Practitioner Diploma / “I wanted to complete executive coaching to the highest ‘reputational’ level”

Dr Claire Handby is a highly experienced business leader and former Big4 director with over two decades of expertise in transformation, operations and performance improvement across private and public sectors. Now offering a range of specialist services as a consultant, including executive coaching, Claire reflects on her journey through the AoEC’s Practitioner Diploma in Executive Coaching and shares how it has shaped her approach to leadership and growth.

Prior to developing yourself as a coach, you worked for organisations including KPMG, Deloitte and EY. Who or what introduced you to coaching and led to you to signing up for the coach training with the AoEC?

I joined EY in 2008 following 10 years in the construction industry, up to this point I’d had mentoring and annual appraisal support as standard within this industry. Joining the corporate world was a step change in terms of the coaching I received, it covered a multitude of topics such as:

• When I secured promotion to senior manager from manager, I was supported with promotion transition executive coaching
• Another time, I was already a mum of one and as I prepared to have my second baby in 2010, the firm ran an executive coaching programme as I transitioned on to maternity leave and also as important to me, as I re-entered and re-integrated back into the business environment seven months later

The 1-2-1 executive coaching approach resonated with me so much, that I have secured my own private coaching support from 2016. It has had a profound effect on me, providing me with a safe, professional space to explore such things as further promotion pathways, sponsorship, pivoting out of the corporate world into setting my own business up, navigating parental commitments with professional ones, calculating my 10-year plan, etc. 

Overall, it has bolstered my confidence, allowing my thoughts to translate into action and helped me keep my mental load manageable when so many people often want a piece of me. I have enabled myself through executive coaching to keep my life, with a progressive career, rolling forward effectively.

I did my research on a number of organisations as I wanted to complete executive coaching to the highest ‘reputational’ level within the UK and to earn a qualification with an internationally respected body. I wanted a pathway to earn further international accreditation too, this is what completing the AoEC Diploma has enabled me to achieve.

What were some of the positives and challenges you experienced while doing the diploma?

Some of the positives and challenges were:

• Challenge - I chose a course which was run in the week initially because I was on a career break but then I picked up full-time client work and also an important family member became ill for a time, and I needed to switch my priorities. The AoEC enabled me to move to completing to a weekend course, which was fabulous because of these exceptional circumstances.

• Positive - choosing virtual training for the whole course was brilliant for me and supported exactly how I wanted to learn. I thrived in this environment, enjoying getting much needed time back from a needless commute to and from venues, not to mention the expenses saving too it was ‘win-win’.

• Positive - it was so important for me to form cohort groups on WhatsApp, enabling a buddy system to support each other which have lasted long after the course, for example a few of us have come together for regular supervisor coaching now. Also, the WhatsApp cohort helps you advance through the course, enabling you to learn together outside of the course sessions, bouncing ideas, practicing coaching techniques. I felt we could really absorb the learnings to the fullest via this companionship, encouragement and support of one another.

• Challenge - there is not a pipeline of clients waiting to book you for your coaching services once qualified, you have to be a specialist at ‘network marketing’ to get your business to grow and the course pushes you out of your comfort zone to start to practice charging for your work. It’s a challenge because I hoped there would be a list of clients, so I had to accept there wasn’t and I’d need to grow a list of buyers, from scratch myself. On the course you increase your confidence to sell yourself to customers, plus you recognise there’s different ways to be paid not just cash, but testimonials can be worth their weight in gold.

What is your top advice to others considering coach training?

• Understand your drivers for becoming an executive coach.
• What’s the purpose you want to bring to the role in support of others and have you had feedback in the past you are good with people, as this is a critical characteristic to build trust and thrive in being an executive coach?
• How professional do you want to be, are credentials and international ones important to you, there’s cheaper courses and less recognised ones, if you want to be top of your field then consider this course.
• Who is going to buy your services when you are qualified and how are you going to grow your market?

Overall, your answers to these questions will be the advice I’d give you personally, as it’s your future and the ‘thought bubble’ for what type of impact you want to make as an ‘executive coach’ needs to stay over your head and not mine.

Looking back at doing your diploma, what has been its lasting impact on you as a person and you as an executive coach?

• Increased confidence to engage with even more senior executive leaders, to lean even more into how lonely these leaders can be. To provide them with safe spaces to explore their professional career developments to date, with their current wants and desires, recognising this tends to lead to them also wanting to explore their personal life integration too.
• Becoming an executive coach has supported me in winning new work for other areas of my business, because I am a business leader and programme leader as well as an executive coach. These roles go hand in hand within my ‘management consulting’ field. Formalising my executive coaching skills alongside everything else I can do has become a differentiator to some ‘hirers’ with regards me being chosen above others in the market.
• Recognised as evolving as an executive coach professionally with the AoEC’s Practitioner Diploma it is a stepping stone, where I remain curious around business leadership in general, which then links to me actively pursuing being professionally accredited with two of the three international executive coaching bodies ICF and EMCC. AoEC is a training provider and not the accrediting body you will be registered with long term, so I was mindful of this route for me.

Can you tell us more about your personal coaching model and how this has evolved since doing the diploma?

My personal coaching model is anchored fundamentally around the GROW model. I am from a Big4 background and GROW originated from a McKinsey background person and thinking which resonates well with me. Then the wraparound of other techniques I like too Gestalt and Solution focused. Overall, I focus to respond to the coachee as they open up and express themselves during our conversations. In general, I am very much a passenger on my client journeys, and I dance in the moment with them. I have a very open mind around supporting anyone through executive coaching techniques and I flex to suit their needs.

You now work as an executive coach and set up your own practice in 2023; can you tell us about the type of clients you are working with?

My customers cover a broad spectrum of professional people, from founders to senior leaders in FTSE 100 businesses and corporate management consulting firms. Topics range from investment raising, to going for promotion, maternity and paternity transitions, menopause, retirement and pivoting careers.

What are some of the issues and opportunities you coach people around?

• Stagnating in existing roles and feeling stuck, helping them unlock a fresh career pathway
• Business growth entrepreneurs, focusing on cashflow, turnaround, perhaps they aren’t making the finances they would like and how to improve this
• Managing menopause and integrating life changes with professional demands
• Confidence and pursuit of growth both professionally and personally
• Maternity and paternity transitions
• Retirement planning and transition
• Redundancy both doing deals and exiting one workplace well, with lining up adventures into new employment pathways

You have gone onto be credentialled with the ICF and EMCC Global. Why was becoming credentialled with these industry bodies important to you and what value has it brought your practice?

It was very important to me to attain the professional accreditation because I am always focused to be externally tested and validated as a ‘professional’ and not only say ‘I am’ like some are happy to do. By this I mean I have always pursued both the work experience alongside the academic qualifications in all I have achieved to date, through to being accredited and/or chartered in my case too with relevant bodies. From a personal perspective when researching my qualification pathway to choose, I saw at networking events that quite a few executive coaches are showing up not having completed an accredited pathway to full professional accreditation and this didn’t sit well with me, as my ethics and reputation are reinforced by the external bodies I represent, they are important to have in my view. 

I think executive coaching should have the validation of attainment completed on individual CVs otherwise it remains an unregulated professional environment, where some people like me have trained in the professional pathway and others are masquerading even being regarded as being in a ‘cowboy/girl’ profession, which I don’t want to see thrown about as per careers when professional accreditation is not expected. This damages all not only the few, but I also think the call from clients will only grow for their executive coach to have the required credentials and qualifications going forward.

Can you share a success story or testimonial from one of your clients that highlights the impact of your coaching?

“Claire’s pragmatic approach and common sense reflections were a huge benefit to me as we discussed my aspirations for the next stage of my career and my need to balance my work and priorities. Claire’s positivity, good humour and constructive insights meant that our conversations helped me to focus on what is important to me. Claire’s relentless drive to find the best in any situation is truly inspirational and I am glad to have worked with her.” Janet Greenwood, director at KPMG.

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a coach?

Making a difference to people’s lives. The mission of my business is ‘Making a Difference to this generation and the next one conversation at a time!’ I am living my purpose through executive coaching and my testimonials continue to reinforce the positive impact I make in showing up, in this way, to support the growth of others.

Our deepest gratitude to Claire for sharing her personal journey and experience of coach training at the AoEC.