Lucy Carter

Professional Coach, United Kingdom

Lucy is a qualified executive coach and experienced facilitator, specialising in supporting people through periods of change and transition.

Throughout her career, Lucy has seen the benefits coaching and mentoring bring to the individual, their team and the organisation. Her coaching style is natural and supportive but doesn’t avoid difficult topics or insights to support growth. She has personally experienced the value parental coaching offers, and is passionate in helping others to benefit in the same way. Lucy’s coaching clients come from a wide variety of sectors, however she has personal experience of working within professional services. With learning at the heart of coaching, Lucy continually invests in her own development both personally and professionally.

Background

Following a degree in Psychology Lucy has spent more than 20 years working in HR, becoming an HR Director within professional services. She has experience of working with teams based locally in the UK and Globally, and always had a keen interest in developing capabilities in others through coaching and mentoring programmes. More recently she has moved into working on a consultancy basis.

Lucy understands that becoming a parent does not always pan out as imagined. During pregnancy her husband died, meaning she became the sole parent of her daughter. Lucy has over a decade of experience of navigating parenthood without a partner, while continuing to work. She has successfully continued her career utilising a range of working patterns and styles including part time, job-sharing and being self employed. In 2021 Lucy was recognised for this when she was included in the Timewise Power List: a roll call of 25 of the most successful senior-level executives in the UK, who achieve everything they do whilst working part-time.

Experience and qualifications

Lucy began her HR career at the law firm Masons (now Pinsent Masons) before spending 15 years at EY supporting leaders across a range of the firm’s service lines. She then moved to Jones Lang LaSalle as an HR Director. During these 20 years working in-house within professional services, she gained first hand experience of corporate cultures, building demonstrable experience in partnering with senior leaders and their teams. More recently Lucy has focused on credentialing her coaching skills allowing her to focus on her passion of developing others and helping them to successfully navigate transitions. While at EY Lucy became a parent and feels fortunate to have been provided with a parental coach. She knows the value that parental coaching can offer and is keen to ensure others are also able to benefit in the way she did.

Approach to coaching

Building rapport and connection is key for Lucy, which she achieves through compassion and curiosity. She takes time to gain an understanding of what’s really needed to enable her to take an individual and bespoke approach with each of her clients. She works on the basis that there is a difference between change and transition. Change being situational and external, for example becoming a parent; or your child starting school; or your child expressing their own opinions – all of which can happen quite quickly. However transition is an internal change that happens over a period of time, for example how you respond, your approach and attitude, a shift in how you think and behave. Lucy knows that there are constant changes when it comes to parenting, and her coaching is focused on providing her clients with the support needed to ease and speed up their transition process.

‘Just to say in terms of feedback, I thought you were excellent.’ Coachee

‘I’m moving forward now with clarity and confidence that I didn’t have when we first met. Thank you!’ Coachee

‘Thank you for all your support over the last few months. You have helped me immensely.’ Coachee