Sue originally trained and worked as a secondary school teacher, and has a BA Hons in French and English and a post graduate certificate in education. She has been further trained by her experience as the primary carer in a large extended family. This has included, at various times, children with educational challenges, informal fostering of emotionally disturbed and/or refugee teenagers, and elderly relatives with mobility and mental health problems. She worked in detached youth and community work from a church base, when she first began to pioneer the delivery of alternative education and fresh approaches to learning and personal development for those, adult and young alike, for whom mainstream ‘teaching’ just didn’t connect. More recently Sue has coached educational departments in the delivery of interventions appropriate to school refusers as well as the young people themselves. And she particularly enjoys working with people of all ages and circumstances who find negotiating change of any kind particularly challenging.

Sue’s commitment to effective coaching comes from the belief that we all hear, see and sense, consider options and therefore can make choices for ourselves. Most helpful in that process then, is someone who will give you time and space to listen carefully, clarify and reflect back to you the feeling, thinking and choosing that is already happening in you, whether personally, in your relationships or in your organisations.

Sue uses an integrative approach to coaching; she is trained and experienced in different coaching skills, from the ‘solution focussed’ emphasis on working towards a preferred future, to performance or personal development coaching, as well as cognitive behaviour approaches to disclosing and reframing any self-limiting beliefs or unhelpful behaviour triggers . She is equally experienced in developing emotional and spiritual intelligence; self, others, and group dynamic awareness, and coaching groups towards agreed goals and projects. An initial appointment will usually give clients the opportunity to decide which approach will be most appropriate for them, or subsequent appointments will allow for different approaches.

Sue is a Relational Dynamics/PCT Accredited Coach, and a member of the Association for Coaching. On the “Strengths” psychometric profile, she is described as a ‘strategic thinker’ and a ‘relator’ who pursues depth of relationship. She values difference, finding it very creative, ‘has an innate ability to understand where others are coming from’ and is ‘an activator’, whose listening presence enables others both to perceive and begin to achieve their own preferred futures.