Welcome to my vantage point

This blog is all about illuminating the human side of you. I will shine a light on how individuals can learn from concepts applied in coaching and adapt techniques into their everyday working world.

If I am going to talk about being human, then it seems only right to share a little more about who I am, what has brought me here and why.

I’m a mum of two boys, currently 8 and 10, married to Chris since 2007 and live in the tennis home of Wimbledon, SW19. I am officially the worst at tennis in the family but still claim the skiing trophy, for how much longer I am not so sure!

As a child I was relatively shy, picked on at school because my mum was a teacher on the same site, but somewhere between university and starting my first role in the city I started to discover who I really was and what I enjoyed. I fell into accountancy and flourished on learning the foundations of commerce and business completing my ACA qualification in 2000.

A lover of travel and exploring new places I have always been a “people” person, looking to hear what makes people thrive and understand different perspectives of the world. I have held a variety of management and leadership positions and love the buzz of being able to help others overcome challenges and make the most of opportunities in their role or career.

In 2006 I completed a Masters in Management Development and Organisational change, I was keen to learn more about the human side of people at work and as part of my dissertation studied the emotional connections of people at work through periods of change.

Returning to work after having two children I was fortunate enough to be provided with 1-2-1 coaching to support my career development and found the process immensely valuable. Shortly after this I was recruited into the internal coach team at KPMG and began training with EMCC (European Mentoring & Coaching Council).

Finding coaching was like an epiphany for me.

It has brought together my interest in people and commerce in a way in that I could not have imagined. I truly believe that I am a better leader because I have been trained as a coach. I am also a better coach because of the extensive commercial experience that I have gained over the last 20 years.

I was struck by the parallels of my learning as a coach with the challenges that I faced in my day-job. Coaching requires a lot of reflection, sometimes a lot more than I had been used to, however there were practices and techniques that I took from my coaching course, in particular when I faced a challenging conversation or decision at work that I found incredibly helpful.

The more I reflected, the more I realised that there was untapped positive potential in coaching practice, that if used in the right way could be harnessed by managers and leaders everywhere.

Encouraged by my “inner coach” I began to scribble my ideas into a journal. At the very beginning I was searching for words to describe my thinking. I knew that coaching was at the heart of my perspective and I saw the potential for its application into the commercial world, but for a while my thinking paused. I had a busy day job, a busy family life and very little time for much thinking.

Ironically, the very fact that I had such little time was a wake-up call to go back to my coaching studies. I found that coaching helped me to create space, pause and reflect and make better use of the time that I had available. I had better, more direct conversations, focussed on what mattered and importantly had more confidence to focus on what mattered to me.

At the beginning of March 2020, I began my Advanced Practitioners Coaching certificate. I spent three days immersed back into the principles of coaching, I began to refine my ideas, gaining greater clarity over my thinking. A week later Covid-19 struck the world on a global scale. The human side of people at work was suddenly exposed like never before. A lot of coaching is about supporting an individual to be authentic to who they really are. Fundamentally it comes down to being human – and so the concept of The Human Advantage was born.

Leadership styles must respond to the changing commercial and social pressures that we are facing globally. It is about illuminating everyone for who they really are and enabling them to thrive in the new working world.

My purpose is to shine a light on how people can learn from concepts applied in coaching and adapt techniques into their everyday working world. The advantage is being Human.

All views expressed are my own and are not linked to any organisation or professional body.

Please feel free to challenge, comment, and connect; collaboration is at the heart of moving thinking forward. helenwada@TheHumanAdvantage.co.uk