Crisp Coaching & Consultancy Ltd, 143 Waltwood Park Drive, Llanmartin, Newport, NP18 2HF  Tel: 0870 042 3720    Company Registration Number 05379946

info@ccandc.co.uk     www.ccandc.co.uk

Jane’s remit is to help bring this vision to life.

During the period of her coaching, Jane was seconded to HEFCW and her work was located within a team responsible for learning and teaching policy. Jane was finding it challenging to manage her workload within reasonable working hours and wanted to explore ways of working ‘smarter’ to maximise her efficiency. She identified what this meant to her in practice as:

• Meeting a plethora of deadlines imposed by others as well as her own;
• Forward planning, yet taking account of the fact that other urgent (to others!) priorities will arise at short notice;
• Delivering her work schedule while being realistic about what could be delivered within a working week;
• Focusing on her key deliverables, rather than prioritising new tasks as and when they arose;
• Working effectively between two office sites and with a Wales-wide remit. In practice this means scheduling her working week to take into account commuting: between two office bases (in west and south Wales); to universities across Wales; and to other key stakeholder organizations across the UK. 

Jane realised that she had ‘got used’ to a ‘long hours culture’ and to getting things done ‘just in time’ in her previous job (i.e. un-useful habits). Now that she had a more demanding, Wales-wide remit and was required to plan much further ahead, to take account of others’ input, she found she needed to consider new ways of working and develop additional skills.

Jane had already tried a range of different approaches including:

• attending project management and time management courses;
• reading widely on the subject of time management, ‘effective working’, personal development and some reading on NLP
• attending a week-long introduction to NLP
• undertaking a great deal of critical self-reflection!

Jane considered that:

• “The above have not changed my habits or my relationship with my workload;
• The critical self-reflection made me realise that I needed to develop new work practices as my current habits no longer suited new role;
• Time management processes seemed very theoretical, dogmatic and they did not take account of people preferring to work in different ways, at different times, etc;
• New books out on using effective working were interesting, but often suggested that you do a ‘little bit’ of lots of things regularly, and this did not feel like my style of working, as I prefer to concentrate for a sustained period on one thing;
• The Introduction to NLP course and the NLP books I have read have been very interesting and I want to develop these new skills so that can apply the techniques for myself.”

Jane chose coaching as a way of helping her explore and embed positive changes in her current behaviours and practices to enable her to work ‘smarter’, with a focus on improved and more effective: time management; workload planning and delivery; team working; and work/life balance.

During the first coaching session, it became evident that the way Jane perceived time (including how she structured her model of time) did not lend itself to a conventional time management or project planning framework.

Following coaching with Dave, she said: “Of most value to me, in terms of helping me become more skilled and effective at work and home, has been the opportunity to discuss these issues in a confidential and non-judgmental environment. In particular, key issues for me have been a greater understanding of how I perceive time and the challenges of time and workload management, examining my reasoning around these issues in detail and creating tailor-made strategies for understanding and planning my time that are meaningful to me. I also feel a strong sense of ownership of, and responsibility for, the solutions created. I now believe that I have skills to reflect my particular working practices, rather than trying to adopt standardised approaches to time management that did not suit me and, therefore, had limited and short-lived impact. I now feel that the changes that I have made have been fundamental and the techniques I have developed now feel like established skills.

The coaching also enabled me to develop different perspectives on a number of practices. I now see how planning, as an integral part of my work, creates less personal pressure and allows me to feel more in control. This gives me the evidence and confidence to discuss workload issues and priorities and manage my work/life balance more effectively.

I have learnt - and am still learning - new skills as I become more and more aware of my relationship with time. Additionally, I have realised that I don’t have to be so self-critical or despondent when I can’t immediately achieve every target (deadline) set, especially when these are not in my complete control.

Now I have a more concrete concept of my time, the productive working hours available to me and a greater ability to allocate tasks to particular time periods. These skills are enabling me to assess more realistically what it is possible to achieve in the limited time available and I am able to forward plan more confidently.

My new skills are becoming more deeply embedded because I am able to see myself operating more effectively at home as well as in work. Minor examples that previously caused me unnecessary stress are that I now plan to refuel the car in good time rather than ‘just in time’, send birthday cards and pay bills for them to arrive by the due date rather than posting them on the due date. These small changes provide me with both evidence of lessons learnt, and confidence, because they are happening naturally, rather than with any undue effort.

I feel I have made some profound changes in the way I see the world and function within it. I do not think that I am yet fully aware of the complete extent of the skills and confidence I have gained through the coaching with Dave. The chance to fully explore working practices and make changes without any implication of being wrong or inadequate has been life changing and more productive than any ‘off the shelf’ and ‘one approach fits all’ course could ever achieve.

In short, I think that I can ride the rolls much more easily and I have new and exciting tools to use that I did not have or trust previously. Thank you Dave for your time and considerable skills.”

Senior Widening Access Policy Manager, The Reaching Wider Initiative, Welsh Higher Education

Jane Johns works for HEFCW (Higher Education Funding Council for Wales) which is responsible for policy implementation and funding for higher education in Wales. Jane is now the Senior Widening Access Policy Manager, whose work includes the Reaching Wider initiative. In March 2002, the then Minister for Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills said: “We want to see a country where every individual is given equal opportunity to fulfil their potential, maximise their earning potential and contribute fully and effectively to society. We want to see a society where knowledge is valued in its own right, as well as for the benefits of application.”