To date Jules Boardman has worked with a wide variety of clients in the arts, entertainment, HR, legal and medical professions. Here is a selection of client testimonials:-


The temptation for me is to write a humorous account of how working with Jules has changed my life. But for once it might be better to be straightforward and direct. Jules has indeed helped me change my life: it has been fun, but it has also been very hard work.

To go back to the beginning, I became CEO of a group of companies that were failing. Through five years of hard work I and the team pulled them into profitability. While the struggle was one of survival there was little time for anything else. But, when we had the time to look around us and plan for a different future, then things began to unravel. Part of the problem was me. I needed to understand what I wanted out of life other than the cut and thrust of business, to learn new and different skills, to allow others the space to act and even to make mistakes, and above all stop behaving like Violet Elizabeth Bott (on an off day) when things went wrong.

Over the last eighteen months, Jules has helped me to change markedly for the better – and don’t take my word for it, ask my team. He has achieved all of this by asking hard and difficult questions, sometimes humorously and quizzically, sometimes challengingly and even confrontationally. To discover the answers has not always been easy and certainly not comfortable, but it has been worthwhile.

I would recommend Jules to any executive who can’t see a way forward. Don’t bang your head against a brick wall. The chances are it has doors, windows, or at the worst toe holds to help you clamber up and over. If it has none of these, a stick of gelignite might do the trick. Jules is just the man to help you find the matches!

Dominic Tweddle (CEO, Continuum Group)
March 2008


Jules and I worked together over a six month period, meeting up once every three or four weeks for two hour sessions. The process was demanding, and Jules was challenging, but in a very good way.

Jules said to me early on in the coaching process “It’s the work that you do in between sessions that matters, Siobhan” – he was right and there was a great deal of hard work to do, but I’m really feeling the benefit now of the clarity I gained through the process about my skills, style, career aims and ambitions. This was executive coaching, but it taught me a lot of wider life lessons too and gave me much-needed confidence in myself.

Jules is a generous coach, a great listener and a good talker – all of which helped me to feel I could say what I want and get what I needed from our limited but very fruitful time together.

This coaching experience feels like the start of a process for me and I sense that I may well be back for some fresh perspectives and robust exchanges with Jules in the future. In the meantime, I’ve been recommending him as a coach to friends and colleagues, and will continue to do so.

Siobhan E (Public Sector Funder)
February 2008


I was mentored by Jules as part of my Nesta Cultural Leadership Fellowship in 2006-7. I came to the encounter with some suspicion. Knowing that Jules was an executive coach, I had images of compulsory self-improvement exercises and assertive goal setting. I was wrong of course. The gentle, humorous, perceptive way in which Jules encouraged me to focus on the things I have the capacity to do, and the barriers I sometimes create for myself, was the opposite of my expectations. More than anything else, Jules encouraged me to clarify and stick to my own best instincts, and to follow the most creative and satisfying aspects of my work and personality. I had always thought of myself as an intrinsically (perhaps annoyingly) positive person, but Jules helped me to see the ways in which positivity can be undermined by assumptions about how others will react, and by the expectations and patterns of thought into which it is all too easy to fall. The process of mentoring has made me more confident in my choices and clearer in my values. Already a couple of difficult decisions that would previously have had me tied in knots have been far easier to make as a result of this helpful and clarifying process.

John McGrath
April 2007


Working with Jules was undoubtedly the best investment the firm has ever made in terms of team development and training.  Jules structured a bespoke program which over a period of weeks challenged and stretched me as a Director of a rapidly expanding professional services business. Jules is demanding and focused, and brought a fresh perspective to our business.  His insight and experience as a CEO of a successful venture capital backed business proved invaluable. It was an excellent program, which I would have no hesitation in recommending to others in my position.


Claire Skinner (Managing Director Ruston WHEB Limited)
April 2007


Coaching is one of the "black arts"- like acoustics !! Difficult to pin down, difficult to define hard measurable outputs…..except that, like acoustics with your ears, when you feel the difference inside you, you know it's been successful. Such a course I have just completed with Jules Boardman.

If you want a coach who makes life easy, who bowls straight up and down, who carries no threat of taking your wicket, then do not choose Jules.He is like a spinner from the Asian subcontinent: seemingly innocuous, genial and affable. But, concealed within his armoury are all manner of "wicked" deliveries- sliders, doosras, googlies and chinamen, designed to deceive and penetrate your psychological defence. If you are prepared and thoughtful he will not take your wicket, but he will leave you stronger in defence, more resolute, with newly reinforced confidence in your own abilities, and aware of the areas in your own technique on which you have to work.

I have no hesitation in recommending Jules Boardman to you as a coach.

Graham S (Artistic Director, Barbican Centre)
November 2005


Working with Jules Boardman has been fascinating: his systematic, step-by-step approach, combined with his rigorous emotional logic and professional insights, has helped me pare away self-doubt and clarify obscured perspectives. He has this knack of making it look as if it’s all your own work, but this belies the considerable attention to detail and after-hours homework he puts in on his side. He’s supportive but firm and has a kindly manner that puts you at ease very quickly. It really is a privilege to have been the focus of this kind of special attention.

Mark I (Author and Journalist)
July 2006