Coaching is a process delivered through conversation that empowers the client to move towards their personal and professional goals.

The coaches’ role is non-directive, not offering advice, but through insightful questioning supports the client to explore the obstacles they face and find answers within themselves. A mentor, is often an industry expert, taking a more directive approach, offering advice in partnership with the client.  

The coaching relationship gives you clarity and the confidence to explore difficult topics, in the knowledge that your coach has your back. It is built on openness, trust and confidentiality.

After an initial conversation, you will decide on the 6 or 10 one-hour sessions. These will be held on Zoom or Skype. You will have a private space where you can talk freely.

Both coaching and mentoring improve individual and team productivity, through greater self-awareness, focus, inter-personal skills development and confidence moving you towards your professional and personal goals. It’s your values and your agenda. We will work together to promote a growth mind-set to overcoming obstacles and provide clarity. Coaching provides a framework of empowerment. Clients develop skills to self-coach and bring a coaching culture into their personal lives and organizations.

‘Coaching is a partnership between the coach and client in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires you to maximise your personal and professional potential.

The process respects that you are the expert of your life and work, believing that every client is creative, resourceful and whole.” – The International Coach Federation.

As your coach, I will work with you to:  

• Discover, clarify and align with what you want to achieve
• Encourage self-discovery
• Elicit solutions and strategies generated by you
• Hold you responsible and accountable

Learn more about me

How I coach or mentor

As your coach, I will ask insightful questions to draw out ideas, solutions and actions in a non-directive way. I have experience of coaching people in many sectors.

As a mentor, it’s quite similar to coaching you, my mentoring style is very collaborative, I draw out what you know already and then offer ideas, guidance and advice at some point for further your thinking and action plan.

Whether you’re a leader in sustainability, fashion or a purpose-driven organization, or from a different sector, I would be delighted to explore working with you.

Executive Coaching

Coaching focuses exclusively on the client, offering little advice. The coach builds a trusting relationship in a structured conversation, that is supportive and understood by the client.  This structure helps the client to feel safe, to explore and recognise themselves, move forward and take ownership of the next actions between sessions and be mindful of the areas they want to work on in the next session. The coaching session is more formalised in its’ set-up and often held outside the workplace, giving the client a neutral space to explore the topics without an agenda. A private, interrupted space is best and whilst face to face meetings can help to establish the relationship, virtual sessions work well too. Coaching is like teaching the client how to drive a car. The gear changes become smoother and the learner becomes attuned to hearing their internal engine, until, with greater self-awareness, they become good at self-coaching/ driving.  Coaching focusses on the whole person, developing deeper self-awareness, growth and personal development, unrestricted by professional demands alone. The focus is on empowerment with your agenda and values being central.

Mentoring

• Mentoring is quite similar to coaching and removes the barrier to giving advice and guidance. As a mentor, with relevant experience, my insights help you challenge yourself to explore new approaches and ideas, solutions and developing a bold action plan, timetables – and together we hold you accountable. As your mentors, I work in a more consultative, collaborative way offering advice at some point to influence thinking and outcomes that benefits you and your company. I’ll be your soundboard with an opinion, providing direction and advice to improve the chances of meeting business and personal objectives.

I believe that leadership can unlock the real transition that we need to move to net zero and real sustainability. As a fore-runner of sustainable business, from supply chains to thought leadership, I bring years 30 years of experience of having founded and led People Tree, the pioneer in sustainable food and fashion, and 5 years of advisory work to my Executive Coaching work.  My background is communications, marketing and consulting. I am an entrepreneur who uses systems thinking to promote sustainability, Fair Trade, social inclusion and commerciality. 

I am excited to coach senior leaders keen to lead in this VUCA world. We are transitioning from the old ways of siloed thinking, a linear, hierarchical economy to systems thinking and putting climate action, sustainability and social inclusion central to everything we do. Leaders recognize that stepping up to these challenges can be helped by a good support team and coach.

Having led change, innovated and pioneered new thinking and practice in sustainability in design, production, fair trading practice, multi-stake holder participation, marketing and advocacy, I know how to listen, learn, trust my intuition to act and bring people with me.

I am certified to Level 7 certificate in Executive Coaching and Mentoring by The International Leadership and Management Institution and have twenty years experience in CEO and senior executive roles.

Johansen B. (2009) Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World

Description:

We are in a time of accelerating disruptive change. In a VUCA world—one characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—traditional leadership skills won’t be enough, noted futurist Bob Johansen argues. Drawing on the latest forecasts from the Institute for the Future—the first futures think tank ever to outlive its forecasts—this powerful book explores the external forces that are shaking the foundations of leadership and unveils ten critical new leadership skills.

Wahl D. (2016) Designing Regenerative Cultures

Description:

This is a ‘Whole Earth Catalog’ for the 21st century: an impressive and wide-ranging analysis of what’s wrong with our societies, organizations, ideologies, worldviews and cultures – and how to put them right. The book covers the finance system, agriculture, design, ecology, economy, sustainability, organizations and society at large. In this remarkable book, Daniel Wahl explores ways in which we can reframe and understand the crises that we currently face, and he explores how we can live our way into the future.

Scharmer O. (2018) The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications

Description:

This book offers a concise, accessible guide to the key concepts and applications in Otto Scharmer’s classic Theory U. Scharmer argues that our capacity to pay attention coshapes the world. What prevents us from attending to situations more effectively is that we aren’t fully aware of that interior condition from which our attention and actions originate. Scharmer calls this lack of awareness our blind spot. He illuminates the blind spot in leadership today and offers hands-on methods to help change makers overcome it through the process, principles, and practices of Theory U.

McDonough M. & Bruangart M. (2002) Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

Description:

“Reduce, reuse, recycle,” urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. But as architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart point out in this provocative, visionary book, such an approach only perpetuates the one-way, “cradle to grave” manufacturing model, dating to the Industrial Revolution, that creates such fantastic amounts of waste and pollution in the first place.

Laloux F. (2014) Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness

Description:

The way we manage organizations seems increasingly out of date. Deep inside, we sense that more is possible. We long for soulful workplaces, for authenticity, community, passion, and purpose.

In this groundbreaking book, the author shows that every time, in the past, when humanity has shifted to a new stage of consciousness, it has achieved extraordinary breakthroughs in collaboration.

Sanford C. (2017) The Regenerative Business : Redesign Work, Cultivate Human Potential, Achieve Extraordinary Outcomes

Description:

Real stories from companies leading innovation and transformation across the globe including; Google, Colgate Europe, Seventh Generation, Nike and others. A logical, comprehensive approach that factors in the complexities of the modern organization. The work of internationally recognized leadership expert Carol Sanford, who for decades has been designing and leading systemic business change

Raworth. K (2017) Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

Description:

Economics is broken. It has failed to predict, let alone prevent, financial crises that have shaken the foundations of our societies. Can it be fixed? In Doughnut Economics, Oxford academic Kate Raworth identifies seven critical ways in which mainstream economics has led us astray, and sets out a roadmap for bringing humanity into a sweet spot that meets the needs of all within the means of the planet.

Senge P.M (2005)  Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society

Description:

Presence is an intimate look at the development of a new theory about change and learning. In wide-ranging conversations held over a year and a half, organizational learning pioneers Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers explored the nature of transformational change–how it arises, and the fresh possibilities it offers a world dangerously out of balance. 

Suzuki S. (1973) Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

Description:

In the forty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind has become one of the great modern Zen classics, much beloved, much reread, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen. Suzuki Roshi presents the basics—from the details of posture and breathing in zazen to the perception of nonduality—in a way that is not only remarkably clear, but that also resonates with the joy of insight from the first to the last page. 

Minney S. (2017) Slave to Fashion

Description:

Slave to Fashion is made up of interviews and microdocumentaries with the men, women and children caught in slavery, making the clothes sold in the malls and outlets across the USA and the world. It uses photos, visuals and graphics to bring the subject to life and give consumers the facts, stories and actions needed to eradicate modern slavery.

Minney S. (2016) Slow Fashion : Aesthetics Meets Ethics

Description:

Slow Fashion offers creatives, entrepreneurs, and ethical consumers alike a glimpse into the innovative world of the eco-concept store movement, sustainable design, and business that puts people, livelihoods and sustainability central to everything they do.This book curates pioneering people and projects that will i

As a member of the ILM and the ICF (International Coach Federation), Safia has obligations to operate within an ethical framework. The ICF code of ethics gives outlines of coach behaviours.

For clients who are coached by Safia they can expect:

• Confidential sessions (within the legal framework)
• A coach who adheres to the highest standards of self-awareness
• A respect of the coaches’ need for a non judgmental space to reflect in
• A transparent and straightforward process of engagement