Lucy Ball

About my work:

• I coach executives and senior leaders in private and public sector organisations

• I coach leadership teams and executive teams

• I work with pairs of leaders for example business partners, peers or a leader and direct report

• I also offer training in advanced coaching and intervening skills

The organisations in which my clients work, are usually experiencing fast-paced change and a great deal of uncertainty. As well as challenging organisational contexts, my clients are often facing challenges outside of work.

1:1 Coaching style

I give support to busy leaders who need to lead high performing teams, work through difficult times or change a key behaviour. I build relationships based on trust and rapport. My clients learn and change through increased awareness, insight and experimentation. I help clients to access their best selves and get the support they need from others. This often involves building the skill to influence a range of different stakeholders and colleagues. I am particularly trained in Gestalt as a theory and method for bringing about change. I’m interested in the way individuals both lead and limit their own growth. I also see individuals as part of a context and a system of relationships.

Typical 1:1 coaching

• Stepping up to the next level

• Leading change

• Building high performing teams

• Politics, power and influence

• Women in leadership

• Emotional intelligence and self-management

• Social intelligence and ‘taking people with you’

• Changing key behaviours

• Navigating difficult relationships

Pairs Coaching

Key pairs in organisations, for example the CEO and CFO, need to have highly functional working relationships. This means they need to be able to support and challenge one another and to have difficult conversations time and time again. Many relationships at the top of organisations are not strong enough to bear the uncertainty and difficulty of organisational leadership. Pairs coaching builds these muscles. Working with me, a pair learn how to grow and evolved their ways of working and communicating so that they are fit to lead together.

Team Coaching

I work with leadership and executive teams who need to lead together through challenging times. My work includes clarifying purpose, goals, roles, decision-making processes and plans as well as building robust working relationships based on respect and trust. Clients report real shifts in trust, clarity, alignment and effectiveness as a result of working with me. I focus not only on relationships between executive team members but also on relationships between hierarchical layers. The relationship between the executive team and their direct reports is a critical one in executing strategy.

Business and organisational experience

Lucy has a commercial background starting in the early 90s with Rover Group. She has signification experience in consulting firms including Deloitte Consulting where she was a manager in the Change Leadership Practice. It was at Deloitte, in the late 90s, where Lucy first learned to coach with ex-racing driver, John Whitmore. Lucy was a partner and owner at leadership development consultancy Ideas Unlimited for 14 years working on large scale change programmes. She has been focussed solely on her executive coaching and team coaching work since 2014.

Qualifications and Training

• Accredited by the Association for Professional Executive Coaches and Supervisors (APECS)

• Diploma Coaching

• Diploma Marketing

• BA Honours Philosophy (1st Class)

• Qualified to use Hogan inventories, the Harthill Leadership Development Framework and Myers Briggs Type Indicator

• Member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC)

• Professional Associate GISC, Gestalt International Study Center, Cape Cod, MA, USA

• Regular coaching supervision and psychotherapy

• Numerous continuous professional development programmes including: Executive Team Coaching, Couching: The boundaries between coaching and counselling, Bath Consultancy Group Supervision Skills, Gestalt Cape Cod Model, Gestalt Practice Group, Gestalt Coaching Skills, CBT, Psychodynamic and Gestalt Coaching Skills, Performance Coaching

Geography

Lucy lives in Taunton, Somerset, UK with her husband, who is a physiotherapist, and two sons. She travels widely but is currently mainly UK focused. She meets clients face to face often in locations such as London, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Reading. She also works via video-conferencing and phone.