Thanks for dropping by and being interested in who I am and what I do. This is a brief overview of what professional coaching is and how it helped me to change my career and life for the better. I’m Vicki and I am a Coach. I set up Ebb and Flow in 2017 after qualifying with a professional coaching diploma from The Coaching Academy.
I am passionate about how the coaching process can help people, teams and organisations make positive, realistic, and achievable changes to improve situations and overcome challenges.
What have I done previously?
From the age of eighteen, I worked in various organisations and industries across the country, in different departments including reception, production control and purchasing, until I ‘fell’ into sales management and business development (I don’t think anyone really chooses sales as a career do they?!) I finished my full-time career working in the audio-visual equipment hire and event production industry, where I had spent sixteen years developing long-term, successful corporate client relationships, helping to deliver conferences and live events and leading a team of outstanding people.
In 2011 the support of a coach enabled me to successfully overcome some work challenges and the benefits were instant and life-changing. My personal epiphany came after a health scare in 2014 when I knew I wanted and needed to work for myself and do something different.
Passionate about Coaching
My business is called ‘Ebb and Flow’ for two reasons. One, my happy place is when I’m next to the sea, especially on the Norfolk and Suffolk coast. And two, the ebb and flow of the tide is much like our lives when they fluctuate between good days and not-so-good days, the ups and downs and the challenges we must sometimes face.
Coaching is a process which helps you focus and define your ‘goal’ and enables you to plan to achieve it. Coaching isn’t counselling or mentoring and it doesn’t involve me giving you advice or opinions.
So, what is your goal? Is it to change jobs? Have you been made redundant, and you need to find a new role? Do you want to lose weight and be more active? Are you thinking about retiring? Or how you might cope once the kids have left home? It could be something simpler such as the dreaded work-life balance and time management, planning a holiday, wedding, or party, making more time for yourself or being more confident.
If you don’t do something differently, nothing will alter. If you desire a different outcome, you are the only person who can make the changes to achieve that. You are the one in control.
Coaching gives you a safe, non-judgemental and confidential space to speak, be listened to and explore what is really important to you. To consider your priorities and what the benefits will be by making behavioural and mindset changes and most importantly how you’ll do it.
For me, it’s a privilege that people let me into their lives and tell me things which they may never have spoken openly about to anyone else before. When a person has the ‘lightbulb’ moment and coaching ‘clicks’ for them and they know what it is they will do to achieve a different outcome – that’s what gives me the buzz and makes the choice I made to become a coach worthwhile.
What Next for me?
In September 2021 I applied one of my top strengths, love of learning, and enrolled on the Masters in Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) course at Buckinghamshire New University. I’ve just completed my first year and I’m not going to lie at times it’s not been easy. However, I love the subject and I know how much the interventions of positive psychology will help me personally and the people I work with. (See my blog, My ‘positive’ Masters Journey)
What next for you?
You’ve found me and read this because my guess is…. you have something you’d like to be doing differently and you’re interested in how coaching can help you. Your next step to making a change is to get in touch for a free 30-minute telephone, Teams or Zoom consultation. We do this to make sure that coaching will be the best intervention for your situation and that I will be the right coach for you.
I’m looking forward to speaking with you soon, so please get in touch.
07554 020669
