Coaching is a guided, confidential conversation which empowers you to identify your goals and work towards achieving them.  It helps you to bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to be.  You will have time and headspace in a safe environment to focus on yourself and on being the best you can be. It is a journey of self-discovery; you will learn a lot about yourself, consider your strengths, explore what is really important to you and address the things that are holding you back.

Coaching is about putting you in the driving seat, empowering you to take control and get where you want to be. Often, it can change people’s mindsets - by rewiring internal thought processes that may be limiting our progress.

Many managers I speak to want a member of their team to focus on specific objectives, for example, improve their confidence, improve their leadership skills, improve communication with colleagues, improve certain aspects of performance at work.  The first step is to discuss these areas with your team member and see if they are willing to be coached on them and willing to take ownership and responsibility, with support.  If they are, then I recommend a three-way meeting with yourself, your team member and I to talk about coaching and how I could support you, and to agree together the key objectives for the coaching and how these will be evaluated.

No, coaching is not appropriate for this.  Coaching, unlike counselling or therapy, is not about exploring things that happened in the past.  We may touch upon things that happened, but only to learn from them, consider things that worked well, times you demonstrated key skills and strengths  and then look how to move forward.  Coaching is future-focused, positive and solution-focused.

In coaching, we will not ‘just have a chat’ about current challenges.  You will always consider what you want to achieve, explore what is getting in the way and you will be solution focused - developing plans to take forward.

You may be familiar with the quote ‘a goal is a dream with a deadline.’  I want you to dream – about what you want to achieve in your working life for you and for the charity you work for. By setting goals or clear intentions and then by developing action plans with timeframes, you can make these dreams happen.

‘Impostor syndrome’ and experiencing the voice of an ‘inner critic’ is exceedingly common.  You are not alone!  Coaching can help you to consider how to ‘counter’ this voice in your head, develop confidence and self-esteem, really believe in your own abilities and go on to achieve what you want to achieve.

Coaching can lead to increased income, increased productivity and impact, more effective service delivery, happier and more fulfilled staff – and therefore higher staff retention rates, which in turn saves money for the charity.

Benefits can include increased confidence, improved leadership skills, enhanced performance, development of new skills, feeling happier and more fulfilled, working and communicating more effectively with colleagues and feeling able to effectively manage conflict and change in your workplace.

No, coaching is not about giving you advice or guidance or even giving any opinions.  It is non-judgemental.  The focus with coaching is on asking you the right questions and sometimes taking you outside of your comfort zone, so you can find your own best way forward.

However, I have worked in fundraising over the past 25 years including in senior positions and have provided fundraising consultancy services since 2012 so if you do need advice or guidance about fundraising, I may be able to help you on a mentoring or consultancy basis – please do call me to discuss this. Some clients decide they would like a mix of coaching, mentoring and consultancy.

Each session will last 90 minutes.  You should dedicate a little time in your diary before and after the session as well to prepare, to reflect and to diarise actions to take forward.

It is really important that you prepare for your session and dedicate time for reflection before and after the session.  You will not want to be rushing out of a meeting and straight into your session as it’s important to be in the right frame of mind.  In addition, you will set yourself actions to work on before the next session.  For coaching to be successful, it’s critically important that you are prepared to invest time in yourself for the benefit of both you and your charity – to complete your actions and work towards achieving your goals.  If you are not ready to invest this time or to take ownership or responsibility for your own results in this way, then coaching is not right for you right now.

I recommend that sessions are held every two to four weeks; close enough to keep up the momentum and I recommend an initial programme of six sessions to enable you to make the progress you want to make and learn about yourself along the way.  Many people want to have more sessions than this which is fine.  We can continue for as long as you are finding it valuable – obviously if your budget allows.  It is important that coaching is not a dependant relationship; the focus will always be on you being in control.  Many people learn techniques and principles so that they are able to ‘self-coach’ – which I love to see!

No, I am happy to coach any member of staff within your charity. In addition to senior management teams and fundraising, I have coached staff in service delivery, finance and operations and charity retail.

Six sessions is generally the minimum I agree to as I really feel you need more than one or two sessions to make significant progress and get maximum value from the coaching. However, if you sign up to six sessions and find that you want to stop the coaching earlier as it is not suiting you, that is fine.  I would always want you to be honest with me and tell me if it is not right for you. Also, I always have a short ‘chemistry meeting’ with a client at no cost prior to the coaching starting to get to know each other. After this meeting, you can decide whether you feel I am the right coach for you.

Please email me to set up a time to chat about this. The cost will be for an initial programme of six sessions and will include provision of any appropriate tools and exercises which you or your team member can decide whether to use or not.  Also included in the programme cost is a meeting with the line manager and member of staff to discuss and agree objectives for the coaching and a review meeting, also with line manager and member of staff at the end of the coaching programme.

Definitely! This is really important.  I offer an initial meeting at no cost (virtually, on the phone or in person, depending on your location) so we can get to know each other a bit, you can find out more about coaching and how I work and you can decide if coaching is right for you or your staff and if I am the right coach for you. 

If you are interested in coaching for a member of your team, I suggest an initial chat with yourself and then a meeting with you, your team member and I at which we can discuss the objectives of the coaching, how it will be evaluated and how they will report back to you on their progress.

I am accredited to use a profiling tool called DISC which I think is a really powerful way of considering an individual’s ‘go to’ behaviour and communication preferences / style. It helps us to hold up a mirror and consider ourselves and then, consider others in our team, stakeholders and donors.

We may not see ‘eye to eye’ with everyone we work with and DISC helps us to realise that rather than having a moan, or hoping others will change, we can take control and adjust our behaviour and our communication to work more effectively with other individuals or to be more effective in the work we are responsible for. It also helps us to realise how valuable it can be when there are people in a team with different styles and approaches.

There are also great benefits to using DISC as a leadership or team development tool.  DISC helps us to consider everyone’s strengths and what they bring to the team.  It aids us to adjust our behaviour, for example, to see that more reserved members of the team who need more time to reflect, are given more time to consider issues and give their input. It could also, for example, help a team who all have tendency to be more focused on the bigger picture to be more focused on detail or a team with greater tendency to be more task focused to be more focused on people than they might naturally be inclined to be.

DISC is great alongside coaching; increased self-awareness and emotional intelligence can help us to set goals individually or as a team, leading to more effective and productive work and improved outcomes and impact for your charity.

I often ask coaching clients to complete a DISC profile as it helps me to understand them better and tailor my approach.

In addition, I love delivering team away days on DISC, effective communication and teamwork.

Don’t put it on the shelf and forget about it!  I can take you through the report and we can discuss it together. The real benefit of profiling is when you embed what you have learnt about yourself and about your team, you reflect on the learning and you use this learning on a daily basis in your working life.

I specialise in fundraising consultancy – based on my 25 years of experience in fundraising and having run a consultancy business since 2012. The main areas I enjoy helping charities with include support with writing a fundraising strategy, undertaking a detailed review of your grants / trust fundraising and developing strategies for grants / trust fundraising.  I am also happy to help with recruitment – for example, sitting on an interview panel.

I am happy to help in a mentoring capacity but generally, I am not taking on ‘hands on’ fundraising work such as bid writing, prospect research etc at the moment. However, please feel free to discuss your needs with me as I may know someone else who is able to help you.

In addition to DISC / team away days, I can offer training or ‘learning and reflection’ sessions for groups on areas including ‘improving management skills’, ‘banishing the inner critic’ and ‘improving communication and dealing with conflict and tension.’ These incorporate some theory along with some coaching techniques, encouraging those attending to reflect on their learning and what they can take forward and action.

I am also happy to provide bespoke training to meet your needs – particularly related to developing trusts / grants programmes, writing a case for support and fundraising strategy development.  I have provided training for staff and volunteers in the past on starting a trust fundraising programme from scratch, how to research trusts, developing and maintaining relationships with funders and writing strong applications.

If you have a challenging strategic issue to resolve as a team, I can help you by facilitating a meeting / away day to discuss and explore the issue and to reach decisions on the next steps. Please email me to have a chat about this if this is of interest.