Fifteen years in organisations, six of them coaching inside them.
I am not a coach who has never done the job. That turns out to matter more than any qualification.
A head of department who stopped believing in the job, and worked out what to do about it.
Nadia Rowe spent fifteen years in organisations, the last six of them managing people, before training properly as a coach. It took two years and a fair amount of unnecessary misery to work out what came next — largely because there was nobody to ask.
She is accredited with a recognised coaching body, with supervision every month, and now works from a studio room in Paddington, seeing people online and in person.
Four things, two of which cost me work fairly regularly.
Six sessions, then it ends
Coaching should be time-limited. Open-ended arrangements are good for coaches and rarely good for clients.
I will refer you on
If what you need is therapy, medical help or a lawyer, that is said early, with help finding it.
No guaranteed outcomes
Anyone promising a promotion or a new career by a date is selling something. What is on offer here is better thinking, and someone to be accountable to.
Confidential, with two limits
Everything stays between us except a risk to your safety or someone else’s, and those limits are set out before we start.
What a session is like.
Mostly questions
Not advice — I talk considerably less than you do. If you are getting advice for an hour, you have hired the wrong thing.
A written summary
Within a day — Covering what we covered and what you said you would do.
Something to do
An experiment, not homework — Every session ends with a small, specific, testable action.
Contact between sessions
Short messages included — So nothing has to wait a fortnight.
Ask me one question.
Plenty of people message once and never become clients. That is a perfectly good use of me.