Anna Young Consulting
Renewable | Sustainable | Resilient
I am motivated by a passion to support purpose-driven and purpose-seeking leaders across the public, private and non-profit sectors.
My work supports people to:
Name and identify future vision and create a pathway to move forward.
Dismantle the obstacles to individuals and their organizations meeting their highest potential.
Develop leaders and teams capable of sustainably delivering outstanding performance.
Create systems and processes that support inclusivity and well-being.
Executive Leadership & Coaching
I work to enable leaders to become the best version of themselves across all dimensions of their lives.
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Team Development
I use a neuroscience-based approach to create customized programs that support growth and change; provide tools for high-functioning teams; and foster healthy, diverse and inclusive work-place cultures.
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Facilitation
I design and guide interactive workshops, meetings, and strategy processes that are creative, and build spaces for courageous, meaningful conversations.
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About Me
I believe that there is no one model of a perfect leader – and that leadership is a mindset more than any particular role we have. When we tap into our own authentic selves and strengths and combine that with the drive for change – that is when the magic happens. Sometimes we can do that on our own. But the gift that a facilitator or coach brings is the ability to help us see what we cannot see ourselves because we are too close to a situation to have perspective.
After 20 years working in leadership positions around the world, primarily with nonprofit organizations, I shifted to work full time as a coach and facilitator. I support change in the world by working with leaders and teams to unlock new insights and access new resources.
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I am originally from the UK, and a strong piece of my heart still grows strong roots there. However, for the past 25 years I have lived, worked and learned with leaders, teams and communities around the world including the Balkans, Indonesia, East Africa and South and Central Asia. I currently live in the Pacific Northwest with my two rapidly-growing children and husband. Before setting up my own consulting company I worked for over two decades in international humanitarian development and was most recently Vice President for Strategy and Learning in a large INGO.
I hold an Associate Coaching Certification from the International Coaching Federation and am a certified coach through New Ventures West, USA. I have a Master’s Degree in languages from Oxford University and a Post Graduate Teaching Certificate from Leeds University. I am currently adjunct faculty at New Ventures West and an adjunct instructor at Portland State University.
Renewable, Sustainable, Resilient
Leadership
What if each professional role we took on left us more energized, powerful, and committed than the last one? What if we could find ways to lead that left not only the world and our organizations, but also ourselves in better shape. What if we could also do that for those we manage and lead?
I support leaders to create the change that they are seeking without burning themselves out.
Just as at a global level we are seeking renewable sources of energy, at an individual level we can find ways of working that don’t leave us exhausted and diminished at the end of each day or week or role.
Coaching
My Invitation to Coaching
Coaching is an invitation to see the world differently, to explore questions, challenges, instincts that you know are waiting to be answered. You are already succeeding, otherwise you wouldn’t have got to where you are today. And yet we all find ourselves at times needing something more. Coaching provides a safe space to step into these questions, supported by a guide who can help you navigate through.
To see whether this might be the right time in your life to pick up coaching (for the first time or again) I invite you to consider the following questions:
How have your current ways of showing up in the world helped you? How have they got in your way?
Would a guide alongside enable you to do things you’ve never done before?
Are you open to trying things differently?
What questions are keeping you up at night? Do they excite or scare you? Do you hunger to have space to explore them?
Core Offerings
Executive Leadership & Coaching
Coaching provides leaders with a unique opportunity to press pause on all the activity that their lives and step back to take stock, to explore what really matters to them and to work with a caring professional who is not afraid to ask the questions and reflect the things that others may not be able to. When the timing is right, I have seen how time and time again allows for truly transformational results, often in areas which we weren’t expecting.
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I work with executives and other leaders to:
- Identify and unblock obstacles that are holding them back
- Reflect patterns and potential to support taking leadership to a new level
- Invite new insights so we can be intentional about how we lead
- Explore regenerative ways of leading that support the leader and those they lead to live their fullest lives.
- Seasoned and more recent leaders stepping into new roles
- Individuals looking to create greater alignment between their own purpose and the work they are doing in the world.
- Leaders who are looking to bring their fullest selves to creating change in the world
- Leaders seeking to create a sense of belonging in the world
Reach out to request details on a custom offering and pricing for you or your team.
Team Development
When was the last time that your team came together to talk about itself. To look at where everything is running smoothly, to check in on what could be improved. To make space for some of the more awkward conversations that keep getting put off? Have you made time to collectively agree on what you are trying to achieve and create a shared sense of purpose? When was the last time that someone new came into the team (a client I worked with recently said that every time someone new joins or leaves the team we should assume it is a new team)
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I work with teams using neuroscience based approaches to create space to:
- Create shared expectations and vision
- Have difficult/awkward conversations
- Discuss team norms and boundary setting
- Practice giving and receiving feedback
I work in ways that are interactive and dynamic and create space to practice and agree on and experiment with new ways of doing things. It is a way to unlock places in which we have become stuck.
Team development can work well during retreats, or as a series of conversations built into the regular cadence of the working week. I encourage seeing these as punctuation built into the way a team works rather than one of moments that are fun but get easily forgotten in the flow of the week.
Reach out to request details on a custom offering and pricing for you or your team.
Facilitation
I work with groups and teams ranging from 4-100 to create dialogue and conversation that allow new insights and possibilities to emerge. I am skilled in guiding conversations around difficult and sensitive topics, developing strategy and vision and creating culture and norms for teams to thrive.
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My principles for facilitation revolve around:
- Co-creation with the key stakeholders – I don’t believe in cookie cutter approaches – I design the process in response to the needs of the group and the organization
- Creating a safe space in which everyone is invited to participate
- Processes which are highly interactive and cater to different learning and engagement styles
- Mixing and matching different processes depending on the needs of the group (no one size fits all)
- Creating space to allow for unplanned conversations to happen
- Being ready to pivot when the unexpected happens
- Creativity and fun.
I have 20 years in facilitation, working with teams around the world. My background in strategy development equips me to guide groups through conversations around strategy and direction as well as more abstract, yet equally critical dialogue around culture, values, relationships and team dynamics. I see workshops/gatherings/meetings as pause moments that need to be integrated into the cadence and culture of the organization’s work and flow in order for meaningful change to take place.
Reach out to request details on a custom offering and pricing for you or your team.
Resources
I write regularly on topics and resources that inspire me, disturb me, and invite me to see the world differently.I post them here to invite a conversation with others in my community – whether friends, colleagues, peers or clients. I believe that by entering into dialogue and sharing more of what matters with each other we will become more connected, more resilient and ultimately find better solutions to the world’s challenges. Please read and join me in conversation. I will respond to everyone who writes back.
Feedback That Helps: Five ways to get people to tell you what they really think.
Last year I wrote a blog post on how to get better at receiving feedback, as a counterpoint to all the articles out there that are helping us get better at giving feedback. But there is little more frustrating than building oneself up to asking for feedback, only to...
Mental Agility – Practicing Switching Perspectives
When I was young, one of the ways my father would entertain us during long car rides, was by picking a topic for us to debate. About five minutes into the debate, just as things were starting to get heated, he would suddenly should 'SWITCH!' at which point we would...
What kind of a boss do you want? And have you talked to them about it?
I spend a lot of time supporting leaders develop the skills to become good managers or supervisors. And through these conversations I’ve come to some insights that I wasn’t necessarily expecting: More often than not, people’s experience of being managed is...
