Five Stages · One Process · Two Disciplines
The HEARD Method
Hear, Envision, Analyse, Reframe, Decide: how every session moves, and why you leave with one step you chose yourself
The Five Stages
How Every Session Moves
The structure that holds a session together, so that the time goes on your situation rather than on finding a way in. Every session follows the same five stages, in the same sequence, and each stage holds both disciplines: the coach’s question, which draws out your own insight, and the mentor’s experience, offered where it will serve and never as a prescription.
Presence
Hear
I ask: “What would make this hour worth your while — and how will we know?”
What happens: We begin with you, not the problem. You set the agenda in your own words, and the practical conditions of communication are settled first: captions if you want them, my face in good light, one voice at a time. I listen for what is said and for what is withheld.
From experience: I have sat on your side of this conversation. You do not need to explain what hearing loss is like; that time is yours.
ICF: Establishes Agreements · Cultivates Trust · Listens Actively
Future
Envision
I ask: “If this went exactly as you wish, what would you notice about yourself?”
What happens: Before we examine the difficulty, you describe the outcome in concrete terms — the meeting chaired with composure, the first date on which your hearing loss is a fact rather than a confession, your child at eighteen. Beginning with the future alters how every obstacle presents.
From experience: Where it helps, I describe what the mainstream path has actually looked like at fifteen, at twenty-five, and at thirty-six — not as a promise, but as evidence that the picture is attainable.
ICF: Evokes Awareness · Maintains Presence
Clarity
Analyse
I ask: “What is actually happening — and which part of it lies within your control?”
What happens: We set the situation out in order: what you avoid, what you infer, what depletes you by late afternoon. I reflect back the words you return to, and we separate the urgent from the important and the changeable from the given.
From experience: Many difficulties that feel personal are structural — acoustics, seating, the settings on a device. Naming the mechanism is often half the remedy.
ICF: Listens Actively · Evokes Awareness
Insight + Experience
Reframe
I ask: “What are you assuming that makes this feel impossible?”
What happens: Your insight comes first: questions, silence, and the occasional challenge, until you articulate something you have not said before. Then, where it will serve, I offer what I have lived — a technique, a tool, a form of words, an account of what worked and what did not.
From experience: This is where both disciplines are most visibly at work together: the coach’s question opens the door, and the mentor’s experience shows what lies beyond it.
ICF: Evokes Awareness · Coaching Mindset
Action
Decide
I ask: “What is the one step you will take — and what would make it certain?”
What happens: You choose one step, sized to be done before we next meet, and we equip it: the technology settings, the sentence for your manager, the seat in the lecture theatre. Within 24 hours you receive a written recap, and the next session begins from it.
From experience: Confidence is built by small, repeated acts in uncomfortable situations until they become comfortable. That is how I built mine, and it is how your step is sized.
ICF: Facilitates Client Growth · Establishes Agreements
The Promise
Heard, Clear, Equipped
Every session ends in the same place.
Steadier than you arrived, clearer about where you are going, and equipped with one step you have chosen yourself.
And with a written recap, so that nothing depends on what you managed to catch in the moment.
Five stages · Two disciplines · One session
The Standard
Built On The ICF Core Competencies
ICF Level 2 Coach (In Progress) · ACC (In Progress)
What Is The ICF?
The Gold Standard In Coaching
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) is the world’s largest professional body for coaches, and its credentials are widely regarded as the gold standard in coaching. Founded in 1995 and recognised internationally, the ICF sets the profession’s core competencies and Code of Ethics, which every credentialed coach commits to. An ICF credential — Associate, Professional, or Master Certified Coach — is earned, not bought: it requires accredited training, hundreds of logged client hours, mentor coaching, and a formal assessment. When you see “ICF” next to my name, it means my coaching is held to the ICF Core Competencies and Code of Ethics — a published standard, not just a promise I’ve made. It does not yet denote a credential. I am ICF-trained; my ICF Level 2 coach education and my ACC are both in progress. Coaching clients during training is part of the ICF pathway — the logged hours count towards the credential — and the ACC will be shown here only once the ICF has awarded it.
Boundaries
Coaching, Not Therapy
Coaching has clearly defined boundaries, so you always know precisely what you are receiving.
Future-Focused
Self-efficacy, decisions, and the next step. You set the agenda, and we build forward from where you stand today.
Clear Clinical Boundaries
It is not therapy or counselling, and I will never represent it as such. Should anything clinical arise, I will say so and direct you to the appropriate professional, every time.
Experience, Without Attachment
My experience is offered where it will serve — a technique, a tool, an account of what worked — and it is always yours to adopt, adapt, or set aside. The decisions remain yours.