A common type of coaching client for me is a person in a leadership role who needs more support.

I coached a leader that was a high performer, which is why she was promoted, but now needed to move away from ‘doing’ to create strategic thinking space. I helped her prioritise what she does and doesn’t need to do, while helping her develop the capability of her team of managers. We also worked on increasing her resilience around the competing demands of work and life.

Newly promoted managers are another kind of common coaching client for me.

A new manager had been promoted above their peers and needed to learn how to manage people well while stepping away from operational tasks. I built my client’s confidence around delegating to his team and helped him understand that in a leadership role, your success is enabling and developing your team, not doing everything yourself. This helped him find what being a good people manager looks like to him.

Particularly in the last few years, a large number of my clients have needed support in how to manage their teams and innovate their services through rapid and significant change.

I’m taking one of my coachees through change leadership at the moment, looking at how change is a constant and what that looks like in a people management and leadership environment. The change management model that I’ve developed, FHOCAL™, offers a framework for her to manage her team through change so that they can thrive in, cope with and adapt to change in a positive way.

I really enjoy helping to resolve conflict in business partnerships. Often the leadership and management issues are still there, but with the added psychological dynamic of how they work together.

Two business owners weren’t speaking when I started working with them. I took a strengths-based approach which helped them understand their differences, leadership styles and emotional intelligence states. Between a mixture of psychometric tests, working one-to-one and joint coaching, I helped them rebuild their relationship and remain in business.

Three friends started a business during the pandemic but found they often argued. I identified that, although they trusted one another as friends, they didn’t trust one another as business partners. They didn’t know how to communicate and would keep issues hidden which would then explode. Again, using a strengths-based approach and team coaching, I helped each person understand what they brought to the dynamic and what their purpose is. I coached them in how to have conflict discussion in a healthy way, which stopped them from having explosive arguments and made room for them to collaborate better.