I'm an ICF-accredited Leadership & Team Coach and iEQ9-certified Enneagram practitioner. I work with leaders and teams using Source™ — a methodology built from fifteen years inside high-performance environments.
I spent 15 years building and leading creative teams at some of the world's most recognised agencies — including as Managing Partner at Publicis Groupe. My world was fast, high-stakes, and built entirely on the performance of people.
Campaigns had deadlines. Clients had expectations. Teams had to deliver, regardless of what was happening beneath the surface. What I learned in those years wasn't just how to run a department.
"It was how teams actually work — the invisible dynamics that either accelerate or undermine performance. Trust. Communication. How people show up under pressure versus how they show up when things are easy."
The gap between what a team looks like on an org chart and what it actually feels like to be inside it. That gap is where leadership either happens — or doesn't.
I reached a point where the external success didn't match what I felt internally. I'd built something I was proud of — but I was also burned out, asking questions I'd buried for years, and ready for something more meaningful than the next pitch win.
Coaching found me at that inflection point. What I discovered through training, through practice, and through working with clients — was that the skills I'd built leading teams were exactly what leaders in transition needed.
Not theory. Not frameworks borrowed from a textbook. The real thing. The weight of a decision made under pressure, the specific exhaustion of holding a team together through change, the loneliness of leadership at the top of an org chart.
"That experience didn't just inform my coaching — it is my coaching."
I work with leaders and their teams across industries using Source™ — a coaching methodology that traces leadership challenges back to their origin, and builds lasting change from there.
Source™ integrates diagnostic depth work, Enneagram precision, and transition psychology — grounded in the credibility of someone who has actually led inside high-performance environments, not studied them from the outside.
I'm based in South Africa and work with clients globally — directly and through a network of associate partnerships with leading coaching and consulting firms.
How we can work together →
Source™ is built on a simple belief: sustainable change only happens when you find what's actually driving the challenge — not just what's visible on the surface.
Most leadership development focuses on skills and behaviours — what you do. Source™ goes beneath that. We look at what's shaping how you show up, what patterns are driving it, and what a more conscious choice would look like.
When that foundation shifts, outer change becomes sustainable. Not managed. Not performed. Built from the inside out.
— Clinton Middleton, Johannesburg
The discovery call isn't a sales call. It's a real conversation about where you are, where you want to go, and whether my approach is the right fit for what you need.
"Clinton's ability to listen, challenge, and guide was exactly what I needed to stay focused and on track."
Federico D. — GM, Video Husky
"Clinton created a safe space that helped me see the bigger picture — both personally and professionally."
Judy S. — Consultant, WPO