Our Testimonials
We worked together for 5 months as part of a mentorship programme. Sessions were used to manage difficult ongoing change and to take control of a stagnating career. The approach was solution-focused so we didn’t spend a great deal of time on problems except to identify and unravel patterns.
We co-developed positive and winning steps that were realistic and achievable. Support and guidance to prepare successfully and manage formal interviews gave this client the confidence needed to apply for more senior management roles. Hard work secured her immediate success and is a great example of an effective coaching partnership!
“Heather has been a fantastic and supportive mentor; helping me over the past 5 months to get through a dark time at work and move on to bigger and better things. Heather has challenged me but has ensured that I have had the tools by which I could progress and move towards my goals. She has helped me to rationalise thoughts, reframing and depersonalising my feels and turning apathy to energy.
She has shown me that it is possible to succeed and if you are driven enough things will work out but it requires individual hard work … Heather has been someone who I have been able to talk freely with and her skill in turning round negative thoughts to positive actions is amazing. The process that she has followed has been tailormade to suit my requirements and throughout a way forward and direction of travel has been paramount. I have found the whole experience enlightening – it has been hard and difficult but I have succeeded and wanted to ensure that Heather was able to share in my joy at succeeding in the end. I will miss the sessions that I have been fortunate enough to have, but feel that the tools and techniques she has given me will prove to be a lasting legacy throughout my future career.”
We worked together for 6 months as part of a mentorship programme and the sessions were used to identify potential barriers to securing a more senior management role/promotion. An open dialogue and my experience of working in Japan led us both to a number of potential barriers that could be culturally-bound and the working ‘ethos’ attached to those cultures.
Taking into consideration the formative years – being born and growing up in Asia with the more recent life experiences of studying and working in the UK, it became clear that cultural differences played an important role. This became the focus of our coaching partnership. Combined with personality metrics from Myers-Briggs, we were able to map out key cultural and personality differences that may have an important impact in how she perceives others and how she herself may be perceived.
“It was a brilliant experience to have Heather as my mentor. She was absolutely fantastic and so professional in terms of:
1. She made me feel so comfortable to talk to her on the phone right from the beginning of our first session. English isn’t my first language, so I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t express myself clearly. However, she is so easy to talk to and made me feel that she knew me already.
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2. Heather’s excellent profession can be seen as she identified my problems/barriers so rightly throughout the sessions. She identified the working style that I prefer and introduced different working styles to me so that I can adopt both Eastern and Western working styles.
3. She has suggested many tools and information for me to work on, such as networking, SMART goal approach, and strategic thinking. These life long tools not only will help me regarding the development of my career but also my personal life. I truly enjoyed doing the tasks which Heather gave me.
4. After our mentoring sessions, I feel that I definitely can achieve my goals with the right attitude and tools and I am feeling so positive about my future as well.
In Chinese, we say in life everyone is like a horse and sometimes when the horse is lost, she/he needs to meet her/his right leader to guide her/him in the right direction. I think Heather certainly is one of my leaders to guide me.”
“The friendly chats – Café Coach acted as a good sounding board, you listened and quickly identified my needs and concerns, and helped me see a way forward in a practical way, i.e. with the achievement list/action plan/CV”
“It has made me evaluate my skills in a structured way. I have gained confidence in myself as a professional. It has reaffirmed the fact that I need to have a structured approach to time-keeping and goals. Your commitment and passion really came across strongly. I found this a great motivator in making me get tasks completed to our deadlines.”
“Thanks once again for all your help – don’t know whether I would have had the confidence to take that step without you.”
“Very helpful in enabling me to pinpoint some unproductive life patterns, and to see the bigger picture”
“I appreciated having an objective Coach listen and help me to move forward, give me clarity, point out what I need to do to achieve, which was to focus on 3 important areas and 1 aspect of each, instead of scattering my energy and being unfocused. It also helped that Heather was open-minded eg to alternative therapies, also I felt confident of her abilities as a trained Psychologist and with corporate experience, which gave me confidence in her!”
“Thank you very much. I appreciate your hard work, which has given me tools for focusing my mindset, becoming more proactive and realising my goal”
Interior Designer, Career Coaching Package“I liked the template approach as a tool. It made it relatively easy to give an overview of what I had actually achieved, and my strengths and weaknesses. Redesigning my CV, and inputting your words and information was extremely helpful and will definitely give me much more confidence in applying for positions that would have seemed out of my reach before”
Specialist Decorator, Career Coaching Package“Feedback from tasks ESPECIALLY the Values and Needs tasks, has been really useful, enabling me to look at contradictions in my approach to money, work and relationships and begin to address problems.”
Teacher, Life-Coaching Package“I knew anyway that Heather was both intuitive and practical, and I felt I needed that kind of person to help me.”
Numerologist, Life-Coaching Package“Thanks for very inspiring session yesterday. Couldn’t sleep properly last night, mind whirring too much! “
Retail Manager, Career Coaching Package“Café Coach has provided Muswell Hill Library with free life-coaching workshops for the last 2 years. They have been very well attended events with positive feedback. There is always interest for future sessions and we are currently holding at least 4 sessions a year now at the library.”
Angela Gordon, Branch Manager/Librarian, Muswell Hill Library“Excellent event – gave me some tips and food for thought and to gain clarity regarding future career goals”
“Excellent event – feeling stuck and helped to find out about moving on. It did make me realise that where I am is not so awful and that steps could be taken to improve my way forward”
“Excellent event – this satisfied my curiosity”
“Excellent event – to find motivation/ideas for changing job and life generally”
“Very good event – I got clarification for work-related changes I want to make in my life
“Excellent event – it was a useful introduction to life-coaching”
“Excellent event – What a wonderful idea, I came to the Library looking for a book on ‘self-auditing’ and found this – Synchronicity”
“Excellent event – I received inspiration on my career ideas”
“Excellent event – The Life-coaching session gave me food for thought”
“Excellent event – I felt stimulated to better achieve my potential – excellent!”
“Excellent event – more of this please …my new objective is to think more proactively”
“Very good event – to find tools as part of a process towards effectiveness”
“Excellent event – to have personal coaching and advice in how to make Coaching/NLP a career path”