Claire Stretch

BA (Hons), Cert IV: Life Coaching, LCIA, FHI.
Executive Coach / Corporate Trainer

Claire’s professional background spans public relations, journalism, small business management, Apple Mac IT consulting, counselling, coaching and training. Thus Claire brings a unique mix of highly practical skills, along with a deep understanding of, and sensitivity to, people’s psychological needs.

Claire’s career began in London, working in public relations in the not for profit sector. Concurrently Claire worked as a telephone helpline volunteer for Saneline - a UK-based organisation supporting people, and the families of people, suffering from mental illness. This led to Claire being trained in addiction counselling and being involved in the set up and running of a drug free wing within Holloway Women’s prison in London. She next moved into small business management when the opportunity arose to run a small, not for profit business. Within nine9 months, using her unique mix of ‘people’ and business skills, Claire turned this small business around from running at a significant loss to making a small profit that was then available to be put back into the organisation. Thus the mix of ‘people’ and business skills was born. Since moving to Australia in 1997, Claire has continued to work as a business manager for a niche management consultancy specialising in negotiation training, conflict coaching, conflict resolution and mediation.

Claire is well known and highly regarded for her ability to establish and maintain a consistently safe and supportive environment. Her empathic nature allows her to clearly see her client’s perspective, the bigger picture, and what they are capable of achieving. She is intellectually astute, emotionally wise and unfailingly respectful. These qualities, combined with her wide-ranging skills, are a powerful combination that allow her to consistently unearth potential in her clients producing improvements that everyone knew were available and yet had not been able to identify and trigger. In essence her art is in making the elusive seem obvious.

When it comes to small business management, Claire has years of experience, having run two small businesses, and consulted to many others, helping them get systems and processes designed and set up to meet their needs and help them increase their efficiency and effectiveness. With honed writing skills, Claire is also able to help her clients create reference documents and manuals of their operational procedures so that they capture the know-how, that can all too easily walk out the door of a small business, with just one key staff member moving on.

A few examples of the projects Claire has been involved with include working with a Change Management Consultant and multinational IT company to create an on-line prototype behaviour change management tools for en masse, high leverage, behaviour change across large organizations; co-designing and delivering, with Noel Posus (also of Project Balance), a leadership workshop called “Wisdom at Work; lifting leadership to the next level”; assisting in the set up and launch of various on-line businesses and associations; co-writing and filming, again with Noel Posus, The Wheels of Life and setting up an online business for this set of coaching tools.

To sum up, Claire brings a unique set of skills and experience to bear on finding solutions for the businesses and individuals she works with, coupled with an innate ability to create rapport and communicate in just the way each individual requires.

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