Approach

Growth and development are fundamental to human well-being as well as to success for individuals, teams and organisations. My focus is on helping work to be a place of fulfilment, learning and motivation. I base my work on a number of assumptions and principles.

Solid Research. Whatever I teach or speak about needs to be grounded in solid research or very well established practice. Wherever possible I have applied this learning to myself before offering it to others.

People are worthy of respect. Even if their behaviour is difficult, when they are treated in the right way, their motivation is better and performance improves.

Relevance. Any coaching, training or facilitation I provide needs to be of demonstrable value to the person or organisation commissioning it.

Everybody can learn. And grow and develop if they choose, but the organisational climate in which they operate can powerfully encourage or obstruct this development and therefore the level of performance they attain.

Training and Research

I am a strong believer in continuing personal development (CPD) and I submit a CPD account each year to my coaching supervisor as part of being an accredited tutor and supervisor for coaching and mentoring qualifications with the ILM (Institute of Leadership and Management).

For the past 10 years I have studied Positive Psychology which is a relatively new field of psychology which brings together high-quality research and real applicability in the workplace. Positive Psychology challenged the traditional approach of psychologists which tended to focus on people when things went wrong, for example through brain injury or depression. It focuses instead on people at their best, when they are happy, fulfilled and functioning at a high level.

I have also trained in Gestalt therapy and in Neuro-linguistic Programming.

Many Sectors, Similar Challenges

I enjoying making connections and taking learning from one sector into another. Although environments vary widely, I have seen that the challenges people face at work are often quite similar. I have worked with many clinicians, with senior military officers, with engineers, with finance people, with entrepreneurs, with social workers and with council employees. While the differences are very obvious, I’m often surprised at how similar they are under the surface.