Associate Director Operations, Large NHS Acute Trust Central EnglandPublished 21/07/2015

Helen was asked by the Chief Operating Officer to coach a Director of Operations who had been moved to bring his highly successful approach to a different and high pressure area of Operations for the Trust and had struggled. The unsuitability of the post to the individual had been recognised, the AD had been given leave to refresh from stress-related illness and the Trust did not want to lose such a valuable resource.

The sessions concentrated on exploring the loss of self-esteem he had experienced, reinstating and building new, deep resilience and perspective and working with his patterns of thinking around how he knows he’s making a difference and how he prefers to work vs. the role he had been asked to do. We then focused on preparing him to come back into work and enabling him to access his inbuilt a resourcefulness.

At the end of the coaching the AD fed back that they had achieved all of their outcomes – reinstating a very good level of self-esteem and confidence in their own abilities. They were focused on their new role, delivering on KPIs as they always had and creating a team that worked effectively towards its goals. They felt they had acceptance of previous situation and has ‘erected scaffolding’ for themselves for the future.

He described the coaching as ‘Uplifting’ and highly effective – giving the maximum possible outcome for him from a series of carefully targeted sessions. ‘Helen’s facilitative skills are exceptional.’

The COO was delighted with the results of the coaching – retaining a valuable member of staff and increasing performance in the new area he went to work in.