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" I found the coaching immensely helpful and benefited from having regular meetings with an external experienced colleague to discuss aspects of leadership confidentially." |
What are our coaches typically like? Here we have profiled two of them so that you can see the type and quality of the people we have on our team.
Louisa Hardman is a respected coach and organisational consultant who brings extensive experience of the commercial, public and not-for-profit sectors to her work within higher education. Now, having coached vice-chancellors, registrars, deans and heads of department from within a range of Universities, she is familiar with the personal, professional and institutional implications of higher education’s rapidly changing context. Time and again, she has also been delighted to witness the positive impact of timely coaching on the confidence and achievements of senior leaders, whatever their portfolio.
What lies behind the success of coaching? Louisa sees the answer as being in the development of a respectful and confidential relationship based on a joint commitment to achieve the best possible outcomes for the client and institution. Reflective yet rigorous conversations are also critical; what are your intentions, how do these align with your values and the organisation’s culture, what within and around you impedes progress and how will you move forward? These are the kind of questions that elicit a rare combination of awareness, clarity and choice.
Clients say that they value the depth of Louisa’s insights, coupled by her ability to create the kind of empathic, challenging yet enjoyable tone that fosters fresh thought and practice.
David Wagstaff is a coach working at senior levels in higher education. His background is in both education and the private sector where he has worked on large scale organisational change programmes and coached senior executives.
David believes that coaching needs to be both supportive and challenging as clients explore both the difficulties and opportunities that accompany their roles. He encourages clients to explore what might be hindering them from achieving their full potential or what might be stopping them from achieving their organisational objectives. His focus is therefore on coaching the person in the role and the coaching has a strong developmental orientation.
He has a particular interest in top teams and has worked with a number of clients in helping them to understand their own team’s dynamics. A further interest is in working with senior academics who are moving into leadership roles often with little or no formal training. As well as coaching David is heavily involved in coach training both in the UK and Europe. He is a member of the coaching and mentoring research group at Sheffield Hallam university and held a visiting fellowship at Durham Business School from 2003 to 2009.