Carl Taylor
psychologist & coach
Shaped as much by lived experience as by training, and it shows in how I work.
what i do
Most people I work with are already capable and experienced. What brings them to coaching is a specific situation: growth, a restructure, a partnership under strain, a remit that has outgrown what got them here.
Something has changed and raised the stakes, and the way they’ve always operated hasn’t caught up with it yet.
Most of the work is about seeing the situation more clearly: stepping back from the pressure of deciding, looking at it from more than one angle, and understanding what’s actually driving it before deciding how to respond.
Some people arrive with a specific decision in front of them; others simply want somewhere considered to think it through.
professional background
I’m an accredited Senior Practitioner Coach with the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) and a Chartered Counselling Psychologist, registered with the British Psychological Society (BPS) and the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).
My coaching draws on more than 25 years of professional experience working with people through change, uncertainty, responsibility, and development.
The work is grounded in thoughtful conversation, psychological understanding, and helping people think more clearly about themselves, their decisions, and where they want to go next.
my background
I grew up on a council estate in the North of England and left school at 16 with few qualifications and little expectation that I would go on to higher education or professional training. My early working life was spent as a barber in a small industrial town, where I learned how to build relationships with people from many different walks of life and developed an early interest in people, identity, relationships, and the different ways individuals make sense of themselves and their circumstances.
In my early twenties, I decided I wanted something different from life and returned to education through an adult access course before later studying psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. That experience of reinvention, uncertainty, and moving across different social and professional worlds has remained important to me and continues to shape how I think about ambition, transition, identity, responsibility, pressure, and change.
Alongside postgraduate training in Counselling Psychology at Regent’s University London, I worked within the National Housing Federation’s consultancy and research service, balancing professional work with intensive academic and clinical training. This early experience gave me exposure to organisational systems, leadership, strategic thinking, business development, reflective evaluation, and team coordination alongside my psychological training.
I later spent more than 14 years working within NHS psychotherapy and psychology services, including senior roles within specialist psychological therapies at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Over time, my work expanded across psychology, psychotherapy, supervision, consultation, and service development. I previously led the provision of Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) and Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT) within the Lewisham Integrated Psychological Therapies Team.
Today, I work independently in Central London and online, drawing on more than two decades of experience in psychology, psychotherapy, coaching, and consultation to support people through development, change, and important decisions.
Today, I work independently in Central London and online, drawing on more than two decades of experience in psychology, psychotherapy, and consultation. More recently, I trained as a coach and became an EMCC Global Senior Practitioner Coach, bringing my experience and understanding of how people think and relate into a coaching practice focused on decisions that matter.
why work with me?
The psychological training doesn’t switch off once the conversation becomes coaching. It’s what makes it possible to hear the assumptions and patterns beneath a decision, and to help someone think more clearly than advice or a framework alone could.
It also means knowing precisely where coaching differs from therapy, and keeping the work firmly on the coaching side: focused on you, your judgement, and where you want to get to.
In practice, that’s the difference between being handed something to do and understanding why something has been difficult to move on in the first place, which is usually what allows a decision to actually hold.
in the right balance.
how i work
My training as a psychologist shapes how I listen. I notice patterns, assumptions, and the beliefs people use to make sense of their situation. But you set the direction. My job is to help you think, not to think for you, and to hold what I notice lightly enough that you reach your own conclusions.
I see coaching as a working relationship first. Trust and a real sense of safety are what make honest challenge possible, so I pay attention to how the work feels as much as to what we cover. I’ll use structure to give a conversation shape, but the movement comes from the thinking we do together, not from any framework.
I also hold a particular view of how people actually develop. Real change tends to need enough challenge to move you alongside enough support to make that bearable. Too little challenge and nothing shifts; too much and it overwhelms. And development isn’t something handed over, like information passed across a desk. It’s worked out actively, between us, through conversation, reflection, and testing things in practice. That’s why I don’t offer formulas. Formulas skip the part where the understanding actually forms.
At its centre, the work moves between reflection and action: understanding something more clearly, then testing that understanding in practice and learning from what happens. I’m as interested in how you’ve come to see a situation as in what you conclude about it, because that’s usually where a decision becomes one you can actually hold.
who i work with
I work with founders, owners, partners, and leaders who carry real responsibility and real authority over their own remit. What brings people to me usually isn’t a job title. It’s a situation: growth, a restructure, an expanded remit, a partnership under strain, something that has moved and left the way they’ve always operated behind it.
They’re capable, and usually have a track record of solving things themselves. What they’re looking for isn’t rescue, it’s somewhere to think that holds up to real scrutiny. They want to be challenged rather than agreed with, and they can tell the difference between a question that’s doing work and a question that’s technique.
If you’re looking for motivational coaching, formulas, or ready-made answers, I’m probably not the right fit, and I’d say so. If you want to reach a position on something difficult and act from it with genuine conviction, that’s the work I do.
25+ Years of Professional Experience
Working with people through change, uncertainty, responsibility, and development
The work is grounded in thoughtful conversation, psychological understanding, and helping people think more clearly about themselves, their decisions, and the direction they want to move in.
900+ People Worked With
Across psychology, psychotherapy, coaching, and reflective practice
14,000+ Professional Conversations
Focused on relationships, understanding, change, and meaningful movement forward
Accredited Senior Practitioner Coach
I am an accredited Senior Practitioner Coach with the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC)
