My work follows a clear process: first insight and awareness gained through reflecting on theoretical models and concepts; and then meaningful, skilled and practical actions.
When I work with a leadership team, people gain a deeper understanding of themselves and of their colleagues, and greater insight into what makes it tricky between some people. Why some pairings work easily and others feel like walking through treacle.
This deeper understanding allows a softening of the emotional field to come into the room, and into the pairings. This, combined with the skills and tools I introduce, allows people to move from a place of being oppositional (and in a place of blame and accusation) to a place of sitting shoulder to shoulder and agreeing on sustainable solutions in a collaborative way. Contracting on these solutions helps them move through their differences to a place where they can, as a team, leverage off their differences and work together more easily and more successfully.
“When the field softens, the same differences that were causing conflict become the team’s strength.”
Every engagement is customised. After decades of doing this work, I’m able to offer different versions of the same approach depending on what the team needs.
People come to me for individual work usually because something in their relationships isn’t working: personal, professional, or both. They’re feeling stuck, or lost, or unsure how to handle what’s in front of them. Many come from team work I’ve done in their organisation. Others are referred privately by people I’ve worked with before.
My work always starts with insight and awareness, and then moves through to meaningful and skilled action.
For the insight and awareness piece, I draw on several tools. The Enneagram is one: I describe it as looking in a behavioural mirror. Most of us check the physical mirror before we leave the house each morning, but we rarely get the chance to look honestly at how we behave and show up in the world. And we seldom ask whether our behaviour is serving us, whether it is helping us achieve the life we want. The Enneagram is a very powerful tool to assist in this reflection.
“Most of us check the mirror before we leave the house. Far fewer of us look in a behavioural mirror, and really give thought to how we show up in the world.”
Alongside that, I work with the dynamics of power, ranking, and status between people. I believe that this dynamic sits underneath far more relational difficulty than most people realise. I work with the role of anxiety in relationships, as well as the different psycho-social roles that we often step into in the different groups we are a part of.
All of this is Systems Thinking work and comes from my early clinical training and experience.
Once these insights have landed, the work moves into action. Meaningful, skilled and practical action. I introduce tools and frameworks people can actually use; because insight matters, but only if it changes something. My original training as an occupational therapist was grounded in meaningful action, and that thread runs through everything I do.
Every engagement is shaped to meet the person. Sometimes the work is short, and focused on a specific transition. Sometimes it unfolds over time. It always lands in real change, providing a sense of agency and opportunity to my clients.
I work with couples in two ways: in one-on-one couples coaching sessions, and through two-day couples workshops.
The workshops are conducted over two days, in groups with a maximum of eight couples. A structured process, combined with a Couples Enneagram report, enables each couple to understand themselves and each other more deeply. Private spaces enable the couples to apply the learning from their report and the theoretical group discussions to specific areas of their relationship.
Couples coaching sessions are usually where couples come when something is harder. They might be in crisis, in a transition, or stuck on a particular issue they can’t move through on their own.
In both formats, the work follows the same process: insight and awareness; then meaningful, practical and skilled action. It starts with understanding yourself, understanding your partner, and understanding the differences between you.
The differences in a couple are often what makes them a strong team. The strength one person has is often a gap in the other. But those same differences can be the source of repeated conflict and difficulty.
“The strength in one partner is often the gap in the other. Couples who see this stop arguing about it and start using it.”
Our work together moves from this insight into the skills people can actually use. A true appreciation of the differences, combined with the skills to talk about managing and leveraging off the differences, rather than fighting against them.
“I have been told that this work has saved people’s marriages.”
Frameworks
My work draws on several established bodies of work — for insight, and for action.
This work becomes truly transformational when conducted in real time, in the moment; a way of working that I was first introduced to in my clinical work through Irvin Yalom’s seminal publication: The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy.
bodies of work for raising awareness
Looking at the patterns and dynamics between people, not just at individuals. What is happening between us, not just inside each of us.
A behavioural mirror. A way of looking honestly at how we show up in the world and whether our patterns are serving us.
The dynamics of power, ranking, and status between people. Often what sits underneath relational difficulty before anyone realises it.
Nancy Kline’s work on the conditions under which people actually think well together. The opposite of most meetings.
Understanding emotion and relationship as practical capabilities. How to read what is happening, and respond rather than react.
A framework for genuine change — moving from old patterns to new ones by paying attention to what is really there, not what we assume.
tools for skilled communication
The practice of talking with each other, rather than at each other. Slower, more careful, more honest. Substantially more useful.
How to have the conversations we tend to avoid. The ones that matter. Practical tools for saying the harder thing well.
A framework for communicating what we need and feel without blame, accusation, or shutdown. Marshall Rosenberg’s work.
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