What is coaching?
Coaching is a structured conversation to help you move forward. You bring whatever you want to work on - a decision, a change you want to make, something you're stuck on, or just a sense that things could be different. I ask questions, help you untangle your thinking, and notice what's getting in the way. From there we turn that thinking into practical actions, experiments or decisions — and keep coming back to what you're learning as you go.
I don't give advice or tell you what to do (sorry). Coaching works on the basis that you're the expert on your own life. My job is to partner with you as an equal and help you think better about it.
What do people use coaching for?
Pretty much anything where thinking alone hasn't quite got you there yet. I've coached people to:
get jobs they really wanted
leave jobs that were making them miserable
find more satisfaction in jobs they decided to stay in
get promoted and grow into leadership
work out broadly what was important for their life
feel more comfortable in their identity
move through shame about having a lot of different life chapters
make difficult decisions about relationships
explore mindfulness and different ways of looking after themselves
start believing in themselves again
And once, I helped someone finally upholster a chair they'd been meaning to upholster for years. Sometimes it's that simple.
Do I need to know what I want?
No. "I know something needs to change but I don't know what" is a perfectly good coaching topic. Working out what you want can be the work itself.
What happens session to session?
We talk about what's on your mind. I listen, ask questions, reflect back what I'm hearing, and sometimes challenge your thinking. Together we work out what you want, what's getting in the way, and what you're going to do next.
Then we get practical: what are you going to do, what might get in the way, what would make it easier? Sometimes that means making a decision or setting a goal. Sometimes it means running an experiment — trying a small change in real life, seeing what happens, and using what you learn to decide what comes next. You don't need to know the answer before you start.How long does it take?
Depends what you're working on. A specific decision might take a session or two. A career change, or a bigger question about how you want to live, might benefit from working together over several months. There's no requirement to stay in coaching indefinitely.
Coaching or therapy?
There's some overlap — both involve talking and understanding yourself. Coaching is generally focused on the present and future: what's happening, what do you want, what's getting in the way, what are you going to do? Your past may come up, but I don't diagnose or treat mental health conditions or work therapeutically with trauma.
You can have coaching and therapy at the same time.
Is life coaching definitely a real thing?
Life coaching has a bit of a reputation. The industry isn't regulated, and there's no shortage of people making very big promises online about what it can do. I'm not going to promise to transform your life in 30 days, reveal your one true purpose, or tell you that anything is possible if you just believe hard enough ✨ But good coaching can be incredibly useful. Meeting regularly with a thoughtful, empathetic person whose only job for that hour is to help you do your best thinking can shift your perspective, build self-awareness, create accountability, and help you keep moving towards things that matter to you.
I'm professionally trained and ICF-accredited, with more than 350 hours of coaching experience, and I work within professional standards and ethics. And I take part in regular learning & CPD.
One more thing worth saying
Coaching isn't based on the idea that you can think your way out of everything this late-stage capitalism binfire world is throwing at us.
Money, mental health, power, discrimination, disability, caring responsibilities, workplaces and other circumstances affect the choices available to us.
We'll distinguish between what you can change, what you can't, and what you want to do with the choices you do have.