About Karen
Karen is a proactive learning & development professional and coach with over 20 years experience supporting individuals and organisations. Having worked in the public sector and in HE supporting internal staff development projects her freelance experience extends to working with clients from across sectors and includes supporting voluntary projects in her local community which she feels passionately about.
She is a trained and qualified coach, trainer, assessor, verifier and work place mediator and has in more recent years completed an MA in Leading Innovation & Change, where she completed her dissertation research on the benefits of leadership coaching.
“I view my role as a coach very much as being in service to my client; my ultimate commitment to them is to be useful. That can mean different things for different people, often it involves asking the challenging questions, the ones that make you stop to think or make you shuffle in your seat. As coaching is always about change in some way or another then it is important to remember that we must first feel uncomfortable before we can feel comfortable. My role is to provide an safe supportive space for my clients to experience this and If they don’t feel uncomfortable at some point I’m probably not doing my job properly.”
Karen’s specific interests and experience are in supporting managers and leaders in their work practices and working with people to support their career planning. She has a genuine interest in people and gets great satisfaction from seeing others take positive steps to fulfil their own potential and that of the organisations and communities they serve.
As a coach she describes herself as a facilitator of thinking and utilises her skills in listening and questioning in order to best observe and understand what is been experienced inside and outside of coaching meetings. She is committed to providing honest and supportive dialogue where useful challenge can be experienced in a safe environment.