Fiona Westwood

EXECUTIVE, SENIOR LEADER AND LIFE COACH

Fiona is a confident and experienced Coach, having applied these skills to every professional role she has ever undertaken since she left university. Throughout her career, she has coached and mentored peer colleagues, junior colleagues, middle leaders and senior leaders alike, on both a formal and an informal basis.

Her interest in coaching, mentoring and people-development activity has been extensive and life-long. She has worked with all kinds of organisations and clients across the public, third and private sectors and with people at all levels from a very diverse range of backgrounds.

Fiona has extensive experience in training and development work with adults and has worked regularly with groups of all sizes as well as with individuals. She has devised and run training courses, has delivered course programmes belonging to organisations and has worked with people individually as a regular part of her work, which continues to date.

As a result of the areas in which she has worked (predominantly social work and the trade union movement) Fiona has acquired exceptionally high-level experience in managing difficult behaviours, engaging in challenging conversations to facilitate change and undertaking successful conflict resolution processes. She understands emotional intelligence very well and is able to help clients develop their EIQ to improve their performance and that of the organisation they work in.

Through her work, Fiona has developed particularly strong skills in enabling, empowering, empathy, relationship building and authentically collaborative approaches, all of which she brings to her coaching and mentoring work.

Fiona is very passionate about coaching for diversity as an integrated part of her work. In her professional life, she has always been in roles for organisations working to support and assist their stakeholders to receive a good level of support.

All clients can be confident about contracting with Fiona because she:

• Has significant remote coaching expertise, strengthened since qualifying in 2018
• Has extensive experience in coaching senior leaders and other clients on areas such as how to deal effectively with work overload, competing priorities, business planning, establishing and maintaining personal and organisational resilience and managing change positively.
• Gained ILM level 7 Certificate in Executive in Coaching and Mentoring in 2021.
• Gained her NLP Diploma in 2018. Is experienced in employing a wide variety of different coaching approaches to suit the client's needs.
• Has worked with many Executives and senior leaders to help them understand, interpret and change their behaviours so they can hone their business relational and interpersonal skills to enable them to build confidence and improve their own and their organisation’s performance outputs.
• Has helped clients from all areas to build their self-awareness and develop strong presentational skills that can be tailored to each audience as needed.
• Has strong experience in working with clients to help them identify, reframe and dispel anxieties and limiting beliefs that can hold them back in ways they may not be aware of.
• Has supported many clients with a full range of career and work coaching e.g. planning and achieving higher-level career development, making career changes, returning after a career break, succeeding in a promotion and providing an effective training needs analysis working with groups or individuals.
• Has undertaken many assessment processes with Executives and senior leaders using tools such as the 360º assessment process, personality tests, EQI tests, preferred learning styles analysis and exercises covering main strengths and areas for development to work on.
• Has worked one-to-one and with groups via web-based video platforms, email communications and telephone when coaching. Is a member of the Association for Coaching and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council.
• Abides by the Global Codes of Ethics published by the Association for Coaching and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council and encourages clients to access these.
• Uses a pre-coaching questionnaire to encourage clients to focus and identify what they are seeking from the coaching process, whether there are any wider consequences to consider and what specific goals they may wish to work on during the programme.
•  Abides by the EMCC contracting guidance.
•  Is committed to her own continuing professional development and has an annual CPD plan to ensure she stays relevant and current for Executive and senior leader clients.
•  Works with the support of a trained and qualified coaching supervisor.
•  Seeks feedback from clients and other relevant stakeholders to ensure she is providing a quality service that meets the needs of the client and (where relevant) their organisation or manager.
•  Has taken recent courses to further her own development and get qualified as a coach and mentor.
•  Has 10 years in a senior leadership role.
•  Has 16 years in various developmental or managerial roles.
•  Has 34 years employment in fields that included regular coaching, support and mentoring activities.
•  Is still in employment currently, where being proactive about her own CPD is also a regular expectation.

Client Experience:

Here is some feedback from clients recently worked with:

"Even though we conducted this whole experience via Video Conferencing, it didn’t take away from the experience." (Senior leader client).

"You have coached me from the start without me even realising! This is your special skill, the ability to 'read' a person or situation without seeming to, you are intuitive and empathetic - the perfect coach." (Middle leader client).

"Visualisation technique you taught me was a life-saver." (Executive client). "It was interesting to have to put on paper what my values are as I have not thought about these in this way. I clearly use them every day but now I understand why some behaviours are tolerable and others not." (Senior leader client).

"Just to say thank you for your coaching on Wed. It made me clear on what I really wanted job-wise." (Executive client).

"The sessions reminded me to take ownership of the skills I have, these were skills I have taken for granted in the past." (Senior leader client).

"Through her mentoring and coaching, I developed my interpersonal and leadership skills. Fiona has helped me by looking out for me and checking in on me, she has been a source of advice and guidance as well as being able to give an outside perspective on some tricky situations." (Middle leader client).

"I have found Fiona to be an excellent motivator, her own enthusiasm and work ethic is second to none, and this inspires those around her, not only the individuals and team she manages but across the wider work environment." (Middle leader client).

"Working with Fiona made me realise that there were other options. Her support was very clear and suggestions were informative and the experience motivated me to move forwards in a better direction." (Middle leader client).

"I have found from a particular experience, an exceptional quality of Fiona's is personal coaching which has enabled me to sustain my self-confidence and self-belief at work, during a particularly challenging life event." (Middle leader client).

"I have benefited from the coaching and mentoring from Fiona in many ways. She particularly helped me to become much more self-confident and to expand my skills and knowledge base." (Middle leader client)

"As my line manager, Fiona was able to develop me as an individual. Even though I had been in my role for many years, due to Fiona's encouragement, I was able to continue to progress, and not stagnate in my role." (Middle leader client).

"Fiona has a wealth of knowledge, and she was always there for you and is never judgemental, and this makes her a very credible leader of people." (Middle leader client).”