Coaching | Personal Development

My experience of coaching

I am an organisational psychologist and often work on various kinds of change issue, and part of most change assignments is a personal coaching element.  I have coached many Chief Executives, Directors and senior managers, in their role as managers, as leaders of change, and also in their quest for personal development.  I have, at any one time, a number of coaching assignments, and also supervise other coaches

I am also a counsellor and psychotherapist, and am usually working with four or five individuals going through significant personal change, so I integrate my experience of organisations ,and of psychotherapy, into my coaching work.

I also supervise other coaches and am an ‘EMCC Accredited Coach/Mentor Supervisor’.

Qualifications

I gained my MBA from Cranfield School of Management.  I also hold a Diploma in Organisation Consulting (Gestalt), a Diploma in Clinical Psychotherapy (from the Gestalt Practitioners Training Institute) and an MSc in Gestalt Psychotherapy from Middlesex University.

My approach to coaching

My approach to coaching is based on the assumption that people cannot become something they are not; they can only become more of what they are.  So I encourage managers/leaders to inquire in depth into their present context, the role and style they adopt, their patterns of behaviour and relationship, and their thinking and assumptions which inform their current practice. 

Out of this exploration will emerge an appreciation of their strengths, and also the issues they want to address; for example their tendency to make decisions on their own; their difficulty in delegating; their work overload or whatever the issue is, and I help them to become more aware of what 'drives' sometimes ineffective behaviour.

I then help them to re-think their role or to try out different leadership styles or behaviours as 'experiments'; we need to think of change and development as a process of continuous experimentation.