I find myself acting as a coach on a daily basis in my role as a Chief People Officer. I trained as a coach many years ago as part of my management and leadership development. Having worked with Dulcie in the past, I decided to do this programme to both refresh and build new coaching skills.

My experience with Dulcie and her team has been excellent. Top Right Thinking are like the 5-star boutique hotel version of a coaching supplier – you get the personal touch alongside world-class standards. I would recommend them to professionals and new coaches alike.

I’m an experienced Coach and realised I was doing way more coaching and reading around the subject than the Top Right Thinking qualification required I also had the coaching hours logged that would make accreditation fast, simple and much more interesting that doing it on my own.

So I thought why not use that time I’m investing, take three days out of the diary to do something I know I will enjoy and will refresh my knowledge and become formally qualified and accredited at the same time? I’m already booked on to days 4, 5 and 6!

I got my first ‘grown-up‘ job in HR and had a team to manage – some of whom had more experience than me. I was in a real quandary as I knew that learning coaching would really help, but with a new job (and a houseful of kids!), I really didn’t have a lot of spare time!

I was really lucky to go on one of Dulcie’s programmes. Her style and the practical content really enabled me to hit the ground running in my new role. I was pleasantly surprised to find that in the end it probably saved me time!

I also found I was using the skills I learnt in order to influence better in the business. The coaching skills were transferable and gave me the confidence to challenge people in the business who were more senior than me.

If I’m honest, I was a bit of a coaching sceptic when I first met Dulcie via one of her programmes. I had a challenging team of people who I didn’t think would react to a “soft-touch” approach. I had previously thought that coaching was the remit of the HR department if I’m honest…

However, what I learnt is that Top Right coaching might be a “soft-skill” but it is hard hitting and based on robust science. The techniques we learnt really did work when managing people in real life.