Synergia Coaching Limited

08/10/2026

Today I have been inspired by the creation of Poppy’s Promise by the parents of Poppy, Kate and Neil, following the death of their daughter during her birth.

Poppy’s Promise is about bringing compassion into the Telford maternity unit, learning from people who didn’t receive the compassion they needed.

It’s sad that following the extensive work of Michael West CBE in the creation of Compassionate Leadership, we still need to focus on how to work compassionately with patients and colleagues.

However, as the CMO discussed, Dr John Jones, the staff find themselves working in a familiar environment; however, patients and their families find it very unfamiliar and often frightening.

The work of Dave Ulrich and Smallwood around Leadership Brand (2007) asks organisations to understand their customer’s expectations and branding, to create a leadership development system which develops the behaviours required to meet those expectations.

Richard Branson is known for saying ‘develop your staff so they can leave, treat them well enough so they decide to stay’

These are all signposting us to the same basic principles:
treat others how we would like to be treated, with compassion, respect and dignity.
Value the individual for who they are.
Listen to them with empathy and hear their words with interest to understand what is happening for them.

Good luck to Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust in their work with Poppy’s Promise and thank you to Kate and Neil for the bravery to share their experiences to help ensure others don’t have to go through the same experience.

06/10/2026

I’m here in Manchester today for an EMCC UK volunteer meeting.

This is a great opportunity for all of us who volunteer with the EMCC to get together and talk all things coaching and mentoring.

It’s important that I do this, not only for my own learning, also for those I coach to know that I am always developing my skill.

And also for all our students on our ILM Coaching and Mentoring courses, from level 2 through to level 7. They need to know that we are staying ahead of the trends in Coaching and Mentoring and continuing our professional development.

I’m looking forward to a really positive day. I hope you are too.

28/09/2026

This is a significant day here at Synergia Coaching. We are at our largest annual conference with HMC as well as welcoming Luke for his first day of work with Synergia

22/09/2026

On this lovely Tuesday morning, I am in Warwick at 3P innovation delivering a leadership and management program at level five of the ILM.

Today our topic is coaching and this is a really key cornerstone of any leadership toolbox.

This enables our leaders and managers when working with their team to take a pause and a question in a curious way what help and support their team require?

Too often because time is tight, we tend to just offer solutions, rather than spending time talking through what a person is thinking and how they may want to approach the situation they are facing.

Our team learn more and develop quicker if we spend time coaching them.

One simple question, what are your thoughts about how you want to approach this, demonstrates to our team that we are interested in what they are thinking and value their opinions.

Take some time today to think about and put into action how you can coach your team to enable them to step up to their potential.

16/07/2026

How many of us will be approaching today feeling sad or down because of the football result last night?

We are letting something external, that we can’t influence, affect our mindset and our emotional state.

We need to find that positive mental attitude.

Let’s focus on the positives- how many teams did we beat to get through to this semifinal - how many teams were we better than because we got to the semis?

As executive coaches we enable our clients to choose their mindset, through reflection, challenging and incisive questions.

When you got up this morning, if you knew today was a day to celebrate your own success, how would you have felt, what would you have thought about, when you first got out of bed?

14/07/2026

When we work with Executives in our Coaching Practice, we often find them talking through dilemmas where they have ‘to let’ someone down.

When training our students to become excellent coaches, we talk to them about developing strong curious and incisive questions, rather than having to ‘know’ everything.

We need to be aware of our own tendencies to please people or rescue them.

Today’s video focuses on Kahler’s Five Drivers, in particular how we balance pleasing people.

Our incisive question is:

If you knew the person / people would like you still after you have said No, how would that enable you to say No?

22/06/2026

I hope you are all looking forward to the hot weather this week! How will you stay cool??

I’m also thinking about how all the Heads we work with are approaching the last few weeks of this academic year.

It’s interesting when we have a holiday coming how we suddenly want to finish so many tasks.

This pressure we put on ourselves helps us to move the needle.

How can we learn from this in our normal every day work to focus on the ‘right’ priorities on a day to day basis?

15/06/2026

12/06/2026

12/06/2026

I have got to the end of this week totally buzzing about what I have been able to achieve and the direction I am moving towards.

Aligning myself with my purpose and focusing my time on working on the business rather than in it.

Unless you are an Operations Director or Deputy Head, your role is not the day to day running of the organisation.

Instead your focus should be on what you can do that others can’t. The value that you add is your expertise/ discipline/ technical knowledge.

How we make this happen can be challenging. Focusing on the tasks which enable you to add your biggest value. (This isn’t a monetary value by the way)

The feeling of alignment and balance as well as achievement is very different to just completing the tasks - that’s why I’m buzzing.

What do you need to do differently to make that happen for you?

Thank you to my team for supporting me in driving the business forward, and enabling me to trust that they have the day to day work covered.
Kerry Clark
Jo Shuttlewood
Richard Bills
Annette Roberts
Louise Robinson
Andrew Smith MA, BA (Hons), MIoL
Stacey Adams