Claire Foy is Head of Learning & Professional Development at Coutts, and also a fellow student on the Barefoot ICF accredited Post Graduate Certificate in Business and Personal Coaching.

In this podcast we both reflect on week 1 on the course, what we learned and discovered, and our hopes and aspirations for the future.

Claire was brought up in the Caribbean, she is happiest living a simple life, walking barefoot. But in her mid 20s she was encouraged to seek out a 'career', and ended up applying for a role at Coutts in the Cayman Islands where she lived. 

Fast forward to today and she leads a team of internal coaches based in the City in London, who are helping senior leaders at the bank create 'Time to Think' - based on the principles of Nancy Kline.

Claire believes humans 'leak the truth' so it is important to listen carefully to one another, and to believe the answer lies within them. If you believe they'll believe too.

Tune in to hear more.  

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Jon Wragg is a versatile and broadly experienced Commercial and Retail leader, with a strong track record. His experience is Global, it covers Apparel and Home categories, includes Private Label development and Premium Brands, is both B2C and B2B; and it encompasses physical retail and 20 years in e-commerce. 

With both Board and Executive experience, he sees himself as a results-driven team player, and the type of leader who is able to build, lead and motivate a team to fulfil both their potential and that of the business. 

Jon was my first proper mentor at Asda, through which I took a six month career break - then he became my boss on my return, helping me discover the power of diversity, and believing that people who think differently should be valued and supported.

He prefers working with radiators rather than drains - people who inject energy into the room with their enthusiasm - albeit not restricted to extroverts. He himself outside of work is quite introvert, but he has learned how to perform and sell in front of colleagues, always mindful of what the 'customer' needs to hear.

Jon says he is very much a confidence player, and finds trust to be truly empowering. An early interaction with a new CEO set him on that path, who showed faith in him, and trusted him to deliver.

Jon is also a non exec director at Manchester Airports Group, and has no plans to retire any time soon. In fact he's on the look out for interesting opportunities where he can bring all of his experience and knowledge to the table. 

He concludes: "When work feels like work it's time to move on!" Well said :)

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Fiona is passionate developer of people and high performing teams. She believes this is key to a business' success.

She thrives on learning, developing and challenging herself whether in the work environment or personally.

With a proven track record in the world of fashion, Fiona has had a successful career working at Next, George, Dunelm, and River Island where she built an entirely new brand from scratch.

The bootstrapped entrepreneurial approach is something she is now applying to her new role at Marks and Spencer. 

When building a team, Fiona says you absolutely have to know yourself and know what your strengths are and what your opportunities are. She knows she needs a team of people around her who will compliment her skills.

Fiona wants her people to be curious, willing to have a go, make mistakes, and learn from them. Somebody who's going to need every bit of analysis before they move forward is not really going to work in a start-up environment.

In a tiny team personalities that gel together is really important, so Fiona looks for people who don't take themselves too seriously, but take their work seriously.

Fiona says she is not necessarily a generalist. And that was one of the biggest things as a leader she needed to understand about herself. It was a massive step forward for her, recognising what her personal best is, what her skills are, which are about people, product and purpose.

"I'm a very passionate person, and being able to dial those up and not pretend to be something I'm not... Too many people try to emulate a model maybe that isn't authentically them. 

"I think what I've hopefully done with the people I've worked with.

"Looking at boards that are very heavily led by men in the past, working out that you haven't got to be like them, you can be yourself and be the very best version of you. I think that's hopefully what I've bought people I've mentored."

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Jill is an executive coach with more than 25 years experience operating at the highest levels in business.

She started her career in America, which exposed her early on to a very entrepreneurial way of working, and the well documented American approach 'that anything is possible'.

Jill is now the founder and director at theeightytwo having become an exec coach. Her aim is to help people grow, help them perform, but also provide them with 'kind but challenging spaces to do so'.

Jill has enjoyed a successful career including executive management roles across commercial operational teams in premium digital publishing data and media.

Having worked in the US, when Jill met her husband and relocated back to the UK she also went from the operational side of business to the commercial side, which brought with it a huge revelation for her. Having previously sat quite quietly in the back of the of the business and just made things happen, she suddenly needed to learn how to sell. This was was a very, very transformative moment for her.

Fast forward to today Jill has formed her own company theeightytwo, under the idea that as long as you are invited into the room, you can really help leaders be the best that they can be, whether they're starting from a really solid start or have quite a bit of work to do.

She hopes a year from now we'll be talking about things that aren't even on her radar or the company's radar right now. It is one of the delights of running your own business, the potential to discover and uncover opportunity.

Tune in to hear more of what Jill had to say.

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Ellie in her own words is a seasoned executive with many years experience at board level and working internationally. 

She is a qualified Executive Coach; working with Non-Execs, emerging and established leaders, and an ambassador for Girls Out Loud - a multi-award winning, not for profit, social enterprise, established in 2010, on a mission to raise the aspirations of teenage girls in the UK.

She has extensive Board, Company Secretary and Non- Exec experience, including Director of and Chair of Risk and Audit Committee at Asda, a £20bn multi-channel retailer and Chair of £1.3bn international sourcing company. 

Ellie is a tenacious and dynamic leader, who is skilled at balancing objectivity and challenge with building productive, lasting relationships with internal and external stakeholders across different business cultures.

She is a proponent of Nancy Kline's Time to Think. In meetings she chairs she starts where the energy is, then goes around the room, so everybody knows that they are going to get a chance to speak. 

By knowing you can speak uninterrupted, and when you're allowed to talk uninterrupted, Ellie believes it really helps bring clarity to your thoughts. You get a much richer discussion, and you get less nit-picking and argy-bargy with people talking over one another. And it really does help build trust and build relationships. 

Ellie says we all have it within within us to do far more than we ever dream we're capable of, and when people realise that through being coached and actually create a way of getting there it is amazing.

Her best piece of advice is be kind to others. It only takes a minute to be kind, in a world of where everything is fast pace, how people show up to a situation doesn't often reflect what is going on for them. It's very easy to judge harshly. So actually, being kind to somebody just can make a massive difference to them. 

Tune in to find out more.

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In the first episode of Coach Class I had the pleasure of speaking to Stephen Smith, President and CEO at L.L.Bean. Steve and I worked together at ASDA here in the UK, before he became CEO of the family owned outdoor clothing retailer in Maine, USA. Since then I've been lucky enough to have L.L.Bean as one of my clients.

Steve thinks about leadership as curiosity, and trying to get the best out of the people around you. He thinks about expert skills and transferable skills in people all the time. Expert skills are what you are good at e.g. you're a marketer, you're a social media expert, you're a public relations, professional. Whereas transferable skills are what makes you a great thinker, you're persuasive, you have great time management, you're charismatic.

He has three big three values that he lives by and thinks about all of the time from a leadership perspective: empathy, transparency, and integrity.

Empathy - put yourself in somebody else's shoes, understand their perspective. And that can be a person working for you, or can be an adversary or peer.

Transparency - sharing everything, talking about everything, trying to give as much context as possible.

Integrity - just always attempting to do right to do the best possible thing. 

Those three values, to Steve are the most important values. When he thinks about his own career, and he thinks about managing and leading people, he imagines assembling skills. He thinks about removing friction, trying to understand why things get done and how they get done and how these decisions impact the organisation and these individuals. 

Tune in to hear more of what Steve has to say. He is a truly remarkable leader and human being.

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