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My clients range from second jobbers navigating the work world, to those recently promoted or progressing within their field. I also coach people undergoing corporate restructures, career changes or easing into retirement.

So why coaching?

Rather than just being in the business of coaching; I'm focused entirely on coaching for business. That means I can deliver tangible solutions to specific challenges my clients are facing, and build strategies enabling them to progress.
My style is quite directional, so rather than asking 'open questions' as part of a personal development exploration, I seek to guide and support. My clients often bring me specific career challenges or changes they are having to navigate.

I've pulled together a few example case studies below, to illustrate the diverse range of people I've been privileged enough to work with. I engage with individuals with a wide range of experience and backgrounds, and I'm open to working either on an ad hoc basis, or as part of a longer term coaching or mentoring programme with clear, actionable outputs.
If you would like to know more, or have a chat about my approach and availability, please feel free to reach out by email at: [email protected] or message me on LinkedIn

Senior Executive sector change
Liz was seeking to re-launch her career direction away from her position as founder / owner of a successful licensing business, into a Senior Executive position in a specialist sector she had previously thrived in.

I worked with her to review her application process, presentation tone and direction and make sure she really 'told her story' to engage with her future employer.

“I found Sophie’s approach hugely helpful, pragmatic and insightful and would recommend her to anyone looking for advice around a career or sector change.
Not only was she able to advise on the bigger picture, Sophie supported me through the details on interview technique, presentation advice and general hand holding. She is very personable too, making the whole process much more enjoyable than I had anticipated.”

Recruitment and on-boarding for a growth business area
Adele was seeking to evolve her successful International Sales as she joined a new 'best in class' Art Photo Library as a Sales Manager. With a great track record in the Heritage sector and prior to that with an Editorial photo agency, she was perfectly poised to make the transition and maximise the sales opportunity.

With specialist experience in this area, I worked with Adele throughout her initial on-boarding and as she applied her extensive skills to successfully overhaul the agent business. I was able to support a highly personalised programme which accommodated the nuances in managing a mix of direct and indirect sales teams and the importance of bringing stakeholders 'along' with the journey to a successful blended sales operation.

"Sophie has been such a brilliant influence both personally and professionally. I feel hugely encouraged to step up and step over those sometimes niggling things that can hold you back, like imposter syndrome. Sophie is incredible at asking the right questions and giving you real life examples to enable you to crystallize your thoughts and put them into actionable action. With Sophie's support I feel empowered to take on new challenges!"

Promotion to manage a larger business area
Clare has recently been newly promoted to a senior management position within the events business of a global lifestyle magazine publisher. Her manager (the CEO) has recognised her consistent success and contribution to the business and readiness to move into a senior role.

Clare’s mentoring programme aims to focus on raising both her personal profile and gravitas within the management team, as well as developing a bespoke approach to managing the performance of her events team for success. The intention is to maximise new business opportunities and manage deadlines and priorities with a sharp focus on delivering profitable, successful events. The ambition is also to tackle specific people development challenges faced in the new role, as the relatively inexperienced team evolves to embrace a more proactive business culture and increased responsibility. The year-long programme aims to deliver tactical and strategic approaches to optimise the impact of the new role within the business and externally with clients and partners.

"Sophie has helped me evaluate the effectiveness of my current ways of working; upwards with my manager, sideways with my peers and across my team to my direct reports. Our mentoring sessions have enabled me to step back and look at ways of increasing my personal impact and manage effective communication to engender confidence in me and the wider team to consistently deliver successful and profitable events. We also aim to tackle managing challenging conversations, for example; when a new client event is pitched, and may not fit with our busy events programme. We will explore tactical approaches; like putting structures in place to enable simpler, more transparent commercial decision-making at proposal stage, as well as ensuring my decisions are communicated with clarity and confidence."

Early career industry change
Jasmine was seeking to develop her CV and career profile following her successful completion of her Post Graduate Diploma at UCL. Her exemplary academic track record made an ideal foundation for applications and the recruitment process. However, working from a position of starting off in the work world, and in competition with many more experienced applicants, she needed to tailor her CV, personal profile and applications to ensure that previous work experience was effectively woven into her 'story' to reinforce her suitability for new roles and new sectors.

After her first job in recruitment, I worked with Jasmine at this important career point to prepare her for this next step to successfully secure interviews and her chosen new industry sector. Based on her openness to coaching and ability to build out an enhanced CV and profile, Jasmine's success has led to multiple promotions, and swift career progression.

“Sophie helped me appreciate that I had way more to offer employers than purely academic success and 'staying power' having recently completed my Post-Grad diploma. Our coaching work enabled me to surface a diverse range of highly relevant skills gained as part of my work experience, summer teaching abroad, and ad hoc volunteering projects. She encouraged me to think about how this could translate to the specific roles I was applying for, which was instrumental as I was moving industry.

The confidence that I could demonstrate good leadership skills, and pull disparate teams together was a great foundation to kicking off my job search. Presenting my skill sets positively and having developed that approach, was key to feeling prepared for my interviews and ultimately landing my new role."

Career hiatus driving a new direction
Wendy’s team has been part of an organisational restructure, which she felt, neither played to her strengths, nor recognised her highly respected experience. She is open to change, but needs to ‘reframe’ the situation to facilitate that. There are a few factors at play; career stage, financial stability and changing personal circumstances. She is open to change and transition; ultimately she wants to give herself the best shot at ‘opening a new chapter’ positively and taking control of her own destiny.

Wendy and I are working together to give her the tools to explore her ambition and plan approaches to develop long term goals, which work for both her career and life plans. This way she can action practical change to give her more control of her external profile and gain clarity on the factors driving her decision making on next steps, and the type of job and career direction that she wants to follow.

“I approached Sophie for help as I was trapped in circular thinking and unable to plan for my next phase of life. From our first meeting, Sophie put me back in the driving seat and enabled me to reframe my situation.
She validated the challenges I was experiencing and helped elevate me out of a victimised mindset. Together we put together an approach, with achievable steps and a timeline for change. She encouraged me to have a voice and this has had an immediate impact on my mindset and current work experience"

Planning a positive career wind-down to pre-retirement
It’s hard sometimes to face the fact that you’re no longer really part of an industry you’ve loved for decades. In some ways it defines your image of yourself and your life successes, so facing that it’s coming to an end is significant. Jack faced just this challenge. He had had a “eureka moment” over his Christmas break, thinking of starting yet another year doing what he’d always done. A rapidly changing market, economic challenges and a reality check that positive change was needed, led to him reaching out to me.

First, we acknowledged what was happening and that reaching a decision that change was necessary, wasn’t an overnight decision. Helping him accept that he was entering a new phase of his life that wasn’t easily “pigeonholed”, proved to be the catalyst that helped Jack think positively about career change, especially given how entrenched he had always been in his previous world. It was important to verbalise his decision to make changes as emotionally, he was clearly upset that he no longer felt he belonged in that industry. Together we worked on planning the next few months, and how he could approach winding down his successful career in that space. It became his pre-retirement phase - not just a switch being turned off.

Jack had also been learning new skills over a period of 4 years in tandem with his other career. Our coaching sessions revealed that the new direction he had been following, had actually become his new passion. Giving him this clarity of thought, empowered him to develop his external career profile with a different voice and showcasing these new skills. Financially he had also started considering other ways to earn money which didn’t rely on his black book. He has become more open to the idea of a gentle career step-change way out of his comfort zone.

"When you're in your late teens, early 20s, and desperately trying to find your place in the world, you need someone you can respect and trust implicitly.
Navigating from a career that has consumed me for most of my working life, into the final stages of work feels exactly the same. Fortunately I found Sophie. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend her to anyone who finds themselves struggling to find the positives that this kind of change inevitably brings."

Managing a re-organisation
Louise was facing a challenging situation within her events business area. The wider company was undergoing a significant reorganisation borne from a mix of cost reduction and strategic realignment for the longer term. She approached me to find a way to navigate her way through a very stressful and challenging situation, to move forward into a calm, clear thought process and approach to her future choices within the framework of a redundancy programme.

I was there to clearly lay out a way to formulate a constructive approach to planning her future next move - into a freelance business and beyond.

“I approached Sophie with a view to addressing a very difficult work situation; where I was at personal risk within a structured redundancy programme. I had toyed with 'going it alone' as a freelance events manager, so it was important to plan on a neutral level and evaluate the opportunity based on the new circumstances I faced. From our first discussion, Sophie gave me the space to explore all options - and how I felt about it all with a clear head. From feeling quite abstract and out of my control, we started to look at real steps to moving things on constructively.

Some of the fear factor and imposter syndrome came to the forefront, but I found I was able to rationally verbalise my ambition and had clearly gone further in my thought process than I expected. Sophie has a habit of reinforcing the positive, and was very sympathetic to my situation; she perfectly understood the anxiety I was feeling and from the get go, I felt validated and that I was in a very trusting environment. I would recommend working with Sophie either for a specific work issue like mine, or for a longer term coach or mentor at critical points in a career path.”

Career Dilemma
Caroline approached me as she was facing a dilemma in her role within a small production company; after 10 years in her tenure, both the business and the team were growing. However, the knock-on effect of this change was a significant dilution of her responsibilities, lack of recognition of her obvious skills and experience in the position and general misunderstanding of what she could bring to the company as a whole.

She approached me to find a way to articulate some of the obvious frustrations around the situation and to formulate a constructive way forward.

“I wanted to work with Sophie to address a very difficult situation at work, which was beginning to turn into a crisis. The Team dynamic had changed significantly and I felt a real lack of control with my circumstances and despite my efforts to offer constructive actions to resolve this, was unable to get over the negative feelings of what was happening to me. From our first session, Sophie enabled me to explain the situation openly and describe some of the behaviours which had led to my needing her coaching - some of which had triggered a high level of anxiety around my changing role and the lack of control or input I had in this.

Sophie is both empathetic and constructive and perfectly understood the situation - validating the challenges I was experiencing and helped me start exploring the building blocks I needed to address each challenge. She supported me to find my own voice and start thinking more positively about my future within the business and beyond.”