Across sectors, organisations are grappling with heavier workloads, constant change, and the silent rise of burnout. Staff push forward despite tired minds and stretched emotions. Leaders carry the weight of responsibility while trying to inspire teams whose energy is fading. Stress becomes a steady companion. Wellbeing slips to the edges of priority lists. Motivation flickers, and disengagement begins to take root long before anyone speaks it aloud. These pressures create environments where people strive to do their best but often feel further from balance with every passing week.
This is where Bex Howe and Howe To Consultancy step in with clarity, compassion, and practical transformation. Bex brings a rare blend of insight and presence that allows her to see beneath the surface of organisational challenges and into the human experiences that shape them.
A Moment of Clarity
Bex often reflects on the moment that inspired her to create Howe To Consultancy. Each Friday she prepared for the weeks ahead and repeatedly noticed that much of her time was spent in meetings discussing issues with people who were not in positions to make meaningful change. Although she was leading systems of accountability and shaping whole organisation strategies, she realised she was not influencing change in the way she had imagined when she first stepped into the classroom and then into leadership. Her daily work was no longer reaching the people she cared about most, the staff and the young people.
Feeling a genuine need to reconnect with what mattered, she created Howe To Consultancy in order to make more difference to more young people.
Rewriting Identity to Ignite Impact
For Bex, the greatest challenge during her transition from executive leadership to consultancy was herself. She needed to look inward and identify the habits and fears that had shaped her professional identity. She explored which patterns served her, which she needed to break, and how to rebuild her sense of purpose. As the sole representative of Howe To Consultancy in its early days, she had to define her core values, her vision, and the experience she wanted people to have when they worked with her. She understood that people needed to believe in her before they could believe in the business.
Networking also proved to be a significant challenge. Within the education system, networking had never been essential and her professional circles were limited to those inside the system. At first, she remained in familiar spaces, working with people she already knew. It took her two years to realise she needed to enter new rooms if her business was going to survive and achieve its mission. This required a major shift in her mindset so she could confidently build relationships with people who could become partners in driving change for young people.
Working alone was another obstacle. Without a team, Bex needed ways to overcome professional isolation. She joined peer networks, created her own groups for idea sharing and feedback, and scheduled regular check ins with mentors, collaborators, and trusted friends.
She also attended sector specific events not only for networking but for inspiration. Now in her fourth year of business, she continues to face these challenges but has built a stronger set of tools to navigate them.
The Common Thread That Connects Us All
When Bex founded Howe To Consultancy, she believed education was all she knew. As she began working with more practitioners and leaders, her understanding shifted. She discovered that people are fundamentally similar across sectors. Their fears, motivations, and needs share remarkable consistency. Most individuals want to belong, feel valued, experience autonomy and trust, gain opportunities to grow, and work in a culture where psychological safety allows them to ask questions, share ideas, and learn from mistakes without fear.
Although the context of each sector shapes organisational priorities and culture, Bex found that when individual needs are placed at the centre, organisations thrive. Instead of viewing each sector as a separate world, she focused on what people need at their core. This perspective allowed her to support leaders across education, corporate environments, and nonprofit spaces with insight and effectiveness.
Building Self Awareness as the Foundation of Leadership
Bex believes that self-awareness forms the foundation of all meaningful change because individuals cannot change what they do not first recognise. She explains that self-awareness helps people understand their patterns, values, and blind spots, which makes growth intentional rather than accidental. It reveals the deeper reasons behind behaviour and helps individuals understand why they react, resist, or repeat certain actions. Without this insight, people often attempt to change surface habits without addressing the root causes.
She notes that self-awareness builds emotional intelligence. When individuals recognise their own emotions, triggers, and responses to challenges, they become better equipped to manage themselves. Increased self-awareness also aligns daily actions with personal values and reshapes the way goals are set. Many people set goals based on external pressures, but with stronger self-understanding they begin to set goals anchored in purpose.
Bex emphasises that self-awareness becomes even more powerful when paired with purposeful feedback. This combination uncovers blind spots and supports deeper growth. Through coaching and bespoke leadership development programmes, she creates opportunities for reflection, realisation, and the identification of individual goals and development areas.
Understanding the Pentagon of Development
At the heart of Bex’s work lies the Pentagon of Development, which includes self-awareness, culture, strategic development, leadership, and training. She describes these five pillars as the essential foundation for transformational change because they influence both the mindset and the mechanics of how people grow and lead together. Without these elements, change remains superficial. With them, it becomes sustainable and empowering.
For Bex, self-awareness serves as the starting point. Individuals and teams must understand their values, behaviours, and blind spots in order to lead authentically and adapt to change. Culture acts as the invisible force that shapes how people behave and make decisions. A positive and inclusive culture makes change not only possible but energising.
Strategic development provides the organisation with a clear roadmap. Strategy transforms vision into action by aligning goals, resources, and priorities. Without strategic clarity and strong communication, the journey becomes fragmented and the destination unclear. If the team does not know where they are heading, they cannot move effectively.
Leadership acts as the catalyst for success. Transformational leaders inspire and empower others. They model the behaviours they expect from their teams and create an environment where growth and challenge coexist. Bex believes that leaders must have confidence, self- belief, and the necessary skills to guide others.
Training then equips individuals with the practical tools they need to take action. It builds capacity, strengthens confidence, and enables ongoing improvement across all levels of an organisation.
Bex sees these five elements as a living and adaptive framework for opportunity and success. They sit at the centre of everything she does. Her goal is not simply to deliver programmes but to nurture lasting transformation from within.
Crafting Change That Endures
When Bex speaks with potential or existing clients, her primary focus is always on what they need from her rather than what she needs from them. Her motivation remains rooted in a single purpose. She wants to support organisations and individuals so they can give every young person the opportunity to thrive and pursue the life they imagine for themselves.
Bex approaches every client individually. Some need immediate improvements. In these cases, quick solutions and practical steps serve as the starting point. Together, she and the client explore why the situation occurred and what must change to prevent it from happening again. This includes examining policies, processes, staffing, and the broader organisational context. These short-term solutions often address operational needs.
The long-term goals relate to strategic priorities. Bex explains that short term wins are often essential in making long term transformation possible. When people witness positive changes, momentum builds. Trust grows. Individuals become more invested in supporting the organisation’s larger strategic goals. In her experience, visible progress in the present creates a stronger commitment to the future.
Coaching as the Foundation of Her Practice
Bex explains that coaching sits at the center of her consultancy work. While there are moments when a mentoring approach is necessary because individuals may simply lack specific knowledge, she is clear that the role of a consultant is temporary. For meaningful and lasting change to occur, she believes the people within the organisation must be empowered to lead the work themselves.
She describes coaching as a tool that supports whole person development rather than limited role-based improvement. By asking thoughtful questions instead of providing direct answers, she helps individuals build confidence, trust and self-belief. Through this process they strengthen their ability to recognise challenges, prioritise effectively and make informed decisions. Coaching is woven into everything she does, creating space for conversations that are non-confrontational, non-judgemental and focused on the future.
Making the Invisible Culture Visible
Bex views culture as something that lives in people rather than in policies, and this belief forms the foundation of the Howe To Culture and Efficiency Dashboard. She designed the dashboard to give organisations a structured way to analyse, identify and discuss the essential elements that shape their internal environment.
Each dashboard examines the organisation through a particular lens such as staff absence, number of applicants, retention or demographic patterns. Once the data is gathered, Bex guides leaders through conversations that explore the possible stories behind the numbers. This reflective process encourages leaders to consider questions such as why a significant number of new starters leave within eighteen months or why certain roles attract very few applicants or why only a small percentage of leadership positions are filled internally.
The dashboard acts as a neutral presence that is both non threatening and impartial. It supports balanced and meaningful dialogue while helping leaders gain a realistic understanding of their culture and the areas that require attention.
Lessons From a Life Lived Across Sectors
Bex works with more than sixty organisations and volunteers with multiple charities. She reflects that these varied experiences have sharpened her insight, strengthened her response to challenge and expanded her understanding of the many opportunities for growth. This exposure has shaped her philosophy, deepened her impact and refined her leadership approach.
Her work has offered her a broad perspective on the factors that influence young people’s decisions. It has helped her recognise how different environments shape priorities, pressures and possibilities, making her more adaptable and empathetic. These experiences have pushed her to build a versatile toolkit, reinforcing her belief that skills such as coaching communication and inclusive leadership transcend sectors and are essential for creating sustainable change.
Her engagement with diverse systems has also strengthened her creativity in problem solving. She remains dedicated to innovation and builds purposeful relationships with changemakers across sectors. Through these relationships she has opened doors to collaboration and collective movement building. Navigating varied organisational cultures has further enhanced her ability to lead change in environments where uncertainty and complexity are common.
The Universal Human Need for Meaning
Through all her work, Bex has come to recognise a truth that applies across every organisation and every sector. People want to feel seen, valued and empowered. The desire for belonging, autonomy and growth is universal. When individuals connect with a deeper purpose, their motivation shifts from simple compliance to genuine commitment. This transformation fuels sustainable change and cultivates a sense of meaning and value.
Bex has also discovered that leadership is not about control. It is about creating conditions where others can succeed. It is relational, reflective and grounded in trust. Her cross sector experiences have been both invaluable and a privilege, offering her the insight needed to design and deliver programmes that are built not only on theory but on a lived understanding of what people truly need to grow, lead and make a real difference.
The Values That Ground Her
Bex explains that her work is rooted in helping people feel empowered and confident, and she relies on the same principles to guide her in her own life. Her core values are authenticity, equity, connection and joy. She describes these values as the golden thread that weaves through every aspect of her personal and professional world.
She leads with heart rather than hierarchy and is intentional in ensuring that every person she interacts with experiences her in a way that reflects who she truly is. Bex is a champion for every individual, especially those who are often overlooked or underestimated. She believes that meaningful change begins with strong and purposeful relationships and that every person has treasure within them. She simply sees it as her role to help uncover it.
Joy is a constant in her life. She wants others to experience the same sense of fulfilment and success that energises her. Each day she reflects on how she has made a positive difference to the people she has engaged with. She also considers how she might have made an even greater impact and thinks about the difference she wants to make the following day.
These values and reflective practices shape every part of her life. For Bex, Howe To Consultancy is not merely a business. She sees it as a movement for change, one that she hopes will continue long after her own involvement.
Keeping Bespoke Training Relevant
Bex ensures that the training provided through Howe To Consultancy remains current, adaptable and meaningful to organisations across different sectors. She sets aside dedicated time each week to work on the business rather than only within it. This includes reading current research and policy updates, attending national and international webinars on future thinking and innovative practice, and speaking with educators, practitioners and influential voices to deepen her understanding of emerging needs.
Her approach is simple. She listens, she contextualises, and then she resources. She is clear that she does not have every answer to every challenge facing young people and organisations, but she is absolutely committed to finding the person who does. She focuses on giving individuals on the front line what they genuinely need rather than limiting support to what she already offers. Bex proudly shares that she has never said no to a challenge, and her adaptability reflects her commitment to relevance and impact.
A Vision That Reimagines Education
Looking toward the future, Bex describes a powerful and far-reaching vision for Howe To Consultancy. She aims to contribute to a global shift in education, one in which every school, organisation and charity has the confidence, insight and resources to give every young person what they need to live the life they imagine for themselves.
Her aspiration is to build long term partnerships with people and organisations who share her passion for creating opportunity. Together she hopes they can identify the needs of young
people, design tools that respond to those needs and increase the collective impact across communities. She wants to free educators from the weight of administrative burdens and reconnect them with the joy of teaching and nurturing potential.
Through the development of a global network, Bex aims to influence practice, policy and
mindset. Her hope is to help shape a future in which every young person feels seen, supported and inspired to thrive.
