KATE STEPENS
CEO
SMARTWORKS
Kimberley is a highly valued member of our interview coaching team. She is fantastic with Smart Works clients. She is very empathetic and builds them up so that by the end of the session their confidence and belief in their own ability to succeed is heightened.
She focuses on coaching the person by building awareness of the strengths and resources that they do have, thereby enhancing their self-worth and core confidence; rather than just sculpting answers to interview questions.
Clients are very comfortable in her presence. She is warm and enthusiastic and creates trust very quickly so that they can immediately feel at ease in their session and leave feeling more empowered and ready to succeed at interview.
KIM SIMMS
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
HEAD OF PRODUCT
UBS
investment bank
Kimberley's coaching helped me turn my career and my life into exactly what I wanted it to be. Identifying where I wanted to be and how to get there was the hardest part. She really listens and helps you to come up with your own solutions, challenges and probes where appropriate but more importantly gives you the tools to continue on without her guidance. For anyone wanting to make their lives more meaningful, focus on and address the changes that you want to make, I would recommend an initial session with Kimberley to see what insights she can unlock. She is warm, engaging, intuitive and builds a sense of trust and ease very quickly. I felt equally challenged, motivated and supported throughout our coaching work together.
The coaching process has helped me work through some (mostly self imposed) obstacles and reach decisions that I am happy with about how to move forward.. I have several clear objectives, which I had not previously arrived at on my own. Being challenged in my thinking has helped me understand some things I didn't see clearly before and work on changing what I would like to change.
I feel very much more confident; focused on certain things I want to do, and feel able to do them! It is not only helpful to have the time and space to talk through problems and obstacles: it is also very helpful to be challenged by someone who can take an independent objective view.
Kimberley is direct, very experienced, helpful and non-judgemental - exactly the qualities needed! I would participate in coaching again, and I would encourage anyone to do the same for the reasons above - it is always helpful to take time to look at yourself clearly.
Director
Sothebys
james maltin
fund manager
rathbones Investment managment
In his book Success Principles, Jack Canfield highlights coaching as an essential ingredient in creating the life of your dreams. Coming from the only man ever to have had seven books on the New York Times bestsellers list at once, you can forget about whether or not you need a coach; the question is which one. Luckily you've just found her.
Each of us deserves to reach our full potential, but it must be claimed by living according to time-honoured principles passed down through generations. Kimberley is a rare being who not only knows, understands and lives these principles, but crucially has the ability to engender that understanding within you. Steve Jobs taught us to "have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become". Kimberley's coaching bestows that courage, helping you feel your heart and enabling you to live a life guided by intuition. The answers rest within us; working with Kimberly helps to reveal them. Start today; I wish you every success.
Kimberley’s coaching helped me to be my own role model and understand that all the strengths I thought I needed externally I already owned. Her coaching is tailored to your own requirements and needs which enabled me to fully engage with the programme.
Suzy Bader,
CFO
Financial Services
Talent & Development Manager
APPLE
I came to coaching for a professional purpose. I was feeling confused sometimes, lacking clarity on how to articulate what I wanted and I needed to start the next step in my career. When I left coaching I felt structured, super clear and focused, positive and re-energised. My goals were achieved; new job/ career and I got the results that I wanted.
I choose Kimberley as she’s smart, very professional, experienced and approachable. I was confident that it would be deep work and I would achieve results. Although English isn’t my native language I always felt listened to, heard, and understood. I felt supported. Kimberley has a great sense of intuition and is able to read through the body what the brain doesn’t tell. She was strong in guiding me to uncover for myself what was behind even (what started out as) a simple topic and get to the underlying cause. She works with the whole person rather than just the top line supporting you to go deeper into the roots.
I felt my boundaries were always respected; that she went where I wanted to go and worked to my agenda whilst creating and raising awareness of my decisions for doing that. Thank you.
Whilst going through a period of considerable change in my working life the time spent being coached has been invaluable. Working in partnership with Kimberley has really helped me begin the process of discovering my ‘true self’. Whilst I know it’s me leading this, it’s the skill and approach that Kimberley brings that enables this to happen.
Kimberley can be challenging and intuitive with her questions and insightful with her observations but at the same time you know she cares deeply about helping you find the best outcome for ‘you’.
Through coaching I have begun to understand what I truly bring to the world, what makes me unique and how I can leverage these qualities to best effect both at work and life in general. Kimberley brings an authenticity to her approach which quickly builds rapport and trust. You will feel supported and enabled through your coaching relationship with Kimberley and I cannot recommend her highly enough.
Richard buck
Regional Learning Manager (South)
john lewis partnership
Head of hr/diversity
deloitte
Kimberley makes an ideal coach for me because we have both been through a life changing illness and therefore she fully understands and resonates with areas that I choose to work on. She is entirely authentic and driven by her values and a strong sense of trust which was important to me in selecting a coach to work with.
Kimberley has extremely good intuition and has used this to heighten my self awareness and really get to the bottom of what I need to do to move forward. She has a calm, peaceful, yet challenging style and there's always some laughter. She is happy to be flexible with her style depending on what we are working on and how I am feeling and constantly strives to get me the outcome that I desire. I always come away from our time together feeling like I've worked hard, gained a different perspective, and have learnt something new about myself coupled with a sense of calm and feeling lighter.
KRISTY CASTLETON
FOUNDER
REBEL& SOUL
MD QUINTESSENTIALLY EVents asia
Kimberley helped me unearth problems that were holding my business performance back that I wasn't even conscious of, clarify the issues I was aware of with ease and help me realise the type of global business and team leader I want to be. I've learnt more about my business-self in 5 weeks than I have from reading business books and attending training courses for 5 years. I can't recommend her coaching enough.
Having never done career coaching before, I did a trial session with Kimberley and found it such a valuable experience that I invested in 5 more sessions with her.
I found it incredibly useful to talk to an expert, but impartial individual on matters of my career, motivations, work stresses, professional strengths and weaknesses.
She proved to be a perceptive and challenging listener which together with her knowledge and experience meant I received very tailored and practical advice.
The work with her has left be feeling more confident, focused and motivated-ultimately more effective at work”
Male Executive Director, FRC, Financial Services
Kim is an exceptional coach. She is astute, sensitive, warm and incredibly switched-on. Her own experience in the corporate world means that she has an empathy and understanding that can only come with that direct knowledge. She is able to cleverly (and gently) push you to uncover patterns of behaviour, deduce motives for these and then create logical solutions which are your own; you don’t feel that advice is pushed upon you, which therefore comes with the added benefit of your own important ‘buy-in’. Even when we hit spots that were uncomfortable to work through, I genuinely enjoyed every minute of my coaching with Kim and will be able to apply what I learned about myself, for the rest of my career
FAY REES
Director of Group Strategy & Operations
REBEL & SOUL
I had never considered coaching. I have always been a firm believer that if you are truly successful as a person, you should be able to navigate through times of change on your own and it will make you stronger.
That said, sometimes, a huge amount of change comes at once and a coach can help with the navigation. For me, coaching provided moments of reflection in my very busy life, with someone there to probe, check in and challenge. Asking you the right questions while you work through your life with more perspective than every day living enables. All it takes to get you back on a clear and focused route is to see that route more clearly and to break it down- into the bits that make you more successful and the bits that don't.
As a result of the coaching process each week, I had actions to take. Taking these gradually made me feel much more in control, confident in my decisions, and successful in navigating the various road blocks that had come my way. It proved productive and succinct in a relatively short space of time and I would highly recommend it.
Robyn Garrett
COO
White Desert
When working with Kimberley- you have a feeling that she sees through you, gently and curiously. She is highly intuitive and empathic, whilst being very warm and engaging making it easy to trust and be open from the start so that you can uncover your goals and dreams, reveal your true motivation, aspirations and values. I felt understood and supported.
It makes coaching sessions focused, greatly rewarding and an unusually deep experience.
Anna Kotskaya
Global Service Quality Manager
JLL
As a senior manager, you are expected to know all of the answers and sometimes you need to know when to ask for and receive help.
Kimberley was the perfect person to help me through a very difficult transition from redundancy into my future career. She is very qualified as an individual coach and group trainer and this was noticeable though the exercises and discussions which we carried out in our meetings. Kimberley has great knowledge and understanding of techniques explaining our progress at all times, illustrating that she is an excellent communicator. I greatly admire Kimberley’s patience, calmness and how she conducted herself at all times. I would highly recommend Kimberley to support anyone as a Coach and endorse her skills and experience as a trainer.
Toni Assirati
Head of Education and Community Engagement
The Royal Parks
Kimberley’s coaching came at a time that was absolutely crucial for me, both professionally and personally. Coming into coaching I did not know what to expect, but what I did know was that I was lost, with low confidence, and unclear vision of where I wanted my career and life to go, all whilst trying to cope with managing lots of change. Kimberley’s honest, open, and empathetic approach to coaching allowed me to open up in a way I haven’t been able to do before, and I have carried this openness into all aspects of professional and personal life.
Coaching has enabled me to look inward and outward, at both myself, others and to be mindful and understanding of that interaction. My perceptions, ideas and decision making have all been challenged by Kimberley’s coaching, and in the most valuable way. Through this I have been able to open up my mind to thinking previously unknown to me, something that is empowering, but also incredibly humbling.
Kimberley’s coaching has essentially helped me feel in control and confident, not only in terms of the decisions and choices that I make, but also in regard to myself as an individual. Kimberley is a warm character, who truly listens, is incredibly responsive and able to provide a perspective that comes from a place of genuine care. It wholeheartedly feels an understatement to say this, but Kimberley’s coaching has genuinely changed my life and I couldn’t recommend Kimberley enough.
Sinead Fenton
Leadership programme uprising
liz hudson
public sector
I had no experience of coaching prior to embarking on my coaching sessions and therefore I had limited knowledge of what to expect. Kimberly introduced coaching in a clear and informative way and put me at ease very quickly. I feel that the coaching sessions enabled me to see things more clearly and to gave me the opportunity to explore and challenge my thinking in a supportive way. I felt that I was given the time and space to think things through and to discover answers that I had been unable to.
Coaching was a fantastic experience to help me discover that I had the answers when I felt completely stuck. The coaching sessions gave me time and space and the opportunity to feel listened to which we rarely encounter in our day to day lives. I felt supported and yet challenged and as a result I am more conscious of myself and my thoughts on a daily basis.
I was amazed by how much I felt I could explore and unpick in a short space of time and felt this was down to the coaching process and having time dedicated to self exploration in a guided way. I would not hesitate to recommend coaching with Kimberley - it was an incredibly powerful and positive experience.
Nicole Eisele
Training consultant
Mediator
I just finished the few days of training I was anxious about. It went down really well and our session, and your support, was very much with me. Thank you.
gareth davies
Co-founder
the Bravest Path
Thanks to Kim, I am flowing with positivity and purpose. Kim has been a vital partner in successfully negotiating various crossroads in the growth of our company. Her direct and insightful approach left me feeling truly heard, and the accountability she provided ensured I was able to perform to the fullest of my potential. A fantastic coach whom I would not hesitate to recommend.
Katherine Mills
Mentalist & Magician
I have worked with Kimberley both as a brand consultant and a personal coach and I found her style of working very concise and productive.
She asks just the right questions- precise and challenging, to strip back the ‘fluff’, to pin you down to the heart of the matter and bottom line truths which I found both refreshing and highly useful.
The time was focused towards achieving results, combined with the support and reflection time for me to talk through and explore my creative ideas and vision- as to how I saw my brand and business evolving to exactly where and what I wanted it to be.
Her friendly and easy disposition created an ideal environment for us to have a great rapport, and create trust. I would highly recommend her.
Uprising
leadership
Coaching is an aspect of the UpRising Youth Leadership programme that marks out UpRising as distinctive from other leadership programmes. A large part of our success in developing our young people as future leaders is the emphasis we place on the personal development of our participants. Such personal development would not be possible without the time and effort coaches such as Kimberley have put into our UpRisers.
Kimberley has been utterly fantastic in working with our UpRisers and has played an integral part in the building and development of their self-confidence, clarity of personal vision and goals, raising their self-awareness and leadership presence in those that she has worked with.
Kimberley's UpRising Coachees have all spoken about how comfortable she made them feel and how quickly they could build a strong rapport with her and gain trust. Kimberley's coaching sessions left them feeling empowered and in control of their future, able to realise that their dreams and ambitions were in their grasps. Such characteristics are the integral qualities of any coach, even more so one that works with young people from disadvantaged communities.
At the start of the sessions I was devoid of confidence, unsure of my ability and lacked the experience within the new role I had taken on. I had a lot of negative experiences from my past weighing me down and was letting them dictate the view I had of myself. With the coaches help I am happy to say that I have been able to break free from the shackles I had put on myself. I really enjoyed the sessions I had and feel like they have helped me to become more like I want/used to be. It was difficult to reflect but thoroughly worth it for the outcome. I would like to thank the Coach for all her hard work with me, it is much appreciated.
I feel more confident and able to enter into any situation within my role and know that I have the skills, compassion and overall ability to succeed in my role. I would recommend the coaching process to anyone who is lacking in confidence or requires guidance on how to become more confident in what they do. This process has been of such great value to me. Thank you.
Manager Stanley Davis group ltd
I came to coaching completely unaware of what it might involve, and was rewarded with a very helpful program that fit a lot into a 5 session arc. Kimberley was both an invaluable guide and a great listener, offering just enough direction to help unlock my own truths. I believe that great teaching leads the student to revelations without seeming to have intervened at all: and so it was in our sessions, with several feeling like a great secret that I had been holding inside had been revealed by the conclusion. Kimberley skilfully addressed both the specifics of my work situation and the wider issues I was dealing with which proved invaluable. I would highly recommend both coaching and particularly Kimberley’s counsel to everyone.