Guy Ellis
Guy Ellis is an executive coach who works with senior executives that are going through significant change in their business and personal lives.
He tells us that, “I draw on over 30 years of experience working in large and small organisations, much of it at senior levels, and for the last twenty years working for myself helping clients to mainly deliver large change initiatives.”
Tell us about your life before the venture/ leading up to your venture?
I started my career in Human Resources and ended up becoming a HR Director at two large multinational companies. For family reasons, twenty years ago I started my own business, working mainly as a change consultant and project manager, offering some coaching as an extra service. Last year, I decided to refocus my business on coaching as I realised that working with clients on a one-to-one basis gave me great joy.
Tell us something about your organization. What is it about and how is it helpful for people?
I founded Courageous Workplaces twenty years ago and over the years we’ve delivered a range of ‘people’ related services including helping clients to deliver a range of HR related projects incuding talent management, reward, operations and strategic planning; supported clients through HR transformation; delivered global workshops and training; coaching; and laterly helped clients restructure their global businesses. While we still offer these services, my time is now focused on the coaching services.
What has been the response of the consumers towards your venture?
One of the key reasons for focusing on coaching is the response we get from our clients. Although I work with both women and men, most of my experience and indeed current clients are senior executive women. I see it as a privilege to work with them, to understand their world, provide a male perspective and watch them grow in confidence, achieve their short and long term life goals, and keep juggling the many pressures that society seems to lay at their feet.
How has your life changed because of your venture?
Absolutely. I have always enjoyed coaching but now that I am focused on offering it, I am constantly humbled by the people I work with and get enormous joy in seeing them change and achieve their goals. I am also a life-long learner and when you work so closely with clients, you can’t help but increase your knowledge and skills.
What are you working on right now?
I’m working with a number of clients at the moment including a senior finance women who has just moved to a new company, promoted after a few weeks, is facing significant demands on her time both from work and her family and I’m helping her to focus on delegation, leadership skills and what her long term career goals are. Another client is the founder of a new business who is struggling to articulate her needs with her business partner, and we’re working on how she can be more assertive.
Give a motivational message for the audience/women who are reading this.
Life is not perfect, but you are smarter than you think, stronger than you believe and more resilient than you feel.