About me
Emma Donaldson-Feilder
Over many years, I have seen how fostering awareness, kindness and wisdom helps people and organisations thrive. I passionately believe in the difference these qualities can make and my work is about creating kinder, wiser, more aware relationships, leadership, teams and workplaces. In my role as a Coaching Psychologist, Coaching Supervisor, Relational Mindfulness teacher and Occupational Psychologist, I have spent nearly 25 years providing support to individuals, teams and organisations, while also conducting research and engaging with public policy.
Initially focused on the importance of leadership and management in preventing stress and enhancing wellbeing at work, my work as an Occupational Psychologist naturally led me to explore the value of coaching and mindfulness in improving leadership, management and relationships of all kinds in the workplace. Over time and following my doctoral research, Relational Mindfulness and Coaching Supervision have emerged as the best ways to bring my skills and my way of being into this field of work.
Relational Mindfulness
In 2019 I completed a Professional Doctorate, in which I conducted research exploring the use of mindfulness and Relational Mindfulness (RM) in leadership development. Building on this work, I have developed a range of RM programmes to support leadership development and coach development.
As I started to offer RM programmes, I found – to my delight – that there were coaches who not only wanted to understand RM but were also keen to engage in RM practice as a journey of development and growth. As you will see from ‘How attendees typically progress through our RM programmes’, the result has been a series of programmes following which participants report deep learning and shifts in their professional and personal relationships. I love to provide this kind of support to others.
In 2025, the book about RM for coaches that I co-authored with Liz Hall was published. Entitled Relational Mindfulness for Coaches, this provides an in-depth look at what RM is, how to practice RM, and the benefits it offers for coaching. It also situates RM in the wider field of theory and practice.
Alongside my ever-growing RM for coaches offering, I have also run RM programmes for others, largely in the healthcare and higher education sectors. The majority have been RM for leaders, including working with the King’s Fund to integrate RM into their compassionate leadership and Top Manager programmes, and working with Health Education and Improvement Wales on bringing RM into their leadership and management development. I have spoken at numerous conferences about applying RM in different contexts.
Meanwhile, my own RM and Insight Dialogue (ID) journey has led to ever greater depth of learning and growth for myself, which has had a profound impact on all my relationships and has naturally come to underpin my coaching, coaching supervision and RM/ID teaching.
As well as my various academic qualifications, and my coaching, coaching supervision, and occupational psychology charterships and accreditations, I trained as a mindfulness teacher through Bangor University’s Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice (UK) and as an ID teacher and Interpersonal Mindfulness Programme teacher through the Insight Dialogue Community (USA).
Coaching supervision and leadership coaching
Since 2001, I have provided leadership coaching to a wide diversity of leaders and senior managers in public, private and third-sector organisations. The focus of my coaching has ranged from career transition, to balancing workloads with caring roles, supporting wellbeing, building resilience and managing organisational change.
I started providing coaching supervision in 2009 because of requests from fellow coaches who knew of my work in setting up peer-coaching-supervision groups and exploring different modes of coaching supervision. I have been providing coaching supervision for both in-house and external coaches ever since. I have an EMCC (ESQA) accredited certificate in the supervision of coaches, mentors and consultants and am an accredited as a Master Coaching Supervisor with the Association for Professional Executive Coaching and Supervision.
I enjoy offering both individual and group coaching supervision and some of my supervision programmes offer a combination of the two modes. As explained in ‘My approach to coaching supervision’, my coaching supervision now integrates mindfulness and RM in ways from the subtle to the explicit.
Writing, speaking and workplace health and wellbeing
Throughout my career, I have regularly been invited to speak at conferences and to write articles, book chapters and research reports. For many years, my work incorporated both research and practice in occupational psychology, particularly around the role of leadership and management in employee wellbeing. As a result, as well as the Relational Mindfulness for Coaches book and a growing portfolio of writing and speaking about RM, my ‘public face’ also encompasses numerous presentations, articles and book chapters on management and leadership, and workplace stress prevention and wellbeing, including co-authorship of an award-winning book, Preventing stress in organisations: How to develop positive managers (2011).
Between 2015 and 2025, I contributed to public policy on workplace health through being a member of the UK Health and Safety Executive Workplace Health Expert Committee.
Presentation on How presence, awareness and compassion can help facilitate insight in coaching relationships.