Episode 16 – Why executive coaching belongs in your portfolio career

In this episode, we explore how executive coaching can become a powerful and versatile strand in a portfolio career. Joined by two graduates of our Practitioner Diploma in Executive Coaching programme, we hear how they transitioned from corporate life to building fulfilling, multi-dimensional careers where coaching plays a central role.

 We discuss:

•  Why coaching is a valuable skillset for those designing a portfolio career
• How to make the shift from a single-track role to a more flexible, purpose-led path
• The personal and professional growth that coaching unlocks
• Real stories of reinvention, resonance and rediscovery

Whether you're actively building a portfolio career or simply curious about what’s possible beyond the 9-to-5, this conversation offers inspiration, insight and practical takeaways.

You can link with the speakers here:

·       Lucy Tulloch, the AoEC & Lucy Tulloch Coaching – host

·       Dr Claire Handby,  Dr Claire Handby Business Leadership Ltd - guest panellist 

·       Helen Keddie, Keddie Consultancy & Coaching Ltd – guest panellist

To find out more about coach training and coaching, please visit the AoEC’s website www.aoec.com.

Transcript

Lucy 0:06

Hello, I'm Lucy Tulloch and I am the Head of Coach Education here at the AoEC. Welcome to our podcast today. Why executive coaching belongs in your portfolio career. In this episode, we explore how executive coaching can become a powerful and versatile strand in a portfolio career. I'm joined today by two graduates who I will introduce you to in just a moment. They are graduates of our practitioner diploma and we're going to hear from them and how they transitioned from corporate life to building a fulfilling and multidimensional career where coaching plays a central role. So over the course of our time together in this podcast, we hope to cover a number of different areas, including why coaching is a valuable skill set for those who are designing a portfolio career. We'll also have a look at how to make that shift from a single track role into something that might be more flexible, more purpose-led, a different pathway. We might also explore that sort of personal professional growth aspect as well that coaching can unlock and bring some real life stories and reinventions and resonance and rediscovery. So, whether you're actively building a portfolio career or simply curious about what's possible beyond a nine to five, I hope that this conversation offers some inspiration, some insight, and some practical takeaways. So joining me today, I have Dr. Claire Hanby and Helen Keddie. Perhaps I can come to you first of all, Claire, to say a quick hello and introduce yourself, and then you can pass on to Helen to say hello too.

Claire 1:42

Yes. Hello, Lucy, and hi listeners. It's an absolute pleasure to be here today. My background started in infrastructure for 10 years, and then I did 15 years in management consulting, resulting in me setting up my own business. Coming into my third year now, and it's a pleasure to be here and I hand over to Helen.

Helen 2:05

Thank you very much, Claire. Thank you, Lucy, and hello to everybody that's listening. I come from a different sector than Claire, so I've got about 35 years of corporate experience all in the healthcare sector where I work with big global companies like PG and Novartis. And within that I was lucky enough to gain about a decade's worth of board experience. I set up my own company about three years ago, and it's definitely a portfolio business, and it is definitely purpose-led Lucy. So I look forward to talking about that more today.

Lucy 2:41

Fantastic, and I hope to bring my insights as well. As you both know, and as many of our listeners might know, I also have a portfolio career, so I spend part of my working life working for the AoEC as the head of coach education. And I've had my coaching practice for 10 years, having stepped away from my previous corporate life of 20 years into this portfolio route for me too. So I'm looking forward to bringing some of my experiences and certainly purpose-led, values-led thinking and and decision making that took me down this pathway. So, thank you both. So let's let's kick off, shall we? You've both given us a little bit of a hint as to the route that your career has taken you. Perhaps one of you would like to start telling us a little bit more about how you started your journey this into where you are today.

Claire 3:34

So, how I started my journey into executive coaching, well, I've had a series of executive coaching experiences over the years, and whether or not it was to do with transitioning off onto maternity leave and then transitioning back into the business that I was part of at the time, also securing promotion and stepping up into the new role. I had executive coaching for that, and so it had a profound impact on me. And it's about 15 years ago I first experienced it. Then advancing forward, I decided that when I did step out of the corporate environment, one of the first things that I wanted to do, reflecting on all the feedback that I'd had over the years of being a people person, was that I wanted to formalise my executive coaching credentials. And that was because I'd sought my own executive coach privately as well, and felt that impact upon me through a personal capacity really helped me navigate into the portfolio career that I've got today. I followed the pathway of my executive coach, which was linked to the AoEC training. I did research other opportunities, but this one, because of its alignment with accreditation with the three bodies, just really suited the way that I like to learn, which is experience-based, skills-based, but also validated with professional qualifications and that they're internationally recognised. So those were my drivers to get the right qualifications to then show up myself to help people who want to uptick their own careers. So that's how I arrived at this move.

Lucy 5:18

So an opportunity to have been coached and then using that coaching to help you then make that decision about your own coach education, your own coach training. Wonderful. Helen, what about you?

Helen 5:29

So I came at it from a professional basis but also a personal basis. So professionally, there'll be no surprise to those that know me that I'm very much a people person. And that has been consistent throughout my entire career. But I had a bit of an aha moment in my last role where I had my day job and I was doing my day job and and that was all going quite well. But I had this side hustle where I was mentoring between 40 and 50 people a year, and I was like, I'm really enjoying this. I wonder if I can make a vocation out of it. And then from a personal perspective, I really wanted to be more UK-based because I was travelling a lot at the time and I wanted to be back closer to my family. My kids were finishing up their university degrees, so I thought, you know what, this is a good time for me to take a risk and do something that I feel really passionate about. So it was a very personal decision, and I knew that I wanted to help people, but AoEC really helped me refine that, and it really helped me think about what I wanted to do, who I am, how I wanted to coach, and what that might look like. And so I set up my own company and immediately got some some board qualifications and also my executive executive coaching qualification because, like Claire, I really, really wanted to make sure that I was equipped with the research and the tools and the appropriate qualification, which then led to an accreditation and and not just you know rely on my own experience. So AoEC was a very important step in my journey, and but I'm very pleased that I made that step.

Lucy 7:20

And it reminds me of the decision process I went through when I did my qualifications. I was going be an internal coach, that was my intention. And as I was doing my internal coaching within the organisation, I found myself thinking about all the other people I could be coaching that I wasn't getting access to, and this desire and hunger to have a bigger impact than perhaps I felt like I was I was having. And it wasn't that it was dissatisfying being an internal coach, but I think it sparked something in me that I didn't know I wanted to do, and I made that decision then to set up my own business and and start to coach beyond beyond the organisation. And I left in the end and now I've had my company for for ten years. My decision to come to the AoEC was because I felt so strongly about the robust nature of the learning and the assessment and the quality, and that it was important to go out into the world with the best training, the best skills, the best qualifications to have the greatest impact, rather than worrying that there were people out in the marketplace who perhaps didn't have the right levels of skill and qualification, and they wanted to be part of the future proofing of the quality of coaching, and which is what led me to to the AoEC, and now I can have that balance as well. But when you think about the practitioner diploma, the course that you both took to do your coach training, how was doing that learning shaped your confidence as a coach now?

Claire 8:59

And so I'd share three reflections for you that have just come up around my confidence. The people that I met on my practitioner were really credible people, whether or not they were in an internal environment and found their way onto the course, or whether or not they'd paid for it themselves, which I was in that cohort. And so it was very good to be able to see the different perspectives and the honesty that that brought. The second thing about my confidence was they pushed you to secure payment for the training that you were learning on the course, not as in cash payments necessarily, but how to secure testimonials, which are classed as payments, and so it was really enforcing that you can make a business out of doing the practitioner with us, so that was super, and then the third, I think I designed my framework, what suits me as a coach to show up for people, a certain demographic of people, a certain level of leader. I designed that approach whilst doing the practitioner, and I'm two years the other side of it, and I still hang my coaching framework and all the other ways that you can support people through the spine of establishing my approach on the practitioner. So that's the three core ways that I'm so pleased I did the practitioner with the AoEC.

Lucy 10:34

Thank you. What about you, Helen?

Helen 10:36

Really interesting, Claire, because mine's not dissimilar. So the first reflection I've got when you asked that question, Lucy, was one of how I selected the AoEC. And Claire, you touched on this earlier because I did a lot of research, so I ended up training and qualifying with the right organisation. And the reason I selected AoEC was because of the mixed learning approach. I think Claire, you mentioned the balance of the research alongside the practical elements, and I really needed that. So people need to think about if they need it virtually face to face. I really appreciated the modular approach and having time to think and reflect in between. But the power was in the mentoring sessions when you were with or the group sessions when you were with your peers, and also the one-to-one time where you really had the ability and the time and the focus just to to practice. So I think it's really important to pick the right course for you. Like Claire, I learned a lot about myself, and I also learnt a lot about my coaching style and probably the clientele who I could help the most. So that was very, very confidence-giving for me because it really helped me sort of define where I wanted to take my new career, which was scary at times, but the AoEC really helped me think about that very carefully. The other thing that the AoEC gave me was my why and why am I doing this, and that was incredibly powerful for me, and anybody taking this course should not underestimate the impact that can have on you at a personal level. The last thing I would like to touch on, Lucy, and it's really important to me, the reassurance. So it's not confidence but it's linked to confidence, the reassurance that the AoEC diploma gave me around the ethical framework. As Claire mentioned, the really robust way that you're assessed, the way that they'll give you the research and the tools and the practice, and then the ongoing learning that you get from that, because you don't just automatically get accredited if you want to be accredited, you have to continue your own development and growth on an annual basis. So to have that ethical framework and to have that sort of robust development programme around me really gave me a lot of confidence that I was doing the right thing, but I also had the right guardrails around me.

Lucy 13:00

That's great. And I was smiling as I was listening to you because when we write and share information about the practitioner diploma when we talk about it being experiential, and I think until you start, you might not really fully understand what it's like to be day one, module one, having a go. And you might have some experience of coaching, you might have none at all. And our intention is to create a safe space for you to have a go. So, right from the start, you're learning by doing, and that might at times feel unstructured, and yet when we go with the process and we go with it, we learn so much about ourselves, which is a wonderful advantage or benefit, or perhaps not necessarily immediately recognisable as you go through that process is you're starting to learn more and more about yourself and your why, and why you want to do your coaching, and how you're going to do your coaching, and who you want to coach. And the course is designed really to help you to over time explore that within yourself and find some answers. And for some people, it comes earlier in the journey than it does for others, and that's okay. I'm 10 years into my business, and I think my business keeps evolving. The more clients I work with, the more I understand about myself and the sort of work I love to do, and the great opportunities still get to present themselves, and I can take my career off in different directions. So when we think about a portfolio career, I'm interested to explore with you both what a portfolio career means to you. I know it's a phrase that gets used, but perhaps it's useful to sort of unpick what it might mean to us and to our listeners as well.

Claire 14:46

So a portfolio career for me, I left at executive level when I was in management consulting. And so I wanted to come out of that environment, but I wanted to also show up in a market that interfaced with those levels of leader. And so it held a mirror back to me completing the practitioner training to say, I'm going to show up as a non-executive director. That's a dream of my portfolio career. And so one of the first things that I did was pro bono support into a charity because that anchored me as a trustee. And then it's naturally transpired over time that I've become chair of the board for the charity. And so then you move into a space of actually using your executive coaching to support the leadership of that board, even though I'm not leading with being an executive coach. I have the confidence of knowing that when challenges are being faced by the board, I know how to support through that environment. Then it's transpired over time that being a trustee in a charity comes over into the private sector of becoming a non-executive director. And so typically the spaces that I'm in presently around that is startups and technology-based businesses. Whether or not that's a startup business who wants to come into the infrastructure sector to disrupt the construction industry as an example and help it to accelerate at pace, then I'm there focused on the governance and leadership of the business. But actually, it naturally moves over into supporting the leaders of these businesses through my executive coaching. Then the other aspect is that I'm actually showing up as an executive coach to grow that work stream of my business in its own right. Then I have another work stream, which is programme leadership, which is the core of my background of being a project programme portfolio leader. But then the executive coaching, one of the opportunities that I went for to show up as a programme leader, and the managing director said back to me, we've given you this because you're the blend of programme leadership with knowing how to executive coach my board and to understand how disruptive this change is of going after our growth strategy. So even when I'm not leading with executive coaching, it is supplementing how I'm showing up in the market. And then I've just written my own first book, and that's coming out next July, and that is to again support people who want to transition their careers, but also recognising that executive coaching is a major way of doing that. So there's some highlights. I do some other aspects like being a trainer, which has resulted in it people coming and seeking me out for exec coaching as a consequence of showing up being a trainer. So it is very intertwined the skill set that you get of executive coaching, and you don't always know how it's going to be leveraged by others, but it is being leveraged a lot when it comes to myself.

Lucy 17:51

Yeah, some great examples there of how you might go into a conversation and engagement with one intent, and yet it's a skill set that's recognised and appreciated by organisations, and they want to tap into it. You know, the more they can get the better. That's the way it's sounding. So it's definitely opening doors, and you're getting to use it in lots of different capacities as well. Great. Helen, what's what's your experience?

Helen 18:16

So my portfolio business is is probably comprised of of four main things. There's my own executive coaching practice, which is the backbone of what I do. Like Claire, I also do board work. Very similar, Claire. I also started as a trustee in the charitable sector in the hospice sector. And I'm just going to give a shout out to the North Devon Hospice because they won charity of the year last month, which was an amazing achievement. So to be associated with something like that is just makes me incredibly proud. And I do non-executive work as well for a UK boutique agency in the healthcare sector. And then I do not dissimilar to Claire, I do team leadership. Probably looks a little bit different to what you were talking about because it's not the programme side of things. I might help with new leader integration or I might help with a team vision or their ways of working. Sometimes I find that my clients just want some practical toolkits designing and developing, and then they get to practice with them, not dissimilar to the AoEC diploma. And all of it involves some kind of design and facilitation. So having all of the research that the AoEC gave me is really handy to then work out how to apply that in that sector. And the last piece of my portfolio business is consultancy work, which is kind of strategic input based on my leadership experience. So, how has the coaching helped me? Well, it helps me listen because that is something you learn and you continue to learn when you're coaching. It certainly helps me ask more insightful questions. I'm still on my journey there, but I think it helps me get the client to really think about what they need. But probably the highlight of using AoEC for me was I once had a team of 20 people who had no coaching background per se, but I got them using the Oscar technique, which is a solution, it's a structure framework that is solution orientated to help people identify their strengths and where they are, and then take really practical steps to get them to improve to a a defined goal. And it was amazing to see a team work through that and really rewarding to see how you can share the learnings across the the different areas.

Lucy 20:35

It brings me great joy to see and hear the joy in how you describe how coaching is playing a fundamental part in the work that you do and how you are weaving it in to this purpose-led opportunities that you are coming across. I think that's when I decided to have a portfolio career, my kids were quite young. So I was looking for flexibility and opportunity, and there are definitely some challenges as well along the way as you're learning to have your own your own business, million-dollar question around fees and all of that sort of stuff. There's quite a a steep learning curve around some of those sort of more logistical pieces. We touched on it a bit in the practitioner diploma, and then there's some sort of finding your own way as you go out into the world, and as part of the work that you do on the programme to understand what your coaching model and framework look like, there's some continued learning as to what that looks like in practice when you go out into the world with your coaching.

Helen 21:38

Yeah, and just to add to that, Lucy, I mean that you do learn during the practitioner diploma, but the AoEC offers all of this extra curricular stuff around how to build your your practice and how to build your clientele base and how to get referrals, etc. etc. I mean, they're always posting every week. continued learning things and and some of that is orientated around having a healthy business so it's not just all about the diploma itself it's all of that extra support that the AoEC can can give you and I value that hugely.

Lucy 22:14

Great thank you. So when we think about having a portfolio career I'm wondering what advice you might have for anybody considering a portfolio career either sort of putting coaching into their skill set or if they want to do it sort of the majority of their time or integrate it into the work that they're already doing. What would be some top tips that you might want to share today?

Claire 22:41

So one of the things that I'll share because I really love this statement and I just think that it's a good one for people to bear in mind. So this is an inspirational quote from the rapper 50 Cent and it's helped me so much with charging for the support that I give. Bear with me whilst I read this out but a bottle of water is a dollar at the store at the gym four dollars at the airport and seven dollars on a plane it's the same water it's got a different price tag. Why? Well it ain't about the water it's about where it's at see when you feel like people ain't seeing your value it ain't because you ain't worth much it's because you're in the wrong spot. And that's what I'd say to people who want to make executive coaching part of their portfolio. It is very, very real that you can give away your experience, your knowledge, your competence and your skills and not charge for it. And one of the reasons why I became an executive coach was to really understand how to show up, how to price the value that I bring and how to make a difference to people. No the AoEC practitioner I'm a gritty person and by doing the practitioner it reinforced that I want to be amongst very gritty topics in the market like I'm the chair of Greater Manchester Trafford Rape Crisis charity. No, this is a challenging topic that we know there's an epidemic on that subject going on in our country presently. Then there's other areas I'm from the construction industry and my executive coaching is supporting people who are on the brink of no there's more people dying of suicide in the built environment than there are people dying from falls. Some of my executive coaching clients that I've got presently, they'll pick the phone up to me and say I just want to confirm I'm still here, no because of that relationship that is the way I'm showing up to say I'm purpose driven for the people but I have the skill set to be supporting our society and that's what I think executive coaching and doing the practitioner has given me just bridging to Helen's point about completing the practitioner it's not been the end of the story for me with the AoEC. One of the trainers I put a cohort together to have supervisor support. So one of the trainers on my practitioner gives the supervisory coaching to four in our cohort and also we have a WhatsApp group that is still alive today as it was when I was on the course. So this support to and and how challenging it is to grow your own business around executive coaching you know Lucy you've been doing it for 10 years, Helen you've been doing it for three years, I did think when I did the practitioner I'd come out into the market and there would be a potential pipeline of clients waiting for me and I've got to be honest the pipeline of clients is coming through because of my daily action to show up to be supporting to be seizing those opportunities when I'm going in for one thing as a programme leader and still keeping my executive coaching skill set alive by making an impact in the businesses that I'm within for a different topic not for executive coaching but I'm bringing those skill sets in. So I'm being very nimble in the market that's my advice is to be nimble and sometimes you don't lead with being an executive coach you lead for other reasons in your portfolio but find your opportunities to bring your skills in because they're a value add and they do make a difference - a real difference to people's lives. So be proud.

Lucy 26:49

Yeah Claire thank you I've often said this when I've taught as faculty on the practitioner diploma about the responsibility we have as coaches out in the world and we've already touched a little bit on ethics you know why we are a supporting and helping profession and we have quite a responsibility on our shoulders and great opportunity to make a difference in the world whether that's in the capacity that you've described or whether that's as coaches with climate change with you know all the different aspects of the world in which we live in today not underestimating the the power of coaching and how that leads to purpose-led work. So thank you for the work that you do. Helen what about you?

Helen 27:32

Really touching Claire. I think that my why is around nurturing and helping individuals or teams which is why it led me into a portfolio approach and not just purely one-to-one executive coaching. My husband often complains that I'm there for everybody else putting them all first and running around helping everybody and not taking care of myself so I feel that responsibility hugely and I said earlier you know this is very personal to me and it's very purpose led. But I like to help individuals or teams really identify their goals and reach their potential and it's important for me to to get that right which is why getting the right qualification, getting the right accreditation and as you mentioned Claire, that supervision aspect is really really important to hold us to account and to make sure we continue to learn and grow. But why a portfolio career because I think I can play to my strengths and if I play to my strengths I can help more people because I know a little bit more about what I really can offer and where I can have the greatest impact. So that's a little bit about the why but from a personal perspective a portfolio career gives me great flexibility so I am therefore able to live my life around this portfolio career. I think your question is what advice would we give somebody Lucy and I'm just like it's a no regret move for me. There's not a single day that's gone by where I've thought I've made the wrong decision. I absolutely am loving what I'm doing so it's definitely worked out for me and I really hope it works out for for many of our listeners.

Lucy 29:25

Yeah thank you you know I'm immensely proud actually of you both and the work that you are the purpose and the why we do what we do I think is really important in any aspect of our life whether we we're in a portfolio career or not and I think the the joy about having that portfolio career is that we can spend more time doing the things that we love having the impact that we want to have in environments where we can do our do our best work. I was thinking and reflecting as you were both talking I think Claire you used the word nimble I sometimes talk about agility because I think part of having a portfolio career is about being agile and developing your offer depending on what's going on in the marketplace. Coaching has highs and lows like any sector and being able to adapt to what the marketplace needs and wants is an important quality of having that portfolio career. I think you know 10 years ago when I think about the work I was doing it feels vastly different now. And part of that is my own preference and my own desires and in terms of the work I want to do and and it's also in response to what's going on in marketplace as well. So thank you both for your insights and advice when someone's thinking about a portfolio career. Let's move our attention to the future where do you see your portfolio career perhaps changing or evolving?

Claire 32:40

Well for me, just massive disruption coming to the market and so its this responsiveness to AI, and senior leadership jobs perhaps not being as available as they have been in the past and the attrition off the back of that where people are also coupling it with the three stage life of education job retirement is not suiting so many people I'm seeing off the back of COVID and the digital agenda that it continues to drive me to show up being in that intersection of people wanting an uptick in their career wanting to pivot how do you go about that what's the practicalities of it and so that's where I've shown up now I became an executive coach and then the natural transition has been to say to show up being a published author now around that topic to really put my flag in the mast about a niche yes but remaining I know I've said it before remaining nimble around what the market needs from me. The other aspect is that I want to be in the right space for realising the value to the people but also realising the value that my portfolio career cannot be as wide as it is presently because there's more sustainability in the pipeline of executive coaching which takes time to grow that over the years. So that is in say five years time I would like more of me doing executive coaching and less of say the programme leadership but if the market won't tolerate that and I can't have a sustainable life then I will continue to - I'm a bit like an organ in a church you know playing the different elements of that to say what's the market wanting right be agile and marry up to it the way that the market needs I remember way back when I first started executive coaching and about the commercial side of it because I don't think we talk about it enough I couldn't even because I wasn't showing up with the right demographic of person I was making a transformative difference to this person to get out of recruitment and to get into the big four. They managed to do it off the back of me supporting them yet when it came to discussing payment I couldn't even get her to give up a nail appointment cost of 30 pounds to pay I'll never forget that and I just like finished the call and I just thought this is not sustainable. I need a portfolio career just to keep me afloat as the main breadwinner in my family, you know just being honest with the listeners, yeah you need to come into executive coaching with your eyes wide open about the market and about what you need to run your life as well as showing up for other people like what Helen spoke about earlier you're doing this for a reason. To have a better life for yourself you've got to get that marriage between showing up for people and also sustaining your life as well if you get that you've cracked it.

Lucy 34:59

Absolutely thank you. Helen what are your thoughts?

Helen 35:03

Well one of the reasons I love having a portfolio business is because I genuinely believe that it keeps you current and up to date and you know your blinkers are off because you're listening to and working in an ever changing environment and that I think is incredibly important because if you work in a sector and this is again a niche you don't have to work in a sector but I tend to work in the healthcare sector because I know it well. I've got clients that that fall outside of that but if my portfolio business is giving me insights into the environment and what's happening in the environment I just believe that I can do a better job coaching. Not that I should be giving the answers but it just helps me have a greater, maybe deeper understanding of maybe what my clients are going through and Claire you mentioned nimble and Lucy you mentioned agility and this is hugely important in my sector and big companies are merging people are reorganising drugs fly like the obesity product some die literally overnight there's constant constant change so I find myself reacting to my client needs and at the moment that is around new roles or new teams or new opportunities or career decisions because the environment has got a lot of change going on. So I don't know that I can give you a really straightforward answer, you know what does it look like because I'm not sure I know it all yet and I think the best thing I can give you as an answer, is is my commitment to stay curious, to keep listening and to keep learning with my clients. If I learn with them then I can probably do a better job supporting them going forward. So there's my early new year commitment to you.

Lucy 37:07

That's a wonderful thank you. I know if only we had a crystal ball that told us what the future was going to look yeah I think some of the things I'm thinking about and with my peers and colleagues at the AoEC is about you know us keeping ahead of what's going on in the coaching world to make sure that that we're bringing that back into our teaching on the programme we're always looking to make sure that what we're doing is current so that we are doing that reflective exploratory thinking about what's going on in them in the marketplace. And so you know AI being probably the biggest one and the most obvious one. We went to a trade show recently and I was absolutely staggered how out of the, I don't know, maybe a hundred stands there ourselves and another coaching organisation were one of the two companies that it felt like we were leading with human beings and not with AI and in that moment we were thinking you know, we all embrace the role that AI has and in the coaching space and yet we were all struck by the need to remain really human and for human conversation we got to try lots of different products and things like that and they were amazing. I mean I'm not going to knock it, it was amazing what could be achieved and I went away just thinking and what about when I get to sit in a room with another human being and there's a connection that is just quite simply human. So that's at the forefront of our mind in terms of what we're doing on the programme and how AI might play a part in the future. The other thing about a portfolio career for myself and for my faculty, is the experience that we're getting outside as practicing coaches and the ability that we then have to bring it into the classroom setting because I personally love nothing more than being able to share my own experiences of being a practicing coach with real clients and being able to bring the learning to life so that there's more exposure and more opportunity for reflection and thinking about what it is that anybody who's on the practitioner diploma might go on to do. I love bringing it to life and so lots of those real life questions about how we logistically run programmes or what it might be fees and you know ask me anything and I'll try and give you the best answer that I that I can. So so we are constantly trying to stay abreast of what's going on in the marketplace and often participants on the practitioner diploma will bring their real life scenarios of the challenges they're in that are in the workplace and they become part of some of our discussions on on the programme as well. So again it's keeping it really relevant and very real as well. I think coaching in a portfolio career feels to me like a pick and mix, a sweet shop experience where I feel really lucky actually to be able to do what I do and be able to work with lots of different people, lots of different organisations, whether that's teams, one-to-one and back to a point that you've both made it's about this transformational journey about making a a difference and how utterly rewarding that is and appreciating that these skills, those listening skills, those questioning skills, again which you both mentioned are making an impact on ourselves and on the people that we get to work with as well and variety that was the other thing that struck me as you were talking and the variety of work that we can do at any time different clients, the different sectors and the different challenges certainly keeps our work interesting that's for sure and for me that's something that I particularly enjoy.

Claire 40:55

Yeah a couple of things as you were just talking then just around the things that I learned on the practitioner course that I still use now and I cherish them and I pay it forward in my executive coaching with people but it's just if the listeners haven't heard it before but also reminding them. So I used to work really hard with the exec coaching answers in my mind when I was listening to one of my clients and the key thing that I always remember to myself is the thought bubble needs to stay over the client you know we don't solutionise we need to stay in the listening mode so really reinforcing what you both said today and then the other one that came up was about driving the car and that the client is always driving their car and we're in the passenger seat and we're asking them to notice if they would like to turn left turn right carry straight on those are like two anchors of techniques just in the in the moment of doing executive coaching with somebody to support them that keeps me in the moment and the final thing that I'd say actually is just I'm a digital first coach. I lead with that whether or not it's because the infrastructure of my life fell over so badly during COVID so it was a forced position in my professional life to be made to go so digital but then I absolutely fell in love with it. And you know I was having executive coaching at the time and we always made a point of showing up in person and then because of COVID then we went online and then I was like this is so easy for my life to click on a link and be there. You know that presence I generate with my clients digitally and it just makes the logistics all fall away to be honest. And even my practitioner I did on a weekend.

Lucy 43:08

I think you raise a really interesting point about the accessibility of coaching virtually and as you know we offer the programme in person and virtually and now we actually offer a hybrid so you can attend module one in person and then do module two virtually and module three in person. And I think that hybrid approach then can help to build confidence about the power of coaching even virtually because as you say if you can develop the skills to be present whether you're looking down the lens of a camera or sitting in the room you can still create a safe space you can still create that connective connection between you and your client and I like yourself I mean I do 99% of my coaching is is virtual and it's accessible and the technology is there and actually if it means that I can get out into the world and make more of a difference to more people then for me it's a it's a no-brainer. Helen, what about you? What's your mix like?

Helen 44:13

My mix is is primarily virtual. Yes, occasionally clients want to meet face to face at some point. But most of what I do from a coaching perspective is virtual. Obviously the the team building interestingly is 50-50 now so it was all face to face but even that has gone virtual and has a sort of like a continued sort of team learning aspect so you can build on some virtual modules after you've built the relationships face to face. The consultancy is mixed again depending on on the client's needs but for the executive coaching practice I'd say 99% is is virtual Lucy. Thank you.

Lucy 44:54

So we're coming to the end of our time together today and I feel like there's so it's such a broad and rich topic of conversation. And so as we as we bring this to a close I just want to say thank you to you both for your time and your desire to bring this topic to our listeners as part of that development of the ideas of how they can use their coaching practice in lots of different ways and incorporate it into a portfolio career will mean what it means to different people and and the breadth and the depth of what that looks like. And at whatever stage of your career as well I think you know the three of us have got a variety of different experiences of starting our portfolio career at different points. And it just says to me that you know anything is possible with some important considerations in there around the training, the thinking about how you're going to run your business what that mix looks like the purpose the value the sort of work that you want to do and the difference you want to make in the world so thank you both very much indeed for your time and I hope we get the opportunity to share some space together again.

Helen 46:11

Thank you very much for the invitation I really appreciated being here today and being invited to to share my experiences Claire Yeah and the same it's excellent and I just say to the listeners that sometimes you show up in the market and you are more qualified because of doing the AoEC and the practitioner diploma but that is the way the industry is going it needs to be more professionalised. There's too many people showing up without the effort that we've all put in and I think that's something that the AoEC needs to champion more as well just about how professionally we've been trained to support people.

Lucy 47:03

And I think you raised a really interesting point there around not just the quality of the training but if you go on to do your accreditation what it actually means to have accreditation out in this in the in the profession as well it's a common question that comes up on the practitioner diploma you know which route should I take and why it says we've got the three bodies - the International Coaching Federation, the EMCC and the AC and they all offer different requirements for for entry and there's a lot of very similar underpinnings that are fundamental to us as coaches and I think your your point about going out and realising you have got an extremely high level of of teaching and education that does set you apart from from others. It's not uncommon to come across people who call themselves coaches who've had little or no training whatsoever and having that accreditation can be really useful to set yourself apart from other people.

Claire 48:04

Yeah don't let them dim your sparkle