What profession were you in before coaching?
I was group training manager for a leisure company, after attending the Coaching Academy’s two days I thought wow I want more, I enrolled for a diploma, qualified and I’m now a wellbeing and performance coach.
Has Coaching given you a sense of purpose?
At the start of the new millennium, I began looking for new career options and had one of those ‘rocking chair’ moments. You know the one where you look back at your life and tick off the things you’re proud of and consider the missed opportunities. I retrained as a teacher and started my coaching journey in 2004. Coaching helped me realise there were other things I wanted to do and enabled me to set some clear goals to help me get there. With the help of a coach and the use of coaching and NLP techniques I was able to create a clear sense of purpose and summon the courage and confidence to take the leap of faith needed to give up a salaried job and step out into the unknown to start my own business. I’ve used coaching to help me with personal and business challenges ever since.
How did you make the transition to Coaching?
Coaching was not a new path for me, I had some experience of being coached or coaching within the sport and leisure sector for over 30 years, and although not the same as being a life coach I did find many transferrable skills making the transition into life coaching a more natural process. Life Coaching has helped me to become more self-aware, ask better questions of myself and others and provided me with a fantastic tool for helping people to achieve their goals.
Has coaching provided you with a more flexible career?
It was one of the things that gave me the confidence to give up ‘a proper job’ (my brother’s expression) and become self-employed. I am now able to work with people who share my values and do the jobs that give me the most satisfaction as well as pay the bills.
What difference has coaching made to your family life?
I think I’ve become more tolerant of myself and others and become a better listener. Hopefully my family would agree!
What did you enjoy most about gaining your coaching qualification?
Gaining a qualification is just part of the journey. The most enjoyable things for me were and still remain the opportunities to meet likeminded people and network with other coaches, be exposed to new ideas, models and tools and continue to challenge myself.
The Coaching Academy was established in 1999, and is now the world's largest coaching school.
In that time we have trained over 14,000 people to become life coaches.
We are accredited by the International Coach Federation and the Association for Coaching, and we're rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot.
