Coach Class

Dave Barber is an experienced internal comms professional and colleague engagement expert.

He cut his teeth in retail, having studied supply chains and worked his way through various logistics roles at Asda.

Seeking a change of scene, he took a maternity role cover in the colleague comms department and immediately found his passion for internal comms.

After leaving Asda six years ago he set up his own consultancy, taking the plunge into self-employment, while helping companies with their own communications strategies.

He also founded the LinkedIn networking group the Asda Underworld, which now boasts over 500 former employees who meet both virtually and in the real world (normally upstairs in the Adelphi for those in the know). 

Dave is a charming guy, and in great demand from former colleagues who saw him operate at Asda and now want him to do for their new organisations, what he did previously. 

But to do so, companies also need to adopt the same approach to listening and hearing what colleagues think, rather than relying on one way communication.    

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Stuart is the chief people officer at Zenith the UK's leading independent leasing, fleet management and vehicle outsourcing business. He's also a qualified business and executive coach.

He joined Zenith from Virgin Health Care, where he was chief people officer before transitioning to chief operating officer. He has also held senior people roles at Costcutter, Morrisons and Asda.

He joined Asda at the tender age of 16 working on the shopfloor where he learned the importance of good people management, involving people in decisions, respecting their opinions. 

Stuart says people make or break teams. You don't have a strategy or culture or products or services without people. 

Asda was both challenging and caring - it had a ruthless focus on performance, but also cared about its people. He was pushed really hard to deliver, but when his dad passed away he was flown down to the south coast to be there in person when it really mattered. 

Retailers tend to be customer-centric, but Asda was very grounded and down to earth and kept things simple. They truly value colleagues at every level - something Stuart has taken with him into every business. At the time it gave him real confidence at a young age to have an opinion and a point of view. 

He's most proud of the work he's done at Zenith on diversity, particularly on women in leadership. Taking inspiration from people like Emma Fox and Amanda Cox (both previous guests on Coach Class).

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Martin Benefer has a passion for human development and loves to help people achieve their potential, both personally and within their career.

He's a Professional Certified Coach (PCC), with a Postgraduate Certificate in Business & Personal Coaching and over 1,000 hours of coaching practice, supporting more than 300 clients.  He's also a Coaching Tutor at Barefoot where he trains new coaches, and occasionally, like me, turns up to new training courses, which is where we met.

A couple of weeks ago we attended a Barefoot course called Psychology for Coaches: Existential, Developmental and Buddhist with Julian Humphreys.

A three week course, each session covered a different area of psychology, with an hour or so of pre-reading required in advance. In this podcast Martin and I reflect on what we learned, what we rediscovered, what stuck with us and what's still swirling around.

Martin has a background in health and wellness, is a Registered Nutritionist (RNutr) and has degrees in Sport Science (BSc) and Human Nutrition (MMedSci).

​He also practices martial arts.  He compares coaching to what he learned many years ago from martial arts: if you're sparring and your focus is on what you're about to do (and not them) you're probably about to get hit!

The tendency as new coaches to plan, prepare and focus on your notes means you're not focused on them. He's always found the best preparation is be present, everything else just gets in the way. Trust that you know what you need to know. 

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Ben Cooke is a highly accomplished coach and agile delivery professional with more than 15 years experience. 

He helps businesses, teams and individuals to respond to an ever-changing  business environment through coaching, training, consultancy, mentoring and facilitation. 

Outside of his client work, he is also a long-distance runner, and is interested in electronic music and contemporary art, having once had to build online ticketing sites for the likes of the Arctic Monkeys. 

In this podcast we talk about what it means to be an agile coach and how the world of coaching informs his consultancy work.  Ben has supported organisations across a wide range of industries, in both the private and public sectors. 

He's worked with start-ups to scale-ups, to global household names. '

Borrrowing the client's watch to tell them the time' is a jibe often thrown at consultants, but in Ben's experience sometimes clients really do just want to you to tell them what time it is. 

Speaking of time, I recorded this back in April and it's taken me a whole month to edit and post it! So apologies about that lovely listener.

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Jayne is a coach, author and burnout retreat organiser and host. She is also the author of Burnout to Brilliance and the Co-Founder of Balanceology, specialising in the prevention and recovery of workplace burnout.

With 15 years experience specialising in burnout prevention, recovery and culture change consultancy, Jayne is a fellow recovering burnee (is that a word?). 

She experienced burn out herself while working at a major UK corporation - the BBC. Since launching her practice in London’s Harley Street, she's helped hundreds of individuals recover from burnout and numerous organisations prevent absenteeism due to chronic stress. 

She's lived and worked in Belgium, Germany, Japan, Spain and the UAE.  But now lives in Bristol near the sea which allows her to host 121 and team sessions, bringing nature into her restorative work with clients.

​Jayne has helped numerous organisations prevent burnout absenteeism, presenteeism and leavism. 

She also supports businesses looking to transition from their existing hierarchal management structure to more sociocratic system using the adoption of models such as Holacracy, Teal and Sociocracy.

In this podcast we compare notes on burning out early in our careers and what has brought us both to coaching. 

It really felt like a meeting of minds, so much so that our conversation has continued since, with me taking to poetry of all things...

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Frances Lee-Rogers is the founder of Butterfly Development, a professional coaching organisation.

She's spent the best part of 18 years working in HR for large corporate companies across several industries, including Professional Services, Aerospace, Logistics and the Public Sector. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in HR and Employment Law, and is qualified in Psychometric and Personality Testing (SHL).

In the latter part of her HR career Fran supported Directors and their leadership teams to help them implement change. She also has experience supporting high profile organisational wide projects in highly ambiguous circumstances, so understands the pressures on senior executives and their teams.

​"Helping individuals and teams develop has always been a passion of mine so it was a logical next step for me to set up my own business focusing on helping individuals and groups achieve their potential through coaching."

In this podcast we discuss how Fran approaches coaching, and how her dog walking business that she set up after leaving corporate life taught her a lot about reflecting and being in nature. 

Three words define her approach, discover, transform, fly - much a like a butterfly. Fran cares passionately about sustainability and doing her bit to make the planet a better place for her nieces and nephews in the next decade. 

She describes herself as a persistent optimist. Listen in to find out why.

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Jon is a self-styled agile coach who works with teams, organisations and leaders so they can understand themselves better and improve the ways they work together.

Offering 1 to 1 coaching, team coaching and facilitation, Jon is a professionally certified coach (ICF PCC) .

He is also a passionate advocate of Agile Software Delivery, with substantial practical experience as a lead developer, Scrum Master, project manager, and software consultant for a variety of clients in the financial and IT services sectors as well as in the public sector.

He provides highly interactive training courses and workshops including:

• Introduction to all things agile
• Scrum master training
• Facilitation skills
• Visual facilitation
• Coaching skills for managers/leaders

In this podcast we reflect on our recent Barefoot supervision, the power of spending time with like-minded professionals and the restorative nature of doing so. We also discuss Jon's superpowers, and what he feels is in front of him now.

Jon was drawn into coaching by Geoff Watts, who alongside Kim Morgan (who I interviewed previously - season 1, episode 26) wrote 'The Coaches Casebook' - a must read for all professionally practising or budding wannabe coaches.

Jon tends to be a creative coach, he uses visual facilitation and he uses Lego quite a lot, enabling clients or teams to reconnect with their inner child. He quotes fellow coach Sorrel (who I interviewed previously - season 1 episode 30) - who once said 'coaching is reconnecting people to the wisdom they had as children.' A lovely notion. 

Listen to the podcast to hear the rest of Jon's thoughts and our conversation together.

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Joy Cosgrove a retail training consultant and coach. Based in Ireland Joy started off studying psychology, mentored by Dr Sharon Lambert - then did her PhD in Edinburgh before ending up in retail for major brands like Harrods and Selfridges. 

Sharon encouraged Joy to stop, listen and question - which led her to an addiction to coaching and opened so many doors. She is so thankful for that moment.

Since graduating from Barefoot, Joy offers both personal coaching and group training. She has a couple of clients interested in divorce coaching, and people approaching retirement. 

She studied labels back in 2007 before the explosion of neurodiversity awareness - something that I have taken more notice of recently. 

In this podcast we reflect on the labels that people are given or they give themselves. And how we interact with them, how they can limit us, how we wear them.

Joy is an extremely generous human which comes out in spades in this conversation. 

I reflect on when someone asked me at a meeting 'who are you?', rather than 'what do you do?'. it made me really think about we short-hand label ourselves with the things that we earn a living from. 

Joy thinks about how our value set emerges when you hear that question. Who are you? It cracks all of your brain open. 

Which brings us round to discussing the essays we need to write for the PD Cert in coaching at Chester Uni. Who are you as a coach?

Listen to find out who we are...

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With a background in additional support needs spanning 20 years, Jasmine Miller has first-hand knowledge, understanding and application of supporting neurodivergent children, young people and adults in an educational and community settings.

She is a Barefoot Coaching Trained Coach and recently led a two-day workshop for Barefoot that I attended at the end of November. 

Over the two sessions we developed awareness and understanding of neurodiversity, considered inclusive working practices and environments. And thought about how we show up as colleagues and coaches to create the best space to think for everyone - but particularly those who are not neurotypical. 

We also considered what might limit us and help us to build relationships and maintain them. 

It really got me thinking about living in a neurotypical world, where the customs and norms are designed by the neurotypical majority and are widely understood by so many of us, but often hidden or subtle to others.  

We also learned about over stimulation or autistic burnout - a concept new to me but one that immediately resonated. What allowances do we make for others when they are experiencing over stimulation? When perhaps even the journey to work might be exhausting. 

And in our coaching practices how avoiding open questions rather than relying on them is worth considering, as they can be hard for autistic people to answer and they can find the expansive nature of them overwhelming. 

Creating bitesize goals can also help move someone up one rung on the ladder, without necessarily focusing on the entire journey.  So much to learn and so much to reflect one. I hope you get as much out of the podcast as I did :)

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After a little break from doing this podcast, I thought I'd change tack and start a new 'season' of episodes by speaking to someone I've had the pleasure of actually coaching.

I find the process of interviewing people an opportunity to reflect and learn about the benefits of coaching people, not just for them but for me as a coach. 

Tony lives in Bentonville in NW Arkansas, so all of our sessions together were conducted over Zoom. I remember our first encounter clearly as I'd just received some upsetting news via email literally one minute before our meeting began.

It was a really important lesson in how to be ready to coach, how to give someone your undivided attention and to be prepared, not just in terms of having the skills required, but also being in the right frame of mind.

I'm pleased to say the session went well and was followed by five other meetings one of which we conducted on the phone as he walked through nature. Metaphor became an important part of our coaching sessions, as a means to unlock deeper thinking.

Six months on, and Tony is still applying a lot of the good thinking he did during our time together. 

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