Our Story

Starting a coaching practice

In 2002, I was in a career transition, building a portfolio of consulting and advisory roles.

During a contract engagement, I had a chance conversation with a senior leader in a client organisation.

The individual just wanted to talk, to be listened to.

We talked about everything - except the contract that I was delivering.

The conversation covered the individual's role and career, their ambitions and the challenges in their current role.

That conversation intrigued me. I hadn't expected it, the individual clearly needed to talk, enjoyed the conversation and valued the insights and shared viewpoints.

I didn't realise it at the time but that turned out to be a coaching conversation.

The experience started my coaching journey.

In November 2023, The Big Blue Box celebrated 21 years of coaching executives.

Engaging Coaching Clients

In the early years, coaching was met with some scepticism, its effectiveness as yet unproven.

However, our collaboration with visionary leaders and advocates for human potential across key organisations laid the groundwork for expanding our client base.

As time went by, our clients - both coachees and sponsors, became advocates of our innovative and impactful coaching projects. As they climbed their career ladder, and moved to new organisations, so they brought The Big Blue Box along, introducing our unique approach to their new workplaces.

This organic growth, through recommendation and referral by champions and advocates has enabled the Big Blue Box to develop and prove a unique coaching style across a diverse client group of organisations and individuals.

Today our coaching practice is justifiably described as 'sector agnostic'. Geographically, our clients span the USA and Europe, and recently include the Middle East.

Coaching Supervision

In 2015, my coaching practice was well established and coaching was becoming a recognised component in organisational learning and development planning.

My clients were also migrating up the organisational hierarchy, I was growing my business through introductions and referrals.

As my clients' requirements became more challenging so I too was looking to develop.

Coaching Supervision was becoming a recognised support and development resource for practitioners. I was initially concerned that 'supervision' meant 'oversight and control', and as a proudly independent business owner that prospect was not welcome.

However I was introduced to an established coaching supervisor, who understood my concerns and, after agreeing our contract and passing the 'chemistry test', we engaged. I have retained that professional support continuously since 2015.

So helpful has the coaching supervision support been to me over the years that in April 2022, I trained and qualified as a coaching supervisor in a program accredited by the Association for Coaching.

I now provide development support and coaching supervision to other coaches and mentors, 'one to one' and in virtual peer advisory groups.

Peer Advisory Groups

As our client relationships have developed, so the drive to continuously support these individuals in their learning journey created the opportunity 'to leave it better' through further innovation.

Working across this diverse client group, I have been able to share my observations and experience, creating insights and challenges across corporate cultures and industries.

I had wanted to explore the opportunity to bring my coaching clients together - for coachees across our client organisations to learn from each other directly - and in so doing building coaching-style interpersonal skills into their development.

initially a Big Blue Box Peer Advisory Group was created in 2018 inviting selected senior leaders from diverse organisations to meet, in confidence, and a spirit of learning, collaboration and mutual support. The objective is to facilitate the creation of groups that collaborate to act as the individual group member's Non-Executive team, fostering improved decision-making, personal development and business growth.

This initiative has now progressed to create additional Big Blue Box Peer Advisory Groups for:

CEOs, MDs, business founders and owners, and the senior organisation leaders
Emerging leadership and high potential 'talent'
Coaching / Mentoring Supervision and business development support

Mentoring

In 2022, the Association of Business Mentors invited business subject matter experts to serve as mentors for the Help To Grow initiative.

We joined the initiative by offering a fixed number of free one-to-one mentoring sessions to the founders, owners, and leaders of the Help to Grow Scheme participating organisations.

Mentoring training was offered to subject matter experts with no previous experience as mentors.

We have now worked with several SME business owners and leaders under this scheme and a significant proportion have now progressed to work with us commercially.