Louise Pode
Founder of ProAbility
Louise is the Founder and Principal Consultant of ProAbility Ltd, an Executive Coaching with a focus on championing people’s performance through a values based culture.
Qualifications & Training
- Institute of Leadership and Management Level 7 Executive Coach
- Workplace Resilience and Wellbeing Master Practitioner
- Neuro Linguistics Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner
- Accredited Strengthscope Practitioner
- Accredited DISC Practitioner
- Member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC)
- MSc Ergonomics
- BSc(Hons) Physiotherapy
- Fellow of the School of Social Entrepreneurs
- Member of Health Care Professions Council
- Member of Chartered Society of Physiotherapy
Areas of expertise
Louise is the People Champion and Culture Lead at ProAbility and specialises in optimising your performance and that of your teams through coaching and building a values led business.
Inherent within her coaching is building resilience, a growth mindset and channelling stress to optimise your performance and that of your business.
- Executive Coach
- Resilience and Wellbeing Coach
- Business Values and Culture Coach
- Ski Coach for Nervous Skiers
- Ergonomics & Human Factors
Executive Coach
Louise’s approach to coaching is values and strengths driven to enable her clients and their businesses to move forward and achieve their goals with energy and resilience.
Throughout her career, from a being physiotherapist in the military to specialising in ergonomics and human factors through to executive coaching, her approach has always been to empower individuals to challenge their perspective. This enables them to take control and achieve their goals through inner motivation.
From her experience businesses can create a great working environment but if their team members have anxiety, self limiting beliefs, imposter syndrome or lacks confidence they will never be able to perform to their best.
Louise’s holistic experience of the impact our mind has on how we perform and her understanding of the importance of creating a values led business is the foundation of her work. By working with businesses to develop a culture which attracts and retains talent, alongside coaching individuals to overcome their negative self perspective, she achieves great results with her clients.
Developing your self-awareness, understanding your values and sense of purpose and having insight into your self-limiting beliefs are an integral part of Louise’s coaching. Louise takes her clients on journey of self-discovery and enables them to challenge those limiting beliefs, create a positive mindset and gain a whole new perspective to enable them to develop their self-confidence to achieve their goals.
Inherent within coaching is understanding and managing your stress and anxiety and utilising it to re-energise you. Louise works with clients who experience stress, anxiety or burnout, which is impacting on performance, to enable them to create their own tool kit of coping strategies to manage their emotional wellbeing.
Resilience and Wellbeing Coach
Developing Resilience and Promoting Wellbeing to Optimise Performance
Working in a pressured environment, handling challenging situations and difficult customers can create stress, anxiety and burnout in your teams. Some colleagues will be naturally resilient, enabling them to be more energised, better at problem solving and motivated, with a positive approach to work. Whilst others may feel overwhelmed, stressed, struggle to make decisions and may turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms.
While certain factors might make some individuals more resilient than others, resilience can be developed in us all. The thoughts, behaviours and actions which create resilience can be learnt through coaching and training to enable individuals to utilise the strategies that work best for them.
Introducing resilience training and coaching into your teams and leadership to build those skills, behaviours and agility is the first step. To truly optimise its potential and enable your teams to perform at their best, it should be embedded in your culture through practices and behaviours which support resilience.
The benefits of building resilience in your managers, teams and colleagues include:
⦁ Challenges are viewed as opportunities rather than threats.
⦁ Improves communication.
⦁ Encourages initiative and a growth mindset.
⦁ Creates an agile and flexible workforce.
⦁ Energises and motivates.
⦁ Promotes collaboration and improves relationships.
⦁ Reduces stress, burnout and presenteeism.
⦁ Promotes emotional well-being.
⦁ Increases commitment.
⦁ Reduces absenteeism and presenteeism.
The Workplace Resilience and Wellbeing Coaching Programme (WRAW)
The WRAW coaching programme is designed to educate, empower and inspire individuals, teams, leaders and organisations to discover and maximise their own levels of resilience.
Drawing on the results of their personal WRAW psychometric report, individuals will build a unique insight into the 5 key sources of resilience (the pillars) and gain an accurate measure of their own strengths and development areas.
Participants will learn practical strategies, tactics and tools to bolster each pillar, giving them the resilience, they need to respond positively to the pressures and demands of their working environment.
The WRAW programme is a great tool for developing resilience and wellbeing in individuals, teams, leaders and organisations. It is a flexible programme, tailored to the specific requirements of your business, providing an ideal framework for creating an integrated culture of wellbeing.
Business Values and Culture Coach
Developing Your Company’s Values and vison to Promote a Positive Culture
Company values shape your business culture and impact on your strategy by creating a sense of purpose, and responsibility, improving team cohesion and promoting commitment to Belvoir. They are the DNA of your business which define the standards of the business, how you manage your customers, colleagues and stakeholders.
Every decision your employees make should be aligned with those values and embedded in your strategy, processes and practices to create a positive culture and strong sense of identity. The more aligned these are with your employees and customers the more you will attract those with similar values and build a strong customer base with increased employee retention and succession.
When developing your vision and values one of the most essential aspects is engaging your employees in the process. Utilising their strengths, skills and resources to enable you to refine Belvoir’s values will create a strong platform for moving forward. Working with your team from the outset and listening to their perspective paves the way for engagement and ownership. This approach takes a traditional “top down” driven change and turns it into a more sustainable “employee owned” change initiative.
.
Benefits of defining your company values and vision
⦁ Provide direction and give a clear sense of vision and purpose in your business.
⦁ Identify and communicate the core values of your business so they are reflected in behaviours, decision making and communications.
⦁ Keep your teams focused on where Belvoir is going and what it is aiming to achieve.
⦁ Bring your team along the journey so they feel valued, involved and invested in the process.
⦁ Retain and attract talent and succession planning.
Ski Coach for Nervous Skiers
The Story Behind Ski Coaching for Nervous Skiers
Louise has skied for many years but the holidays gradually became more stressful as everyone’s competence levels sped away from hers. Louise had good reason to have some anxiety as she had both her hips replaced 20 years ago. In 2017 she was wiped out by a snow boarder at high speed and was on crutches for 4 months. Whilst the anxiety around skiing grew so did her strong desire not to miss out on all those future family experiences.
As an Executive Coach she appreciated that she was creating her own anxiety which was impacting on how she approached her skiing both emotionally and physically. There is nothing like nerves to make you rigid and lean back – the perfect way to be out of control on skis!
Louise embarked on a journey to overcome her anxiety and that is when she became a Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). It was like magic – after just a couple of months she had completely changed her perspective and loved her skiing. All those emotions around anxiety, fear and humiliation dispelled.
In 2018 it became apparent there were many people in Louise’s position and she partnered with Ski2 a British travel company who took their clients to Champoluc, Italy. It was a great success – Louise ran a ski coaching programme in the UK and took her clients to Champoluc so they could put their new found skills and strategies into practice with Ski 2.
Following on from this success clients approached Louise for ski coaching leading up to their own holidays with great success.
As we all remember ,Covid hit northern Italy and the slopes were closed for virtually 2 seasons. Very sadly Ski 2 couldn’t sustain their business with the added impact of Brexit and closed down.
In 2021 Louise partnered with New Generation, who have been established since 1998, and have a great reputation for their outstanding customer service in provision of ski lessons across the Alps.
Louise is delighted to announce that her Ski Coaching for Nervous Skiers is back on for Winter 2022/23
We will be running the following programmes:
Ski Coaching for Nervous Skiers – 4 online coaching sessions with Louise with additional support and materials to ensure you fulfill your skiing goal!
Ski Coaching for Nervous Skiers online coaching plus New Generation Ski School with an ski instructor who specialises in nervous skiers.
Ski Coaching for Nervous Skiers Package to include 5 day trip to Courcheval, France in March 2023 with a group of like minded individuals.
Bespoke flexible package – you choose your group and the location, Louise and New Generation will provide the coaching both in the UK and in resort plus accommodation and New Generation ski instructors as required.
Ergonomics and Human Factors
Louise’s background and experience as a Chartered Physiotherapist, with a Masters in Ergonomics, gives her an in depth perspective on influencing factors on optimising performance in the workplace. Louise has a wealth of experience of designing workplace environments from works station sets up to the whole office.