David Kidd

David Kidd is a leadership performance coach with more than three decades of experience across education, international business, organisational development, and senior-level coaching. His work is shaped by a long-standing commitment to helping people grow, not through pressure, but by reconnecting them with clarity, confidence, and the deeper sense of identity that makes leadership sustainable.

David's academic foundations began in science, earning a degree in Biology with a focus on population ecology. This early training in systems thinking, interdependence, and environmental dynamics continues to inform his perspective on leadership; people and organisations thrive or falter not in isolation but within interconnected systems that shape behaviour, stress, and potential.

He began his career in education, teaching English for Academic Purposes to Biologists in Italy before becoming Co-Director of Studies at an adult training organisation in Paris. There, he led a team of 40 trainers and delivered large-scale corporate training programmes for CAC 40 companies and government departments. These formative years reinforced his belief that meaningful development emerges from curiosity, trust, and an environment where people feel safe enough to expand.

In 1999, David joined MatchWare as Head of Educational Sales for the UK and France, spending over twenty years shaping major developments in educational technology adoption across Europe. He introduced the mind-mapping tool MindView into the UK's Disabled Students Allowance and Access to Work schemes, gaining deep expertise in how assistive technologies support neurodiverse students and professionals. He also introduced mind mapping to the French educational system, where it has since become a widely adopted pillar of modern pedagogy for vocational training. These innovations, long predating his own later diagnosis of ADHD and autism, became the early roots of his specialisation in neurodiversity support.

Following his own experience of burnout and identity disruption, David founded Focused Leaders in 2020, where he has since put in thousands of coaching hours. His work centres on burnout prevention and recovery, leadership identity, and supporting neurodiverse executives, especially those navigating ADHD, autism, and rejection sensitivity dysphoria. His coaching blends narrative methods, growth-mindset principles, incisive listening, and a deeply relational, human approach.

David is a member of EMCC and works actively as a volunteer for the charity Neurodiversity in Business.