Life Coach

Solution-Focused Life Coaching with Dr Gary Wood

Evidence-based psychological coaching for your life goals. Doing what works to get you faster results. Get your free consultation.

Pic: Advert for Coaching Services from Dr Gary Wood

For a free 20-minute coaching consultation (by telephone or Skype, get in touch.

Coaching in a Nutshell
You bring the goals, you work with the coach to co-create solutions and steps forward and you take away the results. Your goals might be to cope better, to make changes, to take things t the next level, to gain freedom from stress or a vague sense that things could be better. Your goals could be personal or professional. And, you might have a very clear idea of where you want to get to in life. Whatever your goals, coaching will help.

Coaching offers you a personalised development programme. It is a collaborative, professional working relationship where you, as the client, provide the agenda and the coach works with you to manage and structure the process in order to keep you accountable to your goals. The process works for individuals and couples.

The first step is to have a chat to find out how coaching can help you get to where you want to be in life. To discuss your needs email: info@drgarywood.co.uk to arrange a free, no-obligation consultation. Free access to personal development course with every coaching consultation.

Read testimonials from Gary’s clients
How do you know you are ready for life coaching?
How to Find a Life Coach (and the questions you need to ask before hiring one)
Coaching Fees_2017_pdf

Who benefits from coaching?

Hello, I’m Gary Wood. Thanks for checking out this page about my coaching practice. I’m based in Birmingham and Edinburgh, UK, although I coach clients nationally and across the world via Skype. My first experience of coaching began in 1994. As part of my teacher training, I had to demonstrate that I could offer pastoral care and guidance to students. This led me to seek additional training in coaching which in turn led me to start seeing private clients in late 2004. Since then I’ve worked with a range of people including managers, executives, artists, entrepreneurs, business owners, and students. What they have all had in common is that they had goals. These have included building confidence, business start-ups, coping with organizational change, managing other people, helping people to ‘sell-themselves’, improving communications, life-work balance, improving relaxation, stress management, career transitions, supporting academic study, making plans to travel the world, rekindling artistic interests and many more.

How I got started in coaching

My coaching career developed from my background in psychology and teaching. I’d begun teaching a group of mature, part-time psychology students. The great thing about this job was that I got to change people’s attitudes and right the wrongs they had experienced the first time around in the education system. Many of them had internalized the messages that they weren’t the ‘academic type’. It was up to me to change their perception of learning and of themselves as learners. My life changed too as a result of working with these students. It got me into personal development coaching and writing.

I did my first coaching course in 2004 and began writing and delivering free personal development courses for my students (out of hours). These courses, in turn, formed the basis for my book Don’t Wait For Your Ship to Come In. . .Swim Out to Meet It! It was during this time that I realised that as I focused on building confidence in others my own confidence increased. This, in turn, became the focus of my book Unlock Your Confidence.

What’s different about my coaching approach

So, as you’ve read, my coaching approach is grounded in evidence-based psychology and experience as a teacher. I know how people learn and make sense of the world, I know how attitudes are formed and changed (for the better). One of my innovations is that I treat low self-confidence and esteem as a form of self-prejudice. This allows me to bring elements of my expertise in social psychology to the coaching arena. I see attitude-change as the cornerstone of coaching for change. Originally I trained in cognitive behaviour coaching and later added solution-focused brief therapy skills. Both of these approaches are supported by evidence. The solution-focused questions were refined by its originators over decades. It’s a very human, practical, action-oriented approach that gets right to the heart of change. It’s meant to be brief and intensive and requires fewer sessions to achieve results than do other approaches.

Types of coaching offered:

Face to Face coaching (Birmingham and Edinburgh, UK, and other cities by arrangement). For Birmingham, I use consulting rooms in Bearwood, Birmingham City Centre and also
Individuals or couples.
Bearwood (near Birmingham, UK) Harborne. Limited appointments in Birmingham City Centre. For Edinburgh, at the moment I offer monthly appointments at the SouthSide Centre in Newington. These sessions are supplemented with telephone and Skype coaching.
Telephone and Skype coaching (anytime, anyplace, anywhere).
Cafe Coaching is something a client first suggested who wanted something a little less formal. So I can offer coaching over a cup of coffee in locations that offer are not too noisy and still offer relative privacy.
Coaching at a workplace or a place that has a particular contextual significance for you as the client. Although I don’t do home visits, I have given coaching in libraries and museums (for students) and in art galleries (for artists).
Free access to personal development course with every coaching consultation.

So an important question to consider is what would be most effective for you?

Coaching qualifications include:

My coaching training is based on my background in psychology and teaching and includes: Certificate in Life Coaching (Cognitive-Behavioural) – Centre for Coaching (London), Certificate in Life Coaching (NCFE, Newcastle College), Diploma in Life Coaching (NCFE, Newcastle College), Diploma in Performance Coaching (NCFE, Newcastle College) and a qualification in Solution-Focused Brief Therapy from the University of Birmingham.

Affiliations:

Chartered Psychologist – British Psychological Society (BPS)
Full member of the Division of Academics, Researchers and Teachers in Psychology
Member of Special Group in Coaching Psychology (BPS)
Registered with: Life Coach Directory, Coach Digg and Life Coach Hub
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