How I came to coaching
I first experienced coaching when I worked in the Civil Service. The high quality coaching with Eric Decker helped me change my whole approach to life and how I think for the better.
I got my first coaching experience as a volunteer for a disability charity on their leadership programmes. I also joined my department’s internal coaching group supporting new staff and those preparing for promotion.
My starting point in coaching is that anyone can become happier. To do this we need to understand ourselves well first.
By listening actively, asking good questions and providing encouragement to see all options available and make a clear decision about the best ones, coaching can help you to ‘see yourself’ clearly, and appreciate yourself fully, often for the first time.
I have seen people I coach transformed by their positive decisions. Whether it is clients applying for (and often getting) a new job or promotion, trying something they have wanted to do for years or achieving a better balance in their life, nothing compares to the satisfaction this brings me as a coach.
I enjoy all aspects of coaching but the areas I love the most are: developing self-confidence and self-awareness, resilience and handling change and challenge.
My approach to coaching
I start from the assumption that every person has within their power the ability to contribute and gain fulfilment and happiness. I view the coaching conversation as one of the best ways to help you, the client, discover how to achieve this. This is about listening to the whole person.
As a deaf coach, as well as listening to what you – as my client - say, I also pay attention to how you say it, read your body language and am alert to your mood and your personal atmosphere.
I often find that the client has the best systems within them to understand themselves and enjoy, where possible, bringing this out and making good use of it. As well as encouraging you to make progress, I try to support you to develop longer-term awareness – for example be aware not just of your progress but how you got there, so that you can capture and use the techniques and approaches in future after you finish coaching.
My experience
My career has encompassed professional music, teaching and lecturing, editorial work, diplomacy, charity governance and being a coach, equality campaigner and social entrepreneur. I have worked in the UK, Poland and Finland. This diverse career has provided me with some fantastic opportunities and some extreme tests of my resilience.
I have studied and worked as a woman in male-dominated institutions, and e.g. have gone from a northern state school to an elite university and F.E lecturing to the diplomatic service. Since becoming deaf in my mid-twenties, I have encountered both the joy of difference – being able to use my influence to benefit large numbers of people, and the devastating and isolating experience of discrimination, which I have always challenged constructively.
I deeply believe that nobody can remove or devalue your experience unless you allow them to. This has enabled me to use experience to achieve positive change for myself and others. And this is why I chose to join Result CIC.
My education includes a degree from Cambridge and an MEd from the Open University. After gaining some experience as a coach, I took a Level 7 certificate then ILM diploma in Executive coaching.
I have been honoured to receive several awards for my work in Poland on disability rights legislative reform (2007–10), to be an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University (2017), and to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). I am also an Ambassador for the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA).
Outside my work with Result CIC I give keynote speeches (including for Birmingham Business School’s Board, Liverpool John Moores University and Leeds University). I have also participated in evidence sessions for the Parliamentary Work and Pensions Committee and given talks for several women’s organisations including Women for Women UK, Wintrade and for Springboard programmes.