MEET Chris Taylor

Chris is an experienced personal, business, leadership and team coach having worked in the personal development and coaching field since 2012. He believes in the uniqueness and self expression of individuals, the creation of possibility rather than the seeking to find which is so often a hollow rainbow chase. 

With Clients Chris seeks to engage in a dance to elicit their sense of self awareness, needs and motivations. Also, their blockers and stories to shift and grow. Each Client has a unique combination to their own lock, the opportunity is to find the formula that works. He draws on a repertoire of coaching training and deep personal development exposure, tools and modalities. This in the backdrop of life experience which includes significant personal challenges as well as achievement.

An eternal optimist, yet realist, he believes the heart of growth or transformation is through living courageously, building self awareness and authenticity, thinking before acting and living true to one’s values. This applies to business, career and leadership and in one’s personal / intimate life too.

Chris’s first career was as a chemical and environmental engineer and perhaps unsurprisingly has most experience working in the allied sectors to engineering and construction. Some of the engineering and construction Clients that Chris has worked with include: Leighs Construction, Fulton Hogan, Hunter Civil Ltd, Arrow International Ltd, Bushnell Builders, Coughlan Homes Ltd, Texco Earthmoving. He also has experience of working with health professionals and teams, finance and insurance companies to name but two.

Chris’s first book, Avoiding Propeller Blades – Self Leadership Strategies to Empower and Transform Your Life (Aviva Publishing New York, 2023), navigates true life stories connecting with themes of courage and empowerment in the face of challenges, rejection and family breakdown. Originally intended as a family memoir for his children, the book became a memoir with a message.

As of mid 2024 he is drafting his second book. A fable story about teams and teamwork titled Barry’s Buzzing Team – A story about creating team buzz.

Born in Newcastle upon-Tyne, North East England in 1970 to an architect father and social worker mother, Chris was schooled at an all boys school where he excelled at rugby and cricket, and being recalcitrant. Leaving school in 1988, he elected to study engineering, firstly in London and then in his home city. He worked in UK for Japanese and US based firms in the industrial water and wastewater sector until 2003 whereupon he emigrated to New Zealand.

A hallmark of Chris’s life is bold yet instinctive choices, from emigrating aged thirty three, to career transition in his early forties to the odd extreme physical challenges. For example in 2022, Everesting for over eleven hours straight on a stair climber raising funds for charity. The decade of his fifties sees more challenges and opportunities in learning guitar and improvised comedy. 

Sport and movement has and is a large part of Chris’s life. From playing senior cricket for near thirty years, cricket coaching through to golf, hockey, snooker and latterly mountain biking. Chris believes in exercise to feed the brain and soul with the vitality of movement, acute today in a device and screen obsessed world. 

Somewhat of a social altruist, he has dedicated time to community projects, charities and initiatives including working with YMCA Education, Graeme Dingle Foundation Project K, Age Concern and a tenure as General Manager for a men’s support charity.

Married with four daughters he supports his professional working partner and is grateful of the opportunity somewhat later in life to spend quality time with his young children who endearingly refer to him as the old man.

A social connector, Chris is typically the centre of social groups with friends, from organizing mountain bike rides and weekend adventures through to a dads group at his children’s school.

Growth through education is a lifeblood for Chris and in recent years he completed Te Whāinga o te Ao Tikanga (Te Kaupae 3) through Te Wānanga o Aotearoa; a Post Graduate Certificate in Counselling Psychology, PGCert(Couns), through University of Canterbury (2020/1). He is currently training in Team Coaching.