Creating effective and engaged teams and leaders
Coaching provides a safe, confidential space for individuals or teams to explore the challenges they face and identify the actions needed to build success.
INDIVIDUAL COACHING
Individual coaching is a powerful tool for growth and sustainable change. Working with the right coach is often the key to unlocking an individual’s thinking.
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It supports individuals to achieve what they want or need in their professional or personal lives.
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It works for anyone who is open to change and wants to be challenged to explore, articulate and maintain focus on what will really make the difference for them.
TEAM COACHING
Team coaching supports teams to deliver high performance and business success.
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It builds understanding of collective strengths and weak spots and raises individual self-awareness of how each member is experienced by others.
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Leaders have a unique role to play in this process and following a team coaching event, often engage with individual coaching to support them to be the leader they aspire to be and explore their personal challenges in leading the team’s success.
WHY PARTNER WITH THE BLUE GNU COACHING TEAM?
Between them the Blue Gnu coaching team have many years’ experience of coaching.
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We work with teams and individuals at all levels within an organisation, from new managers and emerging leaders to senior executives.
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Our backgrounds are within a diverse range of organisations in the private, public and charity sectors where our unique styles and approaches have supported businesses to achieve success.
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We offer free thirty minute ‘chemistry calls’ and recommend you speak to a few different coaches to find one with the right chemistry and fit for you and/or your team.
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If there is a broader need for coaching support within your organisation, our team can work with you to develop a programme that ensures a range of coaching experiences and styles to suit all needs.
As a coach Clare loves working with leaders and individuals to help them remove barriers to the realisation of their goals and full potential. Clare works from the belief that the coachee already has everything they need to succeed but that we all sometimes need a different perspective and help to work on our limiting beliefs. Expect a coaching session with Clare to be engaging, supportive as well as challenging with clear accountability and outcomes.
Clare’s wide experience, combined with her engaging and pragmatic style will enable you to be clear about your outcomes and how you are going to reach them.
Stephen combines more than ten years of executive coaching with 20+ years in international business consulting and blue-chip leadership. He has the presence, energy and acumen to partner senior leaders and executives as they navigate the growing complexity and uncertainty of today’s environment and stakeholder demands.
When it comes to Stephen’s areas of expertise, he is very confident when coaching senior leaders and executives through change. Working with them to develop their authentic leadership style, inspire self and others and their approach and presence. He also enjoys transition coaching, including international transitions and leading across cultures, plus leading virtual and matrix teams. Stephen works with his coachees at a mindset level to help get clarity on behaviours and desired impact on self, others and the business.
Some of Stephen’s recent work has included coaching a newly appointed Exec at a UK Bio Pharma organisation. The client’s transition from a senior leader to being part of the Exec team was particularly challenging due to large scale internal change and CEO moving on. As a result of Stephens coaching, the client shifted their perspective from tactical issues to those of medium and long-term strategy. They gained the trust of the Exco and led his team towards achieving strategic imperatives with high double-digit growth.
Stephen is a licensed practitioner of Insights Discovery, ORSC trained, and an accredited MBTI practitioner. He holds a certificate in coaching from Henley Business School and is ICF trained (International Coach Federation)
“You delivered this brilliantly, made it interactive and fun and the energy kept flowing the entire day that the leadership team spent together. The material and tools provided were just right and it felt more of a team bonding experience rather than “training” in the strict sense. Everyone was buzzing about this experience until the late hours of the night!”
Senior leader at Gilead following a team coaching day
Toby combines his interest and passion in understanding how our minds work with 30 years of experience working in academic, industry and consultancy sectors.
Toby's approach is to listen without judgement so as to gain an understanding of the person he is coaching, and then to take the conversation 'upstream' at some point to view things from a different perspective.
Toby is interested in what brings people to life, what they really want, as well as which of the stories we tell ourselves are genuinely true versus those that strangle our life energy and stop us from fulfilling our potential. Gaining this clarity can help transform how a coachee sees their situation and their mind habits, as well as identify what action is required (if at all).
Toby is accredited in this type of transformative coaching after attending the Genius Catalyst course for coaches by Michael Neill. Toby is also a licensed practitioner of both Insights Discovery and Motivational Maps, which can be used within the coaching sessions to help raise self-awareness and understand key motivators. Self-awareness is key to understanding and allowing ourselves without judgement and therefore harnessing our full personal power.
"I recently had the pleasure of working with Toby. From our first session, his warm and approachable demeanour made it easy for me to open up about my personal and professional experiences. Always listening and asking insightful questions encouraged me to reflect on my goals and aspirations. The process was incredibly helpful, and I often found myself reflecting on my circumstance from an alternative perspective.
What truly stood [out] was Toby’s personal approach. Each session felt like a journey, allowing me to explore & understand my own solutions. Thanks to his support, I’ve gained a renewed sense of confidence, enabling me to view challenges with a fresh outlook. I’m grateful for his guidance and look forward to applying what I’ve learned as I move forward."
Coaching client who had 6 sessions
Lorraine has over 20 years senior leadership and coaching experience within a range of sectors including Financial Services and Publishing. She believes passionately in the power of coaching to support individuals to be the best version of themselves in all areas of their professional and personal lives. She has an energetic and inspiring personal style and looks to quickly build rapport and trust, creating a confidential and safe space. She supports her clients to explore their goal, challenging them to articulate and maintain focus on what will really make the difference – to take the action that will ensure they achieve high performance and/or sustained change.
As well as coaching individuals, Lorraine is also a team coach who works with leaders and their teams to explore how their collective dynamic can support improved team working and increase business performance.
Lorraine is an accredited Senior Coaching Practitioner with the European Coaching and Mentoring Council (EMCC) and a Licensed Insights Discovery Practitioner. She can draw on a range of approaches, tools, psychometrics and 360 Feedback to support her clients on their coaching journey.
“Lorraine created an atmosphere that made me feel safe to explore ideas without fear of being judged. She asked questions that really cut through the layers of what is going on and helped me to pay attention to and identify my blind spots.”
Coaching client
Briony
Lawton
Briony has a deep understanding of how vulnerable it can feel to be authentic in corporate environments, how it feels to seek time and space to think in the fast-paced nature of corporate environments, senior leadership positions and life.
Today, she focuses her coaching to support coachees in creating space to breathe, slowing down and time to think in senior leader coaching and facilitation, whilst bringing with her a wealth of experience from the corporate world. She combines her understanding of business with her knowledge and experiences of organisational dynamics in coaching and facilitation to develop the internal resources to slow down, create work-life harmony, align with what matters, adapt and develop resilience in changing and fast paced environments.
For Blue Gnu, she typically focuses on coaching for human centred leaders, who are seeking space to think, create work-life harmony and are keen to align to their values / what matters where they are. She incorporates Insights Discovery personality profiling to support self-discovery, relationship building and strategies for resilience and work-life harmony.
Briony’s background is a 20+ year corporate career in senior leadership in Human Resources and Organisation Development mainly in the media industry from commercial radio, BBC and TI Media publishing, where she was HR Director.
She has a deep knowledge and experience in strategic Organisation Development having trained with NTL in 2017 and led transformations in businesses through strategic HR and Organisation Development leadership.
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I had the pleasure of being coached directly by Elaine, and Will, on our Institute of Leadership and Management Development Programme. Elaine encouraged to me express myself, and reflect positively on my actions and decisions. She gave honest, and explicit, feedback - encouraging me to work with ‘positive regard’ and recognise unconscious bias both in myself and others. My suggestion when working with Blue Gnu is to approach with an open mind and blank notebook.
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