Conservation Coaching
The most common leadership failures stem from trying to apply technical solutions to adaptive challenges
Ronald A. Heifetz
Welcome to Conservation Coaching. We support emerging leaders to become more conscious, more purposeful and increase their impact in their work and the world.Conservation Coaching can help you develop your leadership skills whilst ensuring you find some balance between 'the cause' you are dedicating your life to, and your own wellbeing so you can re-find your passion for your work.Environmental leaders understand the incredible importance of protecting and preserving the natural world and often give themselves - heart, body, mind, and soul - to make a difference to our world.BUTYou are often so committed to the world around you that you don’t have the time, energy and/or opportunity to invest in the care, protection, preservation, and development of yourself!Stop.
Take a breath.
Ask yourself:
It’s time to heal and nourish yourself and your own environment to allow you to have the impact you want to have on our world.
“If you’re not open to focused introspection & you do not practice it on a routine basis, you will not be a great leader”
John Amaechi
Vision and Mission
Our Vision
Conservation and environmental leaders will not only have the skills, knowledge and aptitudes, but the confidence, resilience and emotional awareness needed to thrive both personally and professionally. This will result in them having a greater impact in the world, individually, at an organisational level and globally.Our Mission is toPlay our part in changing the world!We’ll do this through being your coach, consultant, facilitator and critical friend through a journey of self discovery and personal development. Specialising in supporting mid-career conservationists and environmentalists, we support the next generation of conservation leaders to have a greater impact in an increasingly challenging world.
Meet the Team
We'd love to hear from you
Contact Us
Leading with agility in a challenging environment
Leadership Development Programme
How to be a great leader without burning out
At Conservation Coaching we don’t train ‘managers’. We develop leaders, helping them become more conscious, resilient and effective in their roles. Traditional training approaches tend to focus on imparting knowledge to participants over a short timeframe, with a bit of time for reflection and maybe a role-play or two to make an “interactive” course.Why our approach is different:
Built around a coaching methodology, to support you in an agile way.
We will support you to build self-awareness, recognising that leaders who focus on their own strengths and wellbeing, are more productive and have higher performing teams.
You’ll develop your own coaching skills throughout, equipping you with practical skills and approaches to lead your own teams and programmes more effectively and drive a coaching culture.
We create time to think, space to challenge your own beliefs and a chance to learn from each other.
Provide time for reflection so you can decide how to apply relevant learnings and insights to your day-to-day.
Learning takes place over several months to ensure you have the time and support to experiment and put learning into practice.
Group sessions bring a chance to learn from others, share ideas, feel connected and be supported by a peer network.
Dedicated time with a coach 1 on 1 offers a chance for in-depth support, specific to your situation.
Key Programme Elements
1 x personal assessment to increase self awareness
4 x live knowledge sharing
sessions, recordings available
for different time zones
4 x personal coaching sessions
to develop accountability and
focused development
4 x group coaching
sessions to explore
themes and practice skills
with peers
Expected Outcomes
Participants will be more effective in their roles and better able to support flourishing teams.
Gain confidence in using coaching approaches as a leadership tool.
Heightened awareness of leadership skills, strengths, values and areas for development.
Increased personal resilience and focus on self-care.
Improved confidence.
Improved ability to influence and communicate with stakeholders.
Improved ability to develop healthy working relationships.
Tools to combat a variety of leadership challenges.
Four Pillars of Development
Personal Awareness
Understanding your values, strengths and drivers and how to use these as am effective leader
Understanding your leadership style and how to get the most of out people
Conscious Leadership
How to move from surviving, to striving, to thriving
Responding vs reacting
Work-life balance, boundaries
Building resilience
Leadership Impact
Organisational awareness and strategic thinking
Moving beyond management into inspiring leadership
Situational leadership approaches
Communicating effectively
Relationship Management
'Real-talk' and conflict management
Creating high-performing teams
Influencing others
How coaching can help develop you as a leader
“A valuable investment of time. Grateful for the opportunity to step back from the day-to-day to listen, learn, share and reflect. Particularly loved the group and 1-2-1 coaching that helped work through some real-life challenges, making me more effective in my role.” AK, Executive Director
"Through this programme I was able to identify my personal strengths and weaknesses and gain an insight on important matters that come along a leadership path. The programme taught me practical ways to improve not only in my professional performance but also my personal wellbeing. Thank you!" Sofia Matsi, Executive Director
“I really enjoyed the course, I loved the balance between listening/learning and participation, and the opportunity to connect with the same group of colleagues regularly over an extended period.” Amanda, Executive Director
"Through this programme I was able to identify my personal strengths and weaknesses and gain an insight on important matters that come along a leadership path. The programme taught me practical ways to improve not only in my professional performance but also my personal wellbeing. Thank you!"Sofia Matsi, Executive Director
Increase your impact
Coaching is an opportunity to have a thought-provoking, confidential conversation. Time to think and take stock, re-balance, reflect and focus on what is important. What's the difference between coaching and training? This video summarises it nicely.Perhaps you want to find a better work-life balance and increase your productivity and impact. Maybe you are going through a transition, changing career, or wish to take your career to the next level. Coaching can help you have the courage and self-belief you need to move forwards with all of this and more.We believe in coaching the whole person so whether you want help with a work or personal issue we'll probably end up exploring lots of the different pillars of coaching.We offer bespoke packages tailored to your particular needs, your aims and your personality. Our approach draws on proven techniques from many disciplines and is underpinned by elements of Positive Psychology, Neurolinguistic Programming, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Mindfulness and leadership development approaches.
The Benefits of Coaching
What you will gain from coaching will largely depend on what your goals are, but the following are outcomes that many of our clients have experienced whilst working with us:
Improved confidence - Improved self-belief and confidence to navigate change more effectively, in interviews/job applications or in stating their needs at work or home.
Increased job satisfaction and effectiveness at work - Whether they decided to stay where they were or move on.
Reduced stress - Developed tactics for stress management, resulting in improved effectiveness at work.
Improved leadership skills and effectiveness as a manager - Developed and became aware of their authentic leadership style and felt confident applying it.
Increased motivation and achieved goals - Overcame drivers of procrastination in order to achieve desired goals.
Increased self-awareness of strengths and values - Which resulted in increased understanding, self-compassion and better decision making.
Felt heard and understood - This is sometimes all that is needed to move forwards.
Discovered new perspectives and shifted their thinking - Which unlocked a new approach to an old challenge.
Elevate Your Leadership
You are likely dealing with adaptive challenges, whether you are tackling climate change, species extinctions, habitat preservation or ecosystem restoration, the challenges are complex, multi-faceted, often cross cultural and transboundary.These challenges require an adaptive leadership style - disrupting the status quo, shifting behaviours and values in order to reach a solution. It's tough work and it takes skill, resilience and strength to work in this space. How are you preparing and resourcing yourself to do this work?Perhaps you are new to leadership, perhaps you have been a leader or a manager for a while but still feel like you are finding your way, perhaps you are comfortable with your leadership style and approach but would like to be more effective. Well you're in the right place. We will work with you to:
Find and hone their authentic leadership style so you can be confident as a leader and inspire others
Refresh yourself on how to get the most out of your team
Develop your emotional intelligence so you are aware of your own and your team's needs
Increase your wellbeing and work-life balance to improve resilience when things get tough
Get comfortable in the disequilibrium that comes from disrupting the status quo including work around 'imposter syndrome', confidence presence, and managing up
Find balance
The world is facing many critical threats and it's easy to focus all your energy on these, but how well are you protecting yourself to ensure you are able to maximise opportunities and stay resilient in the face of environmental devastation?How well are you taking care of yourself and developing your skills, to ensure you are still having the impact you desire and are able to tackle the many adaptive challenges you face?We see many clients in the environment sector who risk burning out. Perhaps you recognise yourself:
You're worried that if you don’t do ‘it’ no-one will. You end up taking on more work than you have time for. Busyness has become a bit of a badge of honour for you but you’re starting to worry you might be heading towards a burnout and want some help figuring out how to avoid this.
You’ve dedicated your life to working for a good cause, whether environmental or social. The scale of the problem you are working on is so huge, you wonder how you can ever rest and feel relaxed, knowing that there’s so much to do. You have limited social life outside of work and recognise that your work-life balance is unsustainable but you're not sure where to start.
Together we can work out what a more balanced life looks like for you, so you can keep pursuing your passion without sacrificing your wellbeing.
Nurture Organisational Growth
We are experienced in creating bespoke packages to meet your organisational needs, combining the following elements:
Coaching skills for conservation managers
Group coaching sessions
Team building, leadership development and training
Conservation strategy development
Effective team working
Creating a coaching culture
The Benefits of Coaching within an Organsation
Demonstrates organisational commitment to employee development meaning staff feel valued: 86% of companies report they recoup their investment on coaching*
Improved performance: Over 70% benefit from improved work performance, relationships, and more effective communication skills*
Employees are empowered and encouraged to take responsibility
Individuals are more engaged, motivated and supported to excel
Helps to identify and develop high potential employees
Identifies both organisational and individual strengths and areas for further development
*Source: ICF 2009
Are you ready to support your organisational development?
How Coaching can help develop you as a leader
ABOUT US
Kathleen Harkins
Kathleen has a wealth of experience in people development from a range of sectors. She brings an in-depth understanding of many of the challenges people face in organisations. She has a creative and pragmatic approach, combining over 25 years' of experience in a learning and development environment, with a coaching approach.Kathleen has worked in a variety of roles both in her home town of Edinburgh, and across the UK, including training and development, organisational development and change management, to name a few. The one thing they all had in common was the focus on improving individual and company performance.During her corporate career, Kathleen has observed situations where company performance was detrimental to individual performance and so her mantra became “remember it’s about people not resources”.Kathleen set up her people development consultancy in 2019, which has allowed her to get back to the core of what matters to her: helping people make changes!
Member of the International Coaching Federation
Post Graduate Certificate in Business & Personal Coaching (in progress)
Mindfulness Practitioner with the Mindfulness Association
Change Management Practitioner with APMG
International Mental Health First Aid Superviser Level 3 award in Supervising First Aid for Mental Health
NLP Practitioner Licensed practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming
COSCA Certificate in Counselling Skills completed with Scotland's professional body for counselling & psychotherapy
CIPD qualification in Training Design and Delivery
Certified to use a range of personal profiling tools (MBTI, DISC, BeTalent Resilience, Strengths and Decision Making, SDI Strengths)
Tori Jeffers
Tori has worked for a variety of not-for profit organisations both in London and Bristol. In particular, she has significant experience supporting, developing and managing individuals and teams globally - both nascent and well-established - through challenging situations, periods of growth or change, and often remotely. These situations required dedication, empathy, emotional intelligence and intuition, and equipped her well for coaching.Tori has supported a range of individuals and groups including career switchers, armed forces personnel, teachers, students and conservation professionals. She's particularly passionate about supporting clients during transitions into more senior leadership roles, as working through a series of her own challenges, she came to realise that people are an organisation’s most valued asset and supporting both personal and team growth, wellbeing and resilience is paramount to overall organisational wellbeing and success.
Credentialed as PCC (Professional Certified Coach) with the International Coaching Federation** (ICF)
Over 700 hours of team and individual coaching experience with professionals from a range of backgrounds including NGOs, government, Fortune 500 companies and not-for-profit
Master of Science (MsC) in Conservation and Biodiversity and published author
Kinship Conservation Fellow
Regular supervision to support personal development and ensure Tori adheres to the ICF code of ethics
