Richard Goold

The work focuses on PE-backed and founder-led firms in professional services - typically £10m to £50m - where leadership teams are working through the questions that matter most for the next phase of growth.

Those questions are different for every firm. Some are wrestling with leadership and succession. Some are looking at the commercial model, the go-to-market, or the shape of delivery. Some are preparing for a capital event in the next twelve to twenty-four months and want to be deliberate about how they protect and maximise value. Many are doing all of these at once.

Across all of it, the aim is the same - growth that is scalable, sustainable, and ready for whatever comes next.

Currently Chair of YLD, the software engineering and product design consultancy with offices in London, Lisbon and Porto - where I most recently supported the development of the firm’s AI strategy. Board Advisor to RQC Group, Roq and The Institute of Clever Stuff.

The work covers two distinct but related strands. The board work supports executive teams to think clearly under pressure, navigate complex decisions together, and stay aligned through periods of significant change. The coaching work supports founders, CEOs and senior leaders one to one - on the questions that are harder to ask in a group setting and the decisions that ultimately rest with one person.

Across both, the aim is the same - to make the conversations that matter more useful, and the decisions that follow more deliberate.

Fifteen years on the bench at Sutton, Camberwell Green and Croydon Magistrates’ Courts, across adult and youth criminal jurisdictions. As one of three magistrates on the bench, my role was to apply the law with care while holding the human consequences of every decision in mind. It also took me into a part of life most leaders never see directly - the full range of what brings people into a criminal court, from lives unravelled by addiction, mental health, poverty and family breakdown, through to raw criminality by people who had come to reconcile that being in court was an occupational hazard.

As Presiding Justice, I led the bench - a different kind of leadership. Three peers, reaching a single decision together. The work asked for careful listening, drawing out every view, testing the evidence without presumption, and ensuring the outcome was the bench’s rather than any one voice. Communicating that decision in open court, particularly where it changed someone’s life, asked for clarity and humanity in equal measure.

The disciplines of the bench - hearing both sides, suspending personal views, weighing competing perspectives, reaching a reasoned conclusion under pressure - travel into every advisory conversation I have. So does the perspective. Fifteen years of sitting in that room puts a particular kind of light on the decisions that come up around boardroom tables. Both matter. The weight is just different.

Two and a half years as a frontline emergency response officer in one of London’s most demanding boroughs. Every shift required clarity under pressure, empathy in the midst of trauma, and the ability to bring perspective and structure to people’s most challenging moments. It was a powerful reminder that the leadership principles we often discuss in business - trust, resilience, communication, compassion - are tested most profoundly on the ground, when the stakes are immediate and human.

Achievement in that context looked different from anything I had known before. Rarely visible from the outside, rarely captured in numbers, rarely the kind of thing that translates well to a CV. It was measured in moments - the calls answered, people met at points of crisis, the relationships built that are grounded in shared purpose, mutual protection, and unspoken understanding.

The work cast a brighter light on what resilience, trust and clear communication really mean. It also taught me that real leadership is not about control - it is about staying calm, building trust, and creating clarity when it matters most.