Geoffrey Still
Founding Director
My love of people has shaped my entire career and stemmed from three years teaching business English in Japan in the early 1990s. This eventually led me to roles where supporting people in their professional and personal growth became the every day.
After joining IKEA Australia in 1998, I moved to Melbourne in 2001 as HR Department Head to set up a greenfield superstore. This career-changing experience required me to build, lead, and inspire a team of 350 co-workers. The role prepared me well for my subsequent position as Human Resources Manager at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), where I led a team of six generalist HR Consultants supporting 650 employees. This complex environment included Executive Directors and their teams in sales, marketing, enterprise, healthcare, government, corporate affairs, compliance, and medical affairs.
These experiences laid a strong foundation for my work in consulting, where leaders are expected to create high-performance workplaces that enable teams to meet ambitious and often challenging goals.
“I am genuinely curious about humans and get great satisfaction from seeing organisations and individuals reach their full potential. If you're looking for a consultant who can quickly connect, while fostering inclusivity and healthy tension to create growth and change, I can help.”
30 years in the industry have taught me that the best results are achieved by asking questions people don't think to ask themselves, listening intently, and challenging assumptions about individuals, organisations, and systems. This, combined with good content and facilitation, allows me to provide bespoke solutions. Working through the bumpy parts, noticing patterns and shifts that need to happen, is where you find the gold.
My craft is ever evolving, and I am equally committed to my own growth and development to ensure I continue to create the right environment for professionals to develop their leadership practice. My leadership development and consulting are informed by a deep understanding of program design, group dynamics, and proven adult learning methodologies.
I work with a diverse client base across sectors, including retail, architecture, education, energy, aviation, healthcare, finance, FMCG, sport, government, and local council. While each sector has its own nuances, purposeful culture and strong capability development remain central to success in all of them.
Are you seeking to make positive and lasting change for yourself, your team or organisation?
Get in TouchCredentials
Geoffrey holds a Bachelor of Business Communications in Journalism (QUT), a Graduate Diploma in Employment Relations (UTS), and a Master of Applied Positive Psychology (University of Melbourne). He is an accredited Executive Coach and uses a range of psychometric instruments in his work, in particular: The Leadership Circle, Life Styles Inventory (LSI), MBTI, DiSC, Genos, and MSCEIT (Emotional Intelligence).
About You
Elevate's clients include new and established leaders, senior executives and CEOs. If you are after a coach or facilitator to support you, your team, or division to achieve goals, become more effective in leadership, or navigate and create cultural change, Geoffrey's bespoke methods will get you there.
Typically, clients come to Geoffrey seeking help to achieve meaningful growth and lasting change. Identifying interference points and barriers is often the first step, so Geoffrey designs each bespoke workshop using insights uncovered during discovery sessions. In larger organisations, it is often the people and culture, or talent development experts who reach out for advice. This stems from their organisational need for innovative and practical ways to navigate and solve challenges.
Geoffrey designs each bespoke workshop using insights uncovered during discovery sessions — identifying interference points and barriers is often the first step toward meaningful growth and lasting change.
SMEs that have moved beyond the start-up phase and now require critical HR consulting support are a growing part of Elevate's client base. Geoffrey advises on workforce and succession planning, and performance and development processes, to position your organisation for long-term success. He provides consulting support across the select, develop, and perform phases of the employee lifecycle. This includes senior-level recruitment, facilitated discussions and triangulated coaching, as well as organisational design consulting to minimise disruption and maximise productivity.
Leadership Development
Geoffrey brings a nuanced perspective on leadership and how it shows up in real workplaces. Leadership development is about building the capability, self-awareness, and confidence leaders need to perform effectively - both individually and collectively. Geoffrey leverages decades of experience both within organisations and as an external advisor to enhance his clients' capabilities. Effective leadership development begins with a genuine partnership. By creating a safe environment for honest enquiry and advocacy, Geoffrey works with clients to uncover their true needs and objectives and designs programs that respond to them. This may involve practical skills-building workshops to strengthen fundamental capabilities such as coaching, courageous conversations, and effective feedback, or deeper diagnostic work to understand what is happening beneath the surface within individuals or a team. In some cases, a more transformational leadership experience is required using tools such as 360-degree feedback instruments, including The Leadership Circle or LSI, to surface blind spots and accelerate growth. Geoffrey has extensive experience designing and delivering leadership development programs across both blue-chip organisations and SMEs and is highly skilled at holding groups in a way that enables meaningful development to occur.
Team Development
Teams are constantly evolving, and supporting their growth is key to achieving high performance. Geoffrey offers team development services, including culture and dynamics workshops that help teams understand how individual and collective behaviours affect productivity, morale, and the achievement of strategic goals. He is skilled at designing interactive sessions and 'safe-to-fail' activities that encourage collaboration, foster trust, and unlock a team's full potential.
Individual and Group Coaching
Geoffrey offers individual and group coaching that helps leaders at all levels identify, stretch and unlock their full potential. Through one-on-one sessions, he guides clients to overcome personal barriers, while facilitated group coaching builds insight, alignment, and momentum to achieve collective goals. Coaching can stand alone or elevate development programs for transformational impact.
HR Consulting
As SMEs grow, access to expert HR consulting becomes essential. Expanding teams, new clients, and increasing projects can create challenges around workforce and succession planning, performance development, organisational design, and recruitment processes. HR expertise is in Geoffrey's DNA, and by partnering with him, SMEs can minimise disruption, optimise productivity, and put the foundations in place for sustainable, long-term success.
Traditional growth metrics often overlook the importance of developing critical skills. Geoffrey’s compassionate yet unapologetic guidance has helped ensure our leadership and wider team’s growth has been truly rounded. Our team has grown not only in number, but in maturity, composure, and accountability. Geoffrey is a highly valued collaborator for HIP V. HYPE.
Geoffrey is an exceptional executive coach who brings a thoughtful, practical and highly personalised approach to leadership development. I have worked with Geoffrey since 2015, initially through a structured leadership development program for lawyers and subsequently through executive coaching. One of Geoffrey’s key strengths is the ability to combine deep experience, commercial pragmatism and a highly relatable style with coaching that is both insightful and outcomes focussed. Geoffrey also has an innate sense of perception that enables him to identify leadership capability and potential in others. Geoffrey’s coaching has played a significant role in my professional development and broader career progression. I would highly recommend Geoffrey to anyone seeking to further develop their leadership and executive capability.
From a school leadership perspective, the impact of Geoffrey's coaching has been both significant and sustained. Geoffrey has an exceptional ability to build strong, trusting relationships across staff, creating a safe and respectful space where honest reflection and professional growth can flourish. Through his relational approach, Geoffrey has empowered individuals to lead with confidence, clarity and purpose. This has not only enhanced individual capability but has also contributed to a more collaborative and aligned leadership culture. Through development programs and individual coaching, Geoffrey has supported meaningful and positive change within our school that has had a lasting influence on our staff and our culture. His ability to balance support with challenge has been instrumental in moving our leadership forward, and his influence continues to shape a reflective and improvement-focused culture within our community.
Geoffrey has supported me at various periods in my career over the past decade. He has been a constant in my work life, as I have moved through different roles and organisations and as I progressed to now being an executive. Geoffrey also facilitated sessions for my teams at the Florey Institute and Arts Centre Melbourne. Our long working relationship is testament to my trust in and rapport with Geoffrey. He knows me quite well professionally, especially as he coached me through my Leadership Circle Profile from our first engagement, but our conversations remain fresh and he continues to give me the supportive challenge I need. I value the balance of theory and concepts that Geoffrey offers, combined with practical tools that I can apply to my current work, and I particularly appreciate his prompts to continuously build foundations for the next stage in my career.
Say Hello
Geoffrey is always eager to connect with people, and to see how Elevate Leadership Development and Consulting can help you to achieve your people, business and strategic goals. Please feel free to call or email.