The teams of leaders and managers who have a coaching style out-perform other teams; I enjoy working with people who lead teams.

I coach both individuals and teams. I customize what I do in response to the client. The client’s individual coaching needs dictate: enhanced leadership skills, clarifying the personal way forward, work-life balance, identifying what works best with a person’s best energy. Teams I’ve coached have asked for different things: values clarification, roles clarification, the way we work, business strategy, diversity exploration and conflict resolution. For leaders and managers who want to integrate a coaching style, I run a training programme with three components: three 1 day workshops (meetings, conversations and performance), followed by coaching circles and individual coaching sessions to secure sustainable learning. As a Time To Think faculty member I run Thinking Environment^TM programmes. Lastly, I take every chance I’m offered to write about coaching.

I graduated as an agricultural economist (BSc Hons and PhD) but decided to change careers after having been the Managing Director of the Land Bank in the late nineties. The Land Bank leadership experience made me think about how challenging change is for both for people and institutions. My book, Banking on Change (Penguin 2001) covers this experience. Designing and implementing a new business strategy with new financial products was hugely exciting but I was more challenged by the personal shifts required.

I currently have three coaching qualifications. In 2005, I completed my MA Professional Development – Coaching with Middlesex University (cum laude). I am now an MA examiner. I am an accredited  Nancy Kline Time To Think Coach and faculty member, and in 2010 I qualified as a Martha Beck Life Coach. I have completed short (2-3days) courses in gestalt, meta-coaching, neuro-linguistic programming. Until recently I was writing a bi-weekly column Shift Happens for South Africa’s weekly Mail & Guardian, and in 2009 Penguin SA published Team Coaching: Artists at Work which I edited and co-authored with seven other coaches

From 2005 to March 2009, I was Director of Coaching and Mentoring at Standard Bank. I lead a team that put in place eight complementary coaching and mentoring initiatives. As there are different kinds of coaching for different outcomes: the intention was to create a suite of products to use systemically. Since May 2009 I have my own coaching practice, Grey Matters. My clients include Eskom, Investec, National Business Initiative, Parliament, Standard Bank, Rand Merchant Bank, And Beyond, (Eco Tourism) Telesure, and Tupperware, I also work with the New Leaders Foundation coaching school management teams in Soweto,

Home is South Africa. I grew up in England. My parents were immigrants from Poland and the Czech Republic. I lived in Mozambique (ten years) and Zambia (five years). I can work in English or Portuguese. I have had short contracts in Uganda, Zimbabwe and Tanzania. I am flexible. I have worked from village level, up to becoming an MD, as well as consulting for Canadian, British, Dutch and Swedish organizations.

What I like best about coaching are the moments when the lights go on for the individual or the team that I’m working with. They’ve gained a new understanding about the issues they’re grappling with. They’re energized by this and find a new way of going forward – and I am deeply satisfied with my enabling role.

Favourite quote: “Everything we do depends for its quality on the thinking we do first.  Our thinking depends on the quality of our attention for each other” Nancy Kline Time To Think.