Policies are only part of the story. Soaring Birds in-house consultancy uncovers the structural, cultural and performance dynamics that shape whether parents in your organisation return, progress and stay – and where talented people are quietly falling out of the leadership pipeline.
Drawing on specialist coaching experience and qualitative research expertise, we work with organisations to get beneath headline retention figures and stated policies to understand how parental leave is actually experienced.
The result is an unfiltered, evidence-led diagnosis of your organisation’s parental talent landscape, alongside a pragmatic blueprint for targeted change.
Start with the question
You do not need to know what the solution is before we begin. Every organisation is different, so the work begins with the question that matters most to you. Our work typically explores themes such as:
- Retention and progression – What makes talented parents stay, progress or ultimately leave?
- The lived experience of parental leave – What is really happening before, during and after leave, and how does this differ across your organisation?
- Career ambition and opportunity – What do returners want from their careers, and where are assumptions about ambition, availability or commitment shaping their opportunities?
- The role of managers – What are managers doing that enables successful transitions – and where might management practice be creating unintended barriers?
- Policy versus practice – Are your parental policies translating into the employee experience and outcomes you intended?
- Where to intervene – Which changes would make the greatest difference to retention, progression and your future leadership pipeline?
The aim is not to prove that there is a problem. It is to understand the reality of your organisation well enough to identify where change will genuinely make a difference.
If you have a question about parental talent in your organisation – whether that is retention, progression, gender balance, manager capability or the experience of returning from leave – we can start by working out what you most need to understand.
Talk to me about your organisation →
Becoming a parent is a major life transition. In demanding professional environments, it can also be a critical career transition – affecting confidence, relationships, visibility, progression and ultimately retention.
Soaring Birds helps organisations support talented people through that transition without losing sight of ambition or career trajectory.
Our specialist approach combines executive coaching, doctoral research into parental transitions in high-performance careers and deep understanding of the commercial realities of financial and professional services.
One integrated coaching experience: human-first, with specialist AI coaching available in the moments that matter.
Our programmes combine specialist 1:1 parental transition coaching with unlimited access to Altitude, our AI coach, throughout the transition.
Human coaching provides the depth, challenge and connection for important career conversations. Altitude extends that support beyond the coaching room, giving clients unlimited access to specialist coaching throughout their programme.
Whether preparing for a manager conversation, rebuilding confidence, navigating changed responsibilities or thinking through a boundary before an important meeting, clients can access support when the issue is live – not simply at their next scheduled session.
Support across the transitions
Coaching flexes as the individual’s needs change – from preparing well before leave, through maintaining the relationship with work during leave, to returning with confidence and rebuilding longer-term career momentum.
The focus goes beyond the practicalities of leave and return. We work on the factors that shape careers in high-performance organisations: performance, relationships, sponsorship, visibility, confidence and access to opportunity.
The aim is not simply a successful return. It is to help talented people continue to perform, progress and thrive as parents.
Altitude Coach
Altitude is our specialist AI parental transition coach, built from doctoral research, specialist coaching practice and proprietary coaching frameworks.
It is not a generic AI tool or a replacement for human coaching. It gives clients unlimited, confidential support between sessions: structured reflection, conversation preparation and specialist coaching through the challenges that arise across leave and return.
The result is a more continuous and accessible model of coaching – while keeping human expertise at its heart.
Supporting the manager
Managers have a significant influence on parental transitions, from handover and contact during leave to handback, opportunity and progression.
Programmes therefore support both sides of the conversation, combining coaching for the parent with line manager coaching and a dedicated Altitude manager pathway.
Managers receive practical guidance and confidential space to navigate their own questions, challenge assumptions and make thoughtful decisions – supporting the individual without inadvertently narrowing their choices or career trajectory.
For organisations
Programmes can include:
- 1:1 specialist parental transition coaching
- Unlimited Altitude access throughout the programme
- Line manager coaching and dedicated Altitude support
- Additional coaching where longer-term support is needed
Support is tailored to the individual, organisation and route to parenthood, including maternity, paternity, shared parental leave, adoption and surrogacy.
A more continuous model of parental transition coaching – designed to help organisations retain and progress talented people through one of the most significant transitions in their careers.
Talk to us about executive parental coaching →
Keynotes and workshops on parental transitions, talent and careers in high-performance organisations. Available in person or online. Grounded in research, engaging in the room, practical in the real world.
Drawing on my doctoral research, specialist coaching practice and first-hand experience of demanding professional environments, I bring together rigorous evidence with the commercial and practical realities organisations are navigating every day.
My aim is not simply to present research. It is to make it useful – challenging established thinking, creating better conversations and giving leaders practical ideas they can take back into their organisations.
I speak at leadership offsites, women’s and parents’ networks, client dinners, conferences and senior leadership conversations, tailoring the content and format to the audience.
Topics include:
- Retaining and progressing talented parents
- What really happens to careers through parental leave and return
- The role of managers in successful parental transitions
- Building ambitious, sustainable careers in high-performance environments
- Turning good policy into better everyday practice
Sessions can range from keynote-style talks to smaller, discussion-led leadership conversations, combining research, real-world insight and practical application.
Talk to me about speaking at your organisation →
Parental leave is not simply a mid-career issue for HR to manage. How an organisation treats people as they become parents sends a powerful signal about who can build a long-term career there – to those taking leave today and to the earlier-career talent watching what happens next.
I work with leadership teams to develop a sharper understanding of why parental transitions matter to talent, performance and the future leadership pipeline – and to examine how their own organisation may be helping or hindering successful careers after leave.
Grounded in my doctoral research, specialist coaching practice and first-hand experience of high-performance careers, these sessions combine evidence, challenge and facilitated discussion. The aim is not simply to raise awareness. It is to move leadership teams from insight to alignment, and from alignment to action.
Designed for demanding professional environments
Generic conversations about work-life balance rarely reflect the reality of high-performance careers. My work is particularly designed for leadership teams in environments where performance expectations are high and careers are built through complex combinations of output, relationships, sponsorship, reputation and opportunity.
These are not lecture-style training sessions. I combine original research and evidence with the commercial realities of demanding professional environments, using discussion, challenge and practical application to help leaders examine what happens in their own organisation.
Workshop formats
Sessions can be designed around the needs of the organisation and may include:
- Leadership team workshops and facilitated discussions
- Executive committee and senior leadership sessions
- Partner or Managing Director forums
- Offsite sessions
- Workshops informed by findings from a Soaring Birds parental talent consultancy project
Sessions can range from focused interventions around a specific issue to deeper workshops that enable leadership teams to examine their organisation’s parental talent pipeline in more detail.
From conversation to change
The most effective leadership sessions create enough challenge to shift the conversation, while remaining grounded in what leaders can practically do differently.
The objective is to create a shared understanding of the problem, a common language for discussing it and greater clarity about where responsibility sits – moving parental leave out of the margins of the HR agenda and into the wider conversation about talent, performance and leadership.
Common topics
Every session is tailored to the organisation and its priorities, but common areas include:
- The parental talent pipeline – Why parental leave can become a critical point of attrition and career derailment, particularly for senior female talent.
- The reality behind the policy – Where apparently strong parental policies can be undermined by everyday culture, assumptions and management practice.
- The success equation – How interruption affects the relationships, sponsorship, visibility and access to high-value work on which progression depends.
- The role of managers – How well-intentioned assumptions and everyday decisions about work, opportunity and progression can materially shape a parent’s trajectory.
- Retention and progression – What distinguishes organisations that simply bring people back from those that enable them to rebuild momentum and continue progressing.
- Leadership accountability – What leaders can do differently, individually and collectively, to create meaningful change.