With over 15 years of experience Andi is a skilled and dedicated coach with a strong background in leadership development, team coaching, and personal growth, whether a vulnerable child/adult, a senior politician or C-suite executives. With a passion for empowering individuals, teams and boards, she brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise from a various sectors including public and commercial, not for profit, charities and universities.
Background & Industry Experience
Andi is an experienced and well-respected senior HR and OD professional always resilient and confident under pressure with experience of leadership in a variety of sectors including Save the Children, NHS Leaders during COVID-19, Judge Business School in Cambridge, Kings College, British Council, Cabinet Office and the wider Civil Service as well as many commercial organisations.
Andi trained as a mediator in 2004 and has since successfully mediated many cases in organisations and the community to endeavour to support better working, living and professional relationships.
Andi led the Civil Service departmental approaches to safeguarding and combatting sexual misconduct following media exposure of Oxfam and Department of International Development (DFID) issues in 2016. She worked with DFID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to set up an enhanced due diligence set of standards for the UK and overseas partners to apply safeguards in their work and in particular, to safeguard children and adults at risk of sexual exploitation and abuse.
Coaching Style & Specialisations
Andi uses a variety of coaching models as frameworks to help leaders and individuals to provide in-depth support and growth opportunities for themselves and in turn, for their teams.
Each of the models Andi utilises has different ways of providing support along with unique attributes that make each one good for specific situations ensuring that sessions are tailored to suit individual and team needs: Grow Model, Solution Focused Model, OSKAR, CLEAR and Action Centred Leadership Model. Whatever model Andi uses she ensures that clients feel supported, challenged and motivated to reach their full potential.
A Moment That Reflects Andi as a Coach
One of Andi’s most rewarding coaching experiences involved working with a director facing significant challenges in leading their multi-disciplinary teams in an extremely volatile country in the Middle East. The director was struggling with a distinct lack of confidence and unable to meet with his direct reports and their teams. Furthermore, he felt incapable of developing his senior direct reports and seriously doubted his ability to manage the team and achieve impact in a very difficult atmosphere and working environment. It was very difficult for the Director to open up in the first instance and allow himself to admit to his vulnerability.
During the course of the coaching sessions, Andi supported the director in being able to identify his core strengths, reframe his crippling limiting beliefs and meet with his team for honest, open, yet challenging conversations and developing strategies for the future. Andi achieved this through a number of interventions, in essence being a catalyst for the client to develop and be able to quieten his inner voice of failure. This included the Three Chairs Technique, Journaling and Mindfulness techniques to ensure self-help and resilience, as well as defining options and evaluating them.
Gradually the client regained his motivation and self-belief which in turn hugely improved his leadership and his approach to his senior leadership team and colleagues. In turn, his influence became global. A far cry from the initial chemistry meeting where it was hard to coax him out of this office. His confidence, with hard work and patience, was restored.
Andi continues to be committed to seeing the best in every client and providing an empowering coaching environment, helping all those she coaches to unlock their full potential and thrive with renewed motivation.
Outside of work, Andi loves walking – with the exception of hills which she loathes despite climbing Kilimanjaro to celebrate a friend’s birthday, travelling – she once used her surname to claim she was a footballer’s mother to escape Sierra Leone, and watching sunsets with her family.
