Rebecca Peat, Director
Master Certified Executive and Senior Level Coach; BA Honours;
Accredited Coach in Management; Accredited Insights Practitioner;
Accredited PPA Practitioner and Certified BPS Level B Intermediate Plus Practitioner
Rebecca has a wealth of experience in coaching, facilitation and training in leadership and team development. She works with organisations to help managers and teams unlock their potential and flourish at work, thereby achieving more.
She has worked with both private and public sector organisations, nationally and internationally, so understands the challenges of the ‘real world’ and the pressures and complexity of work situations.
Clients are typically leaders of teams who recognise the need to evolve to stay competitive. These leaders have approached her for help with overcoming work challenges, becoming ‘unstuck’ and engaging employees and stakeholders – in order to drive the team and the business. Rebecca brings her cross-cultural experience and expertise to understand and determine clients’ specific goals, culture and constraints.
Clients value: her quick ability to build rapport; her encouragement and appropriate style of challenge; and her dedication to them and their goals. Rebecca ensures clients take steps towards these goals from the outset, reflecting and learning as they proceed, knowing they have someone they can speak openly to who is on their side and does not judge.
She is professionally accredited in executive leadership and management coaching; psychometric testing and profiling; and team development (qualifications are listed below). She uses psychometric tools in both one to one and team coaching when appropriate. These help individuals and teams to understand their natural strengths and preferred ways of working. They can increase self-awareness, improve team effectiveness, strengthen internal and external relationships and improve communication. This in turn creates more respectful, productive and positive working relationships to enable people to connect better, collaborate more effectively, overcome challenges and conflict.
As part of her professional practice, Rebecca undertakes regular coaching supervision and continuous professional development to ensure rigour in her approach.
Furthermore, Rebecca is a qualified and experienced External Quality Assurer, auditing for ILM (a City & Guilds Group Business) in coaching, leadership and management. She brings the current thoughts, approaches and knowledge from her ILM auditing role into Your Step.
She is a member of The Institute of Leadership & Management and the European Mentoring & Coaching Council, she subscribes to EMCC’s Code of Ethics (see www.emccouncil.org/uk). Our network of experienced and accredited associate Learning and Development Specialists will enable us to provide you with the flexibility, skills and experience to source the right coach for your business and personal needs.
Rebecca holds the following Qualifications and Accreditations
Rebecca’s Story
My Story
My coaching story begins in Tokyo in the 90s when I had just been promoted to my first supervisor/line manager role.
I had really wanted this role but, with little support and left alone to manage a branch, I soon realised management was different from my previous role and my confidence wavered. I knew how to do my previous teaching role very well but managing people was different. Unsure of myself yet wanting to impress my manager and get results, my style changed from friendly peer to ‘telling’ boss. I was fearful of failure and fearful of my team underperforming which resulted in my ‘controlling’ style. With little feedback and knowledge of any other management approaches, I carried on in this way, pretending to have all the answers, pretending to be super confident by being authoritative and very task focussed, whilst constantly feeling uncomfortable in this new role.
Everything changed the day a (brave!) team member gave me some honest and hard-hitting feedback on my leadership style being known as ‘Rebecca’s regime’. I was mortified and upset. This is not the style of leadership that I aspired to and it very much contradicted my values of work being an enjoyable, creative, and psychologically safe place.
It took a while to process this feedback – it was painful and uncomfortable to hear. It still makes me feel uneasy to think about it and share with other people. What I didn’t know at the time was how valuable this feedback was. I am very grateful to the team member who provided it. I give myself some credit that I made it easy for him to give me this feedback and that I was willing to hear and accept it.
From that moment on, I knew I had to change my approach. I wanted the team to enjoy, not dread, coming to work. I also wanted to enjoy it, and not be constantly stressed or fearful of failure. I wanted to be a ‘good’ manager, I wanted my team to feel good and I wanted us to get good results –but not through fear or micromanagement. I recognised that I needed to be more ‘human’. Outside work I was warm, humorous and friendly, so what was stopping me being so at work? I wanted my team to be truly engaged and motivated, with a good team spirit. Things had to change. I had to change. I just wasn’t sure how.
This is where my interest in coaching was sparked. A key moment for me is when a colleague introduced me to coaching – I can picture him sharing his book on coaching and being a little sceptical about what it was and how useful it would be! I started hearing more and more about it and was intrigued…hearing bits about coaching influenced me to make tiny changes in my approach, questioning rather than telling, listening more and generally being more interested in my team as people. Learning about their experiences, their strengths and ideas, helped me to truly value them. I was promoted three more times which I believe was partly due to using more of a coaching style of leadership with them. I realise now that I had needed to connect better with all the people on my team, not just the ones that I instantly and easily connected with; I needed to also develop relationships with those that weren’t like me. Working in Tokyo with people from around the world, with different backgrounds and stories certainly enabled me to practise connecting with people!
When I returned to England in 2000, with the same company, I took on another role. In this case, I was no longer a team manager, however, it still taught me a lot on leadership – in this case, what not to do! From having had a certain level of accountability and ‘freedom’ as a manager, to now having little choice, being told what to do and feeling disempowered was hard going. My new manager had an autocratic, micro-managing style. She was not open to feedback or trying anything new. She lacked awareness of the impact she had on me and the rest of the team. Her style dampened our spirit, eroded my creativity and left me feeling totally disengaged. So much so, that I left the job and the company – a tough decision having spent 6 years working loyally for them.
I now knew that I never wanted to lead in this way and I didn’t want others to lead teams in this way either. I did not want this restrictive, blinkered style of leadership to happen to anyone else. I experienced first-hand the consequences of this – an unhappy team with, at best, little willingness to do anything more than the bare minimum. I was determined to help managers develop and lead better, so that they would have a different impact on their team, on themselves and on their outcomes; so they would empower their teams to try out new things, be creative and ultimately achieve more – and get more out of work.
I felt compelled to get back into a learning and development role which I did in 2005. I subsequently qualified as a coach and have been coaching managers and teams ever since.
Why coaching? I want managers to be at their best to enable their people to be at their best.
I get a real buzz from helping people move forward. I love giving them space to think, talk openly and reflect. I love seeing them have light bulb moments. I love to challenge them; push them to try new approaches; give them feedback, encouragement and the confidence to be brave – and the focus to overcome difficulties and achieve more. I sincerely believe that people hold the solution within themselves. This is the reason that I founded Your Step – to enable clients to fulfil potential and reach their goals, without prescribing how they do that – hence the name ‘Your Step’.