delivering and want to be better across the board. We sharpen how the team decides, challenges each other and leads the layer below.
How do we get started?
Send me a message through this page and I'll reply within 24 hours. We'll have a short call to scope what's going on, I design the session or coaching around your team, and after a team day you get a written summary of outcomes, agreements and actions within ten business days.
Not ready to talk yet?
Start with nine questions most leaders can't answer about their own leadership. The free Leadership Impact Scorecard shows which parts of your Leadership Framework you've already built, and where to start.
