Leadership is a crash course in human nature.
This is what I have learned over the course of my career in HR and now as a leadership coach.
I’ve always been drawn to the human side of leadership: what happens when leaders avoid emotion or dive head-first into it. What happens when the simplest behavioral misstep erodes trust and takes business results along as collateral damage.
My career started in the halls of top-tier hospitals, as an entry-level HR admin, handwriting new hire data into a triplicate form and stuffing personnel files with emergency contact information, offer letters, and signed policy agreements. By the time I chose a new career path as a professional coach, I was advising managing directors and their leadership teams in charge of up to $500 million businesses. Those businesses were made successful by hundreds of bright and talented employees for whom it was my mission to help build a place where they wanted to come to work each day. The backdrop? A global organization transforming itself from a traditional scientific publisher to an information analytics business.
In all the places I worked, like all workplaces, egos were at stake. Identity. Power shifts. Rapid and inevitable change. And fear of change.
I think working in HR is a lot like being an anthropologist on a participant-observer research expedition. I had my own HR deliverables, but mainly I keenly observed what made for an effective leader, and what derailed them.
And being a coach, as author Tara Mohr has said, is more like belaying for a rock climber. It’s my clients who are climbing the rock. And I stand on the ground, with a broader perspective than the climber can see. I guide the rope so the ascent towards their goals is safe while also ambitious and thrilling.
As a coach and facilitator, I bring to bear all the insights I have gathered about human nature throughout my career. But it is my clients who bring new insights and perspectives into their work, changing the experience not just for themselves but all those around them.
Wendy believes we all have unique and powerful gifts to share with world, and she has built a rewarding career helping people find and grow their own.
As a coach, she provokes new thinking. She creates space for breakthroughs in an environment that is equally caring and challenging.
As a facilitator and instructor, Wendy brings empathy, humor and insight to any group or classroom, along with credibility earned through 20+ years of HR leadership experience.
Before (working with Wendy), I would tell myself I was lucky. Now I give myself credit for what I’ve done. I don’t overcommit. I’m thoughtful about how I show up as a leader. Wendy helped me develop the awareness to know what I’m feeling and recalibrate when needed. It’s powerful.
–Leadership Coaching Client
Credentials
- Certified Professional Coach (CPC), Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (IPEC)
- Associate Certified Coach (ACC) designation, International Coaching Federation (ICF)
- Certified Practitioner, Everything DiSC (R) and The 5 Behaviors of a Cohesive Team (R)
- Master Practitioner, Energy Leadership Index
- Master’s Degree, Organizational Development and Communication
- Lead Instructor, Women in Leadership program with Southern Methodist
