DR HELEN TOWNSHEND
Executive and Personal Coach
Helen Townshend is an executive and personal coach with more than 25 years’ experience in business, including senior and board-level roles, consultancy and entrepreneurship across corporate, SME and not-for-profit organisations.
A longstanding fascination with people – what motivates us, what matters to us and why we flourish in some circumstances and feel stuck in others – eventually led Helen from business into coaching.
That curiosity also led her to undertake a Doctorate in Coaching and Mentoring at Oxford Brookes University. Her doctoral research explored what happens when people’s personal values come into tension with their experiences at work, and the role coaching can play in helping them navigate those tensions.
Her research continues to inform her coaching practice and her particular interest in helping people understand what matters to them, make sense of difficult experiences and translate that understanding into choices and action.
Helen is an ICF-accredited coach (ACC).
Interview with Helen
When I started coaching, I think I was quite linear in my approach: client goal + focused attention = solution. Now I see coaching as much more of a dynamic, upward spiral: you focus ↔ you learn ↔ you expand and grow ↔ you refocus. The destination can shift as the client’s understanding of themselves and their situation develops.
The simple question: “What’s really important here?”
And the stance behind it: getting beneath the presenting issue to the root of what is really going on.
One moment has stayed with me for years. A client was describing her frustration with her work situation and there was so much pent-up emotion when she said, “It just makes me want to scream.”
So I said, “Well, why don’t we? Are you up for it? I’ll do it with you.”
She hesitated because there were builders in the house, then realised her washing machine was making such a racket nobody would hear us, so we both screamed! I’d certainly never done that in a coaching session before.
That moment of physical and emotional release opened up a completely different conversation – what was it that she actually wanted to scream and shout about? We uncovered a passion for politics, social causes and making an impact. That ultimately contributed to her finding a new role with a social-impact law firm and becoming actively involved with causes in her community. Seven years later, I hear she is still very much engaged in both.
It gave me a pivotal understanding of the power of emotion and the non-verbal in coaching. Sometimes the most important information about what really matters to someone isn’t contained in their carefully chosen words
One insight that makes them think, “Ah – that’s interesting…” and one practical application that makes them think, “Oh – that’s useful.”
That they need to learn lots of tools to become a good coach.
Tools are valuable, of course, but you are the most powerful tool you bring into the coaching room. So learning about, and working on yourself, is a fundamental part of all coach training.
David asked me!
More seriously, I really like the philosophy behind the programme and the emphasis on developing the coach rather than simply accumulating coaching techniques. And I’m excited to have the opportunity to bring my research on values into a practical coach-development setting.
I’d just completed a marketing consultancy engagement and realised I was tired; not simply physically tired, but I felt grumbling dissatisfaction and lack of energy for pursuing the next project.
So, I stopped and did some fairly hard thinking. Instead of asking what I was unhappy with, I turned it around to ask: what would actually made me happy?
I realised I loved supporting people, providing a springboard for other people’s brilliance, getting genuine pleasure from their achievements and helping people navigate life. Then I discovered this thing called coaching, which seemed to be the title for the job description I’d written without realising it existed.
So much, although you should probably ask the people around me, as they may have a different perspective!
It has certainly developed and legitimised my curiosity (some might call it nosiness). More importantly, it has given me a real energy for continued exploration: asking questions, discovering things and challenging my own thinking. That’s a large part of what keeps me alive and engaged. One fairly significant manifestation of that curiosity was deciding to undertake a Doctorate in Coaching and Mentoring.
The Mona Lisa. I’d love to have even the smallest insight into what was really going on behind that smile.
What still fascinates you about coaching?
Curiosity is at the root of this for me. After all these years, I’m still endlessly interested and intrigued by what my clients bring into the coaching room – their experiences, their dilemmas and what really matters to them. Couple that with my deep-seated curiosity about the what and how of coaching itself; what is actually happening in a coaching conversation and how change and development come about, and I find the whole subject captivating. No two conversations are ever the same, there is always something new to discover, and that keeps the work fresh and exciting for me.