My Story

I have to say I have truly loved my career in corporate HR! I honestly have. Let’s face it, I wouldn’t have done it for over 25 years if I didn’t.

For the most part, it has been a career choice I have been really happy with; being part of a team that could make a positive impact on every single area of the business, as well as every single person who worked there. It’s been so exciting to contribute to things like driving up employee engagement, developing a strong, positive, inclusive company culture, making a very direct contribution to successful growth, as well as being a part of enabling the career development of talented colleagues.

However, there’s no getting away from the fact that the word of HR can, at times, be a bit of a roller-coaster. As HR professionals we can often spend a lot of our time dealing with the ‘negative’ aspects of employing people; the emotionally charged disciplinary investigations, the difficult and often highly complex grievance complaints, the walking into a room full of people to announce that their roles are all at risk of redundancy, and the oh-so sad situations like having to sensitively handle the death of a work colleague.

My Story: About Me

Then, around 2021, there was a point in my career where I was working in a role where it all became too much.

I was fighting a losing battle trying to juggle the sheer volume of ‘stuff’ crossing my desk every day. Work that was legally required or critical to the business, so couldn’t be ignored, but there was only me to do it. I was a standalone practitioner, trying to do strategy, admin and every single aspect of the transactional work all at the same time. There was a conveyer belt of ER cases that I just couldn’t keep up with. And then, in the middle of all this - Covid hit!

It was like constantly being in one of those rooms with spinning plates on top of poles; I was frantically dashing from wobbling plate to wobbling plate trying to keep them from falling but having to watch them crash to ground. I lived like this for months.

But, not surprisingly, eventually it was me who started to crash. Week after week I said to myself, ‘just keep going Mags, next week will be lighter’…. But I eventually realised that the exhaustion was turning to burnout. Working later and later every day was just disguising the problem and making me more exhausted. I had to do something about this otherwise I could see myself becoming ill.

This was the point I turned to working with a coach. And I am SO glad I did. It changed my life!

My Story: Text

My coaching experience was what I’d describe as mind-blowing and almost magical. My coach guided me to strip back completely where my life was at, what was important to me and what I really wanted my life to look like.

Together we worked on my limiting beliefs (some of which I didn’t even realise I had) as well as my mindset; exploring what doubts and fears were holding me back. My coach soon helped me to see that these were mostly due to internal ‘programming’ I’d had for years and never thought to question or challenge.

Removing them was instantaneously powerful and extremely liberating which then made the adventure of goal-setting much more exciting, as I just ‘knew’ that I could achieve whatever I set my mind to! I still feel like that to this day and know I will forever.

How powerful is that?

My Story: Image

For me, the outcome was for me to take my HR career in a slightly different path and set up as a Specialist Coach – helping HR professionals who were in the place that I once was.

Yes - having coaching gave me the confidence and self-belief to ‘seize the day’ and discover what I truly wanted out of life. It helped me to see how I could use my strengths, talents and knowledge of the HR profession, but from a completely different angle.

I invested time and money on myself to become a fully qualified coach and NLP Master Practitioner and took the leap of faith to set up my own on-line coaching business, specialising in helping ‘my community’ – my fellow HR professionals - to master their mindset and enable them to deliver awesome personal impact.

This lifestyle gives me fantastic freedom. If I want to spend time visiting beautiful places around the world – I can (and do!). I set my own hours and my energy levels have soared. Every morning I have that feeling of waking up and looking forward to the day ahead, as well as the immense satisfaction of being told again and again that I’m changing people’s lives!

And I can’t tell you how rewarding and fulfilling that is.