Hear what people we’ve worked with have to say
Team Coaching Virtual Programme
Twice Jo has played a powerful role in helping my teams evolve. The engagements were different, but with both, we left different, better.
Jo’s power is her 1) wonderful listening skills, 2) ability to adapt to situations and deliver what is needed, and 3) timely infusions of creativity, humor, and compassion.
I have recommended Jo to others and would hire her a third without hesitation.
Leadership Team Coaching
I have known Jo for many years since we first worked together at United Biscuits (McVities) and have always admired her ability to coach and connect leaders and teams.
As a leader in the food industry I have partnered with Jo several times to support the development and cohesiveness of cross functional teams I have been leading.
Specifically I have hired Jo twice at General Mills and once at Yoplait which on all occasions has required the facilitation and coaching of some senior level leaders.What Jo and her Phoenix team do really well is bring a bespoke design to meet our objectives by showing a lot of attention to our situational context, which is really important.
In all my experiences with Phoenix I greatly appreciate the collaborative and flexible approach undertaken which earns a lot of trust for all involved.The specific areas of expertise Jo brings have centred around building deeper trust-based relationships, facilitating important conversations, helping the team become aware of patterns
and finally providing tools that helped to shed light on new insight and opportunities.In summary, I tend to rehire Phoenix time and again because they bring a genuine sense of curiosity, warmth and care for the people they work with.
The time spent with Phoenix is an invaluable investment in time and resource that in my experience has paid back dividends for improving team dynamics and growing my own leadership.
Board strategy facilitation – Consumer Goods
We’ve worked with Jo a number of times at innocent, inviting her to facilitate our strategy discussions at Board sessions as well as workshops creating our Packaging strategy.
Jo takes time to understand the brief, then quickly develops a plan to deliver the outcomes in the time available, aligning key stakeholders on the way. She ‘gets it’ due to her business background, and marries this with her understanding of team dynamics to create workshops that work and deliver the desired outcomes.
In facilitation, she brings energy, focus, challenge and appropriate humour to ensure the group is kept on track, yet is flexible if needed to accommodate the needs of the group. She’s skilful at ensuring everyone is heard, and managing the dynamics of a high performing board team.
I’d recommend her for similar work any time.
Team Coaching – IT team in Construction
As a newly established team facing significant organizational changes, we worked with Jo for two years.
With diverse leadership styles and experiences, Jo helped us create focus and positive challenges. She actively encouraged us to reframe our thinking within a complex environment, helping us establish our vision and purpose to ensure value-adding services for our business.
Jo fostered positive, open working environments, enabling the best strategic and operational outcomes while developing us as individuals. Trusting Jo and her colleagues, we embraced the process and were open to constructive criticism, learning how to course correct.
Through this collaboration, our team grew significantly, and as individuals, we continue to embed the growth mindset we established.
Team Coaching – New Team
As a new team, which has been brought together during a pandemic, we saw the value in investing in development. Our aim is to create a highly effective, happy and authentic team so we reached out to Jo to help us on that journey.
We were genuinely included in the development of the day, through scoping calls and being able to feed in as the focus developed. The day was shaped in a way which was most effective to our organisation. I would say that was one of the things I valued the most; the content wasn’t just put upon us, it felt like it was a collaboration.
On the practical side Jo was across everything, quick to respond and kept the project working at a pace.
The feedback from the team has been universally positive for both their understanding of themselves in the workplace and the effectiveness of the team.
I have no hesitations to recommend Jo and am hopeful we will be working together again in the future.
Executive Coaching – Construction Comms Director
Having moved into a new leadership role in BAM UK & Ireland, a tier one construction company, I recognised the need to have some leadership coaching. While I had led teams in the past and sat as a lay member of leadership teams, this was an opportunity to step up. But I knew I needed to hone my leadership skills. Having decided that, I had a choice to make – who would I choose as my coach?
As soon as I met Jo I knew this was the right connection for me. Her background, in sales and marketing, felt like a really good fit with me in communications. But it was her whole personality that just made me feel comfortable from the first minute.
It would be fair to say that Jo challenged me, she made me think in every session we had together. She would ask the questions I didn’t think anyone would ask me and make me think about what I did, how I did it and how it may come across. It was the challenge that I really needed to make me a better leader, better manager and a better person too. Every session led me to think differently, use those breathing exercises, think about outcomes and the inputs that lead to them!
In all, over two years we had 17 coaching sessions – It should have been 18 but I missed one and I regret it to this day. The impact the time spent with Jo has led me to feeling like a different person. The red mist that used to appear, when things were getting tough, has disappeared, I have been able to pull myself out the weeds and become much more of the leader that I want and need to be, while at the same time the skills she has given me, or enhanced ones that were hidden away, have helped me to build better and stronger relationships both inside the business and beyond.
But it is not just work that has benefited, I have been able to put these skills to work in my personal life. Because lets be honest challenges are not all reserved to the workplace.
I have had other coaches in the past, but I genuinely found Jo’s personality and willingness to be open and share, made the whole leadership coaching experience something that was special. Because of that I always felt I could be completely honest and leave my guard down. I had total trust in the conversations between us.
Having had these coaching sessions I now feel I can take on whatever is put before me, without letting those voices in my head tell me otherwise.
Team Coaching – Merging Teams
2024 – I’m delighted to have used Jo and Duncan to expertly guide my new team through our objectives. These were around connecting and building relationships, creating a sense of one team as we were bringing together two teams and to start to co-create the ambition for the future. The sessions exceeded our expectations, it provided challenge in the right way and helped us bring humanity and a sense of vulnerability which in turn created connection. Would highly recommend Jo to support any team development.
2020 – I hired Jo to support my teams development – as a team we had gone through a period of change and growth, and I wanted to bring everyone together to build on the foundation we have and develop the trust across the team. Furthermore, I wanted the new team to learn about each other’s preferences, and the complexities across income streams. Jo took the time to thoroughly understand what our objectives were and helped focus my mind. On the day itself Jo struck the right balance of keeping the day professional and creating a safe space and allowing people to bring some vulnerability, which made for deeper and more honest connections. Very powerful. The Insights Discovery tool provided the opportunity for every single member of the team to learn about themselves and crucially about other team members, their preferences and how to work together more effectively. Back in the day to day, having this lens of the agreed language and insights has been useful, and it’s fantastic to see it people apply their learning. The impact has been extremely positive and the overarching objective has definitely been met. Thanks Jo, I’d definitely recommend.
Team Coaching & Facilitation
I have worked with Phoenix over the last 2 years on 3 separate occasions with 3 very different briefs: Team & Business facilitation; Event Facilitation and Team Development.
They have consistently exceeded expectations helping to shape the brief, challenge the individuals involved in a productive manner and provided a constructive and effective environment that delivered the desired results. They are also a pleasure to work with! I would recommend them for any type of event design and facilitation that you need to do.
Team Coaching 2 days – Britvic Global Marketing Team
Worked with Jo recently to help build effectiveness of my team, to get clearer on purpose and to deepen trust and relationships.
She was great support in building and facilitating the programme and made a real difference.
Bespoke Team Coaching
I have had the pleasure of working with Jo twice as a facilitator for my team. Jo creates an inclusive and safe environment for our team to learn and grow together.
What makes Jo stand out from other facilitators is her responsiveness to our organisation’s needs. We didn’t feel like the workshop was off the shelf, but was clearly linked back to our specific needs and objectives which she had been briefed on.
She is able to balance time for reflection and injecting energy into the day when needed, adapting the schedule effectively. Our wider team gave very positive feedback on Jo’s training, including both the content as well as her inclusive manner of delivery.
Global Marketing Team Coaching
Phoenix helped us create and shape an engaging agenda with creative solutions and activities to help move a senior team as part of a 2 day team development session. We had a great 2 days with open, honest and engaging conversations. We collectively reached alignment on a number of things which we solved / resolved in the team development session, or went away with the stimulus to move things forward back in the office.
For our size of group, we really benefitted from having 2 facilitators, both of which brought different things to the group dynamic. Having independent facilitators also meant they could push us where they felt we were holding back, and offer suggestions from their breadth of experiences.
We found the session hugely beneficial and would highly recommend Jo and her colleagues.
Leadership Coaching – Stepping Up to more senior role
I recently engaged Jo to support me with leadership coaching as I took over the reins of the innocent foundation.
Having worked with Jo previously at the foundation on a strategy refresh and in a previous career, I was confident I would get the results I was seeking. Jo has been a fantastic sounding board and given me practical tips on how to approach difficult situations.
I feel more grounded in my position and secure in my ability. She has given me tools to draw on and confidence in my leadership style. It’s been a great process to embark on together.
Leadership Team Coaching
I cannot recommend Jo at Phoenix enough. I contacted Jo during the drafting of our new Fundraising Strategy at the start of the year; we knew we had a tight knit and ambitious leadership team but wanted some additional support to help us collectively grow our strength as a group, and to help us focus on overcoming challenges to growth. We didn’t realise at the time that one of those challenges would be pulling together in a global pandemic!
We have had such a good experience; the several highly tailored in depth sessions we have had with Jo and co have helped us identify and use our individual skills in the team, what some of our blind spots are, and generally increased our focus on the future, our confidence and cohesion as a group. We’ve asked Jo if she can roll out some of the same tools to all of our 200 team members over the coming year so I think you can tell from that how strongly we feel about it. Thank you Jo.
Leadership Coaching – Communication skills
I just wanted to take some time to thank Jo for the work she has done with a team member, and to recommend her to others looking for excellent coaching.
Jo provided one to one coaching remotely to a member of my team focused on leadership communications skills. My colleague has has really benefited. She wanted to focus on increasing her confidence and communication in a range of complex settings and better dealing with challenges working relationships.
Jo equipped my team member with really concrete tools to apply in challenging professional situations which have given her the confidence to effectively navigate challenging situations and working relationships. Different tactics suggested and explored with Jo have also enabled my colleague to increase her self-confidence to more actively contribute in group settings.
So pleased to see an excellent team member really building her confidence to contribute even more effectively. Thanks again!
Organisation Development and Change Management
Jo has an incredible ability to deeply understand the organisation and the challenges it faces. Previously we have used Jo to help us refresh our values.
More recently Jo has facilitated sessions to look at how we improve the way we work together as an organisation specifically following the lockdown but also looking at ways of working we had out-grown as the size of the organisation has increased.
Her preparation, which involves a lot of listening, has meant all our sessions with Jo have been impactful and moved us on positively as we continue to evolve. The sessions themselves always bring a positivity that is critical when involved in any change management.
Partnership Coaching for job share
Being new to working in a jobshare arrangement and with so many challenges in 2020, we reached out to Jo for a series of coaching sessions. She has experience of partnership coaching and also has experience of working as a jobshare so she was a perfect fit.
She provided exactly the right amount of support and challenge we needed to establish ways of working, explore our professional identities and prioritise our goals. We made significant progress on each of our coaching objectives – genuinely transforming the way we work for the better.
As well as getting results, Jo was fun to work with, understanding, and helpful. We couldn’t recommend her more.
Jo is an exceptional and experienced executive coach. I have been working with her 1-2-1 over a period of 7 years starting when I stepped up to a senior leadership role. I work with Jo at times when I need additional support or have a professional challenge I choose to address.
I have found that there is no issue or aspiration that she can’t help me with and I always leave our sessions with a range of ideas/tools and a structured pathway forward we have developed together.
Jo is warm and friendly and always very well prepared for each session, helping me build on the work we have previously undertaken.
I can’t recommend her highly enough as someone who has helped me enormously in my career to face challenges and unlock potential. It provides me with so much confidence to know that I can turn to her.
Organisation Values, Organisation Development
Acme is incredibly grateful for the ongoing relationship that we have developed with Jo and Phoenix Training.
Jo has an extraordinary talent for getting to the heart of an organisation. We initially approached Jo to facilitate an organisational values workshop which very limited advance notice and within a tight time frame. Her approach was clear, pragmatic and impactful. The workshop facilitation was dynamic, fast-paced and respectful of individual voices whilst remaining on track and outcome focused.
Later, when we were looking for post-pandemic staff support and reconnection, Jo was the natural choice to help guide our transition. The design of her sessions is interactive and engaging. We particularly benefited from her ‘Lands’ model where staff in each of our departments could inhabit the experiences and responsibilities of other teams, leading to a more cohesive and collective understanding of our organisational mission and priorities.
More recently we have again turned to Jo to support a focused deep dive for staff and board into specific horizon scanning issues that impact and underpin our work. As an organisation we continue to build on the foundations that Jo helps to cement. We look forward to growing our relationship and working with her again when the need arises.
Team awayday
Had a wonderful away day for our dept back in Sept (2022). The first in 3 years so no mean feat for Jo to help us really drill down on the objectives and what success looked like.
Jo spent some time with me and really listened to what we wanted to get out of the day and took time to understand the team culture.
The results have been fab with real engagement across the team, and Jo is a joy to work with. Would highly recommend.
Executive Team Coaching Programme
Phoenix designed and led a series of workshops with UnLtd’s Exec team.
Jo and Isabel were brilliant throughout – understanding our needs and aspirations, and providing outstanding design, facilitation and support. They enabled us to flow with whatever was most needed at each particular phase of our development and progress as we sought to become a high performing team. They held our feet to the fire and kept us honest on process, content and values.
They celebrated with us and inspired us – as well as enabling us to fully appreciate each other. Jo is truly a master of her art.
Management Development Programme – Virtual delivery internationally
I originally engaged Jo to provide executive coaching to members of WFD’s leadership team (LT) back in 2019. Jo worked with us to first build an awareness of how coaching can deliver impact for LT and the wider organisation.
Later that year, WFD opened up an external exercise to procure an external partner to develop and deliver a management development programme (MDP) for the organisation. Phoenix’s MDP approach aligned well with WFD’s objectives and we launch the programme with our first cohort of managers in 2020. Since then we have put 10 cohorts through the programme, and have seen a marked improvement in management standards and skills across the organisation in areas such as objective setting, managing workload, delegation, managing performance and staff development. The MDP provided by Jo and Phoenix has become a core part of our development offer for our managers.Jo’s approach is extremely collaborative and she and her team have always looked to find practical solutions that work for us. She understands the problems we are trying to solve and offers options for us to address these through learning solutions. Jo always brings great energy to planning discussions and her training delivery. She is a pleasure to work with and always goes the extra mile to make sure that WFD are able to deliver quality learning for our staff.
Virtual Team Development
Working with Jo was an absolute pleasure.
Full of passion, knowledge and enthusiasm, Jo and the Phoenix team managed to create a virtual team away day to perfection. With new members of our team joining in lockdown and all working from home, we wanted to learn further about our team since our face to face session in November 2019.
As a team, we felt connected, engaged and learnt alot about our communication preferences, reflecting on our time in lockdown and creating a safe space to be vulnerable.
I would recommend the Phoenix team to anyone who wants to work o their team collaboration. Thank you Jo
Team Coaching and Capability Building across 3 charities
In recent years I’ve asked Jo to come in and provide support to teams I’ve led at Save the Children, Ark and Barnardo’s.
At Save the Children Jo worked with me to strengthen the education and health teams, using a range of techniques including ‘Insights’.
She did similar work with the Education Partnerships Group, which was a relatively new team within Ark, where Jo’s support enabled deeper and more collaborative relationships across a global team.
In Barnardo’s Jo supported a cohort of Children’s Services staff presenting at a conference to improve their presentation skills. In all these engagements, Jo brought deep professionalism in her planning and approach to the work, while also being flexible to the evolving needs of teams. Jo’s a very warm and engaging facilitator while at the same always focused on the purpose of sessions and ensuring objectives are met in a timely fashion. I cannot recommend her highly enough.
Capability Building – Difficult Conversations – Private members' library
The London Library engaged Jo Wright of Phoenix to deliver a series of workshops for our staff aimed at Managing Difficult Conversations. We are a private membership library which prides itself on the excellent level of service provided. Sometimes it can be a challenge for our employees to maintain this in the face of occasional problematic behaviour. The post pandemic period has been particularly hard for our people.
I had worked with Jo for many years at Comic Relief, and she was a natural person to turn to. She provided the most compelling proposal in a competitive process, and was endorsed by our internal training and development steering group. Jo took her time to accurately assess our needs and pitch the training correctly for the diverse needs of our delegates, which included several members of the exec team as well as front line staff.
The training, when delivered, was received extremely positively by those who attended, was highly practical in nature and is now being actively applied at work. Jo has helped to build confidence and capability and spread a positive approach to challenges among a workforce who are always expected to go the extra mile for our members.
I would not hesitate to bring Jo back to run further training for us, and highly recommend her to other organisations looking for training of this nature.
Team Development x 3 virtual sessions
We worked collaboratively with Phoenix to create a bespoke plan for our team over three sessions.
Despite being over Zoom we had engaging and insightful sessions which helped form bonds between newer and older team members, recognise and celebrate success as well as plan practical steps of how we can move forward as a high functioning team during uncertain times. I would definitely recommend and would use again in the future.
Executive Coaching – Arts sector
Jo is an exceptionally talented coach and has worked with SB now for many years supporting and coaching our dancers. Jo is also a skilled Executive coach. We enlisted her to coach one of our senior directors, to support them in their own planning, communication and strategic thinking. The output of these sessions has been exactly as we had hoped and the individual has now developed strategies for delivery and communication. I would have no hesitation in recommending Jo, she is hugely engaging, delivery focused with excellent coaching and stakeholder management skills.
Executive Team Coaching
UnLtd is the foundation for social entrepreneurs, finding and supporting the best talent in the UK to tackle the most pressing social challenges in the country and doing so in ways which are sustainable and impactful. We are a highly ambitious organisation, innovating new models, and building an ecosystem of support capable of tapping the full potential of social entrepreneurs.
Our top team has worked brilliantly on their individual functions. But we wanted to go further, with fluid teamwork, bringing all the skills and styles to bear on the whole of our mission.
Jo and Isabel from Phoenix Training and Coaching had an immediate grasp of our challenge, asking the acute questions which got to the heart of our starting point and goals. Their session design rapidly built from the fundamentals of personal communication styles, to trust building, and on to using specific, real projects to identify the behaviours and approaches that would work for us.
Many team development approaches feel great on the day but rapidly lose impact afterwards. Phoenix were different – they changed our “normal”. They left us with commitments, tools and gut level understanding to make our team truly high performing. If you want real, lasting results, I thoroughly recommend them.
Jo was recommended to me by a member of staff she had mentored, and from the first time I met her I was bowled over by her energy and purpose. We began to collaborate on some of our staff development needs, and that is the best thing about working with Jo, she colaborates with you to define what your business need is as much as the development solution.
At Comic Relief we used Jo on several big projects, most notably our Line Manager Development programme.
Jo understood our culture, so the programme we designed was a really tailored solution. Then the real magic happens in the workshops where our staff LOVED Jo; it’s her energy again and also the coaching style she uses with people, so that their own self efficacy increases.
The benefits the individuals and groups who worked with Jo experienced were evidenced in their evaluations, and performance, and the initiative they took to continue applying what they had learned. I should also say that Jo flexes her personal style to make sure that your working relationships with her is easy and flowing. For me this was invaluable because Jo was a vital partner in our development plan throughout the year. I have left Comic Relief now but Jo is sitll very much a part of the development team there.
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