Profile

Overview

Frances has been working as an Accredited Executive Coach for over ten years following a successful career in Business Development and Change Management in Clifford Chance and CMS Cameron McKenna.  She uses her coaching expertise combined with an understanding of successful business development to enable high performers to successfully reach and perform in a partnership environment.  Frances complements this with a focus on career transitions particularly maternity, to improve talent retention and performance.

Background and coaching experience

Frances specialises in working with legal professionals to develop their careers and their businesses particularly at times of transition. Frances gets the best from people she works with by balancing an individual’s goals with those of the organization. She blends an intuitive, pragmatic style with the needs of the role and organization to enable people to focus on their strengths and achieve their potential. Frances’ clients include law firm partners/associates, business support and female professionals looking to progress their careers, build a practice; develop confidence and strategies for successful business development.

Professional qualifications

  • logo-AcC_blueAccredited Executive Coach (Association for Coaching), since 2010
  • Advanced Diploma in Coaching & Mentoring, Oxford School of Coaching and Mentoring
  • Career Counselling Certificate, CCS
  • Strategic Coaching in Professional Services, Cranfield
  • BSc Hons in International Management and French, Manchester UMIST
  • MBTI Step 1 Psychometric Profiling
  • NLP Master Practitioner

Recent clients/sectors

  • Accenture
  • Allen & Overy
  • Bates Wells & Braithwaite
  • Cleary Gottlieb
  • Clyde & Co
  • CMS Cameron McKenna
  • Dentons
  • Expedia
  • Herbert Smith Freehills
  • King & Wood Mallesons
  • Macfarlanes
  • Milbank
  • Nabarro
  • The Parent Practice

What clients say about us

Senior associate on partnership track

Frances has been a true inspiration and I have gained a huge amount from the experience – both personally and professionally.  The coaching has taken place over a very important and challenging time in my career when I was considering applying to make the transition from assistant solicitor to partner.  My coaching sessions helped me to really focus on my goals and what makes me fulfilled in my professional life.  They also helped me to focus on how to change the things that made me unhappy at work and the need to balance my work life with my personal life.  Frances coached me through my successful partnership application process.

Law Firm
Partner
Good to talk to an independent person and reflect on how to get the most out of the Team. I am planning better now and have restructured some elements of how we do things to improve accountability.
Law Firm
Senior associate returning from maternity leave

Frances is very calm and focused with great clarity of thought; she doesn’t give you all the answers but instead asks you all the right questions that you answer yourself.  I was coming to the end of my maternity leave and unsure how my life was going to pan out now I would be balancing my new life as a mother with my career in The City. I wanted to really understand what I wanted out of life and more importantly how I would put a plan in place to achieve that. Frances helped me to pinpoint what was important to me and then formulate a plan on how to achieve it. I was emboldened by the plan and negotiated a successful new arrangement at work.  I am thrilled with the outcome.

Law Firm
Senior Manager

Frances skillfully extracted my ideas and helped me put them together in a coherent fashion to create a plan which I then was successful at achieving.

Law Firm
Senior associate on partnership track

I was always amazed at how Frances could take my sometimes very jumbled thoughts and ‘splurges’ and turn them into focused ideas and objectives.  No matter how fed up or confused I felt at the start of some sessions – I always left feeling positive and focused on what I needed to do.

Law Firm
Senior Associate

Coaching has been very helpful in understanding how I see myself, how others see me, what I want to achieve and how to it can be done, as well as what was getting in the way.

Law Firm
Partner
I’m more aware of my leadership style now and how to flex it.
Law Firm
Senior Manager

I have a clearer picture of what I want from my career and how best to balance this with home.  The coaching gave me some practical tips for how to get the most out of my working day, conquer some of my fears and find a better work/life balance.   The coaching set me up well for taking on a new role at work and gave me the confidence to tackle the role head-on – “starting as I mean to go on.”

Management Consultancy
Senior Manager

I have a greater understanding of myself, am more organised and understand what it takes to balance things better in terms of my many priorities.

Law Firm
Senior Manager

Frances has a warm, friendly style which makes her easy to talk to.  However, it’s not treated like a counselling session – she gently directs the conversation to reach the main points.

City Organisation
Senior Manager

I had coaching to think about what I wanted to do with my career and how I could balance my career with other priorities.  I came out with a greater focus and understanding of these two goals and understand myself much better.

City Organisation
Senior associate

I found the programme incredibly useful, both professionally and personally. Frances is adept at gently challenging preconceptions and allowing me the space to explore prejudices, ideas, possibilities etc.  My recent appraisal was completely favourable, and with Frances’ guidance I have reversed a style of thinking engendered by a previous firm and have re-developed a positive outlook.

Law Firm
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