Claire James
Managing Director
Claire is a Leadership and Entrepreneurial Coach and Managing Director of Pivotal Moment Transitions. She works with leaders in a wide range of organisations, across the UK and Europe, from Government entities, international banks and charities, through to innovative and disruptive start-ups - and everything in between, including the special area of Employee Owned businesses and Mutuals.
Claire established Pivotal Moment in late 2012, with the mission of creating an organisation that would make world-class leadership and business coaching - and team development - affordable, even to those with limited resources - and especially organisations with an artistic and/or social mission and purpose. In addition to running Pivotal Moment, Claire is a coach and mentor for NatWest's business accelerator programme and provides free and low-cost business and leadership growth programmes for small businesses, charities, schools and Arts organisations. She also supports the Employee Ownership Association with the organisation and delivery of its annual conference and Pivotal Moment is an EOA member. Claire is a senior member of the global Enneagram In Business network. She has over five thousand hours of senior leadership, team, and business coaching - and facilitation - experience, gathered since 2007. These many hours have informed her approach to her work...which rests on the belief that if you want real, lasting, meaningful change and growth, you have to go deep...and you have to have courage; change and growth are not for the faint-hearted! This means not everyone will be a good fit for working with Claire. She believes life is too short to work with people and on things that don't make her feel good, or aren't worthwhile - and so she won't. And she encourages her clients to take the same approach. She therefore expects her clients to look hard at where they are spending the seconds of their lives. Are they meaningful? Will they look back and be glad that they exchanged their precious time for the activities that dominate their lives? Are they willing to ask tough questions of themselves, and to look at themselves and their own patterns and motivations before they take issue with others? But she also believes in having a laugh in the process. In fact, experience (and emerging neuroscience!) has shown her that growth and new perspective both come faster when you can see the funny side. Leaders and teams who work with Claire say they have profound and positive changes - often very fast - to their lives, both at work and at home. Claire is accredited in a variety of coaching approaches and uses these in accordance with each coachee and/or organisation's or business's needs. For example:
Claire spent much of her school years focused on music and the performing arts and went on to a Joint Honours in French and Drama at the University of Bristol. She brings her training in presence, holding the stage, method acting and movement, into her work with leaders, to help them step up to their new role and identity, and find confidence in their new way of being. She then gained an understanding of commercial/organisational presence and reputation through a post graduate Certificate in Public Relations Management at the University of Stirling, which helps her attend to the wider context of leadership for an organisation. Claire has a variety of formal coach trainings, with a diploma in Executive Coaching from the Academy of Executive Coaching (AoEC), and is an Enhanced Narrative Coach, an Enhanced Conversational Intelligence Coach, and also a certified coach with the Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching organisation, for guaranteed leadership growth. To read Claire's profile on the Marshall Goldsmith website, please click here. Claire is also certified as a Pumpkin Plan Strategist and an Inaugural Fix This Next Coach designed specifically to support entrepreneurs and small to medium-sized businesses. Claire is accredited in a range of psychometric and 360 degree assessments, including the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®), the Hogan 'Bright Side', 'Dark Side' and 'Inside', the Marshall Goldsmith Global Leader 360 Assessment and the Team Management Index™. She is also trained in the Enneagram framework and accredited as a 'What Type of Leader Are You?' facilitator. She runs year-long Enneagram Learning Communities for teams of leaders looking to up their game as a senior team. For leaders in transition, Claire turns to the Leadership Tensions Questionnaire, developed by Bridget Farrands and Richard Elsner, co-authors of 'Leadership Transitions - How business leaders take charge in new roles', to help leaders stepping into new roles and responsibilities to get clear on their preferred leadership approaches, and where they may need to expand upon these to step up to a new role. Her career in diverse sectors and cultures has equipped Claire with knowledge and experience of a wide range of business strategies, practices and systems. She began her career in commercial management in Marks & Spencer in the mid-1980's and over the past 30 years has worked in, or as a consultant/specialist for, a diverse range of companies from 2-person start-ups to large multinationals. These include Berlitz, International Distillers and Vintners, ABB and TOTAL. Here she ran a specialised public relations programme on behalf of TOTAL’s global President and, subsequently, the Expatriation activities for the company in the UK. Claire spent her early childhood years in Kingston Jamaica and Cambridge Massachusetts. As an adult, in addition to the UK, Claire has lived and worked in France, Spain, Denmark, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates and is fluent in French. Claire has been working in the field of Leadership Development since 2007 and currently lives in East Sussex with her partner and daughter. She feels lucky to be able to combine coaching in Yorkshire and the West Country with visiting her sons at their respective Universities. To see a selection of the clients Claire has supported, or is supporting, you can take a look at our Who we Work With page |
Contact Claire:
Tel: + 44 203 239 3231
Mb: + 44 7875 866 024
email: claire.james@pivotal-moment.co.uk
Mb: + 44 7875 866 024
email: claire.james@pivotal-moment.co.uk
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