Thoroughly Good

Coaching isn’t a cosy chat. It’s a rigorous, collaborative process that challenges assumptions, provokes new thinking, and creates lasting change.

With well over 5000 hours of coaching experience across a 14 year career, Jon Jacob’s approach is rooted in intelligence, empathy and logic — direct, unsentimental, and transformative.

Jon Jacob is an executive and leadership coach, trained by the BBC and working across media, finance, technology, arts, and beyond. He helps leaders at every level — from C-suite to entrepreneurs — develop confidence, communication, presence, wellbeing, and strategic thinking.

Working to International Coach Federation guidelines, Jon’s approach is distinctive for its boldness and rigour. He partners with curious, open-minded, and spirited individuals who have an appetite for change and the courage to confront the difficult and sometimes uncomfortable.

His down-to-earth style avoids the jargon and aesthetics of coaching, therapy, or mental health care — preferring intelligence, relatability, and humour to challenge thinking and bring about change.

Jon has an aversion to inspirational quotes, hacks, quick fixes, fluffy language, performative content and empty guarantees. None of these appear in his work.

Clients invest not for comfort but for challenge. Jon acts as a critical ally — a thinking partner who brings logic, empathy, and analysis to every conversation. His coaching helps clients see assumptions clearly, refine strategies, and build sustainable new patterns of thinking.

Jon’s 30-year career spans arts management, journalism, IT, design, project management, PR, digital strategy, and content production. He has worked for major media organisations including the BBC, Financial Times, and Bauer Media, and with leading orchestras, venues, and training programmes across Europe and beyond.

That same curiosity and drive have shaped projects as diverse as a research study on the history of European broadcasting, radio production, and work with charities in Nepal. The energy and optimism he brings to these ventures infuse his coaching — a quality clients consistently cite as transformative.

Jon also writes about classical music, literature, and television on the Thoroughly Good Blog, an independent platform exploring how culture connects to how we live and think. It’s this mixed portfolio — three decades of real-world experience — that gives his coaching its texture, perspective, and impact.

How would you describe your style?

“I’m a critical ally. You set the agenda. I challenge, push, and cajole in pursuit of your goal. I’ll also provide accountability. I’m unorthodox. I disrupt. I dress down. I’m not afraid to experiment — or find the humour in a situation. Coaching sessions are too valuable to do anything but get to the nub of the challenge quickly.”

How did you get into coaching?

“I’m often asked how I got into coaching. Like many of the things I love, it was serendipitous — maybe even accidental.

I ended up working for a brilliant man at the BBC who, unbeknownst to me, was training to be a coach. He used a thinking framework that empowered me. I grew in confidence during the four years I worked with him.

When he left, the team went into a steep decline, and I realised how much his approach had mattered. Some of us signed up for coaching through the BBC to help support us through the transition to a new way of working.

At the end of that programme, I knew I wanted to provide the same service for others. It was the first time the insights from therapy became tools for action. That was fourteen years ago, a moment when I discovered a vocation.”

How do you know when the coaching is working?

“The client will often report that they’re feeling lighter, more energised, perhaps even more grounded.

From my perspective as coach there is a different feel to the conversation. There is clarity in the connection. A charge or a spark. That might be discernible in subtle shifts in pace, more pauses, or more silence. Sometimes the eyes brighten or the shoulders relax.

Sometimes its something that occurs outside of the session and the client reports it when we meet up again. That’s when the coaching has shifted up a gear. Its quite something to bear witness to.”

What kind of people do you work best with?

“The richest conversations often come about when the client is open — and by extension, brave. Just showing up, or even making the request to embark on a programme, is already evidence enough of the co-creative relationship between coach and client.

There needs to be a willingness to experiment, maybe even a sense of playfulness. A sense of ease and a down-to-earth outlook helps. And there has to be a desire to have fun — none of us want to find ourselves in yet another dull, unproductive meeting.

These and many other qualities are usually already present in the client’s day-to-day experience.

What’s most important is that you don’t think that I’m there to provide the answers. My role is help you find and implement your own.”