Joy Harcup

Joy is an executive coach with over 10 years’ experience of coaching senior leaders, working in organisations undergoing transition. She previously held a senior management position at an international professional services firm. Her coaching clients include public sector organisations such as top Leaders in the NHS, Home Office, HM Treasury, British Council and, in the private sector, firms such as Royal Mail PLC, Societe Generale, RBS, CBRE, Linklaters LLP, Norton Rose LLP and Baker McKenzie LLP. Joy is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coach Federation (ICF), the largest Global coaching professional body, that promotes best practice in coaching and has over 20,000 members worldwide. As a member of the Global ICF Ethics Review Committee, Joy has an in-depth Global and UK perspective on ethics and coaching standards. She is also the current President 2015 of the UK ICF Chapter and was previously, for 4 years, the UK ICF Director of Credentialing and Ethics. She has extensive coaching and training experience and she has also co-authored academic coaching research, published in Management Learning, and based on her MBA (Distinction). This research covers how coaching individual leaders/managers leads to organisational learning.

Career background

Her previous roles include co-founding a training and consultancy partnership that focused on developing leaders and managers in private and public sector companies and as a consultant to head up learning and development for the Bermudian Civil Service. She joined the UK Legal Services Commission in 2000 where she became Head of Learning and Development, a senior member of the HR team responsible for setting direction and delivering strategic leadership development, talent managing and coaching solutions to create a high performance organisation. Over the last 10 years she has shared her experience with a number of public sector departments including the MoJ, Department of Health and DFID to help establish coaching cultures. She has trained over 2000 managers and leaders in coaching skills, resulting in improved personal and team effectiveness, greater staff engagement and a coaching approach to managing performance.

Coaching practice

With over 20 years’ service delivery/ management experience, Joy initially qualified as a lawyer. She subsequently moved early in her career into management, at a dynamic award-winning international professional services firm. Ultimately she had strategic and management responsibility as head of a function, reporting to the Board. In this role she had day-to-day involvement in managing service delivery and led a team involved in the firm’s integration following a merger and strategic review. Joy also has personal Board/leadership experience as a Chair and a Director of organizations in the not-for-profit sector.

Coaching practice and coach training

Since running her own executive coaching practice, Joy specialises in coaching leaders to implement strategic change in their organisation and coaching individuals who are undergoing a change of career or role (eg, through promotion/ lateral hire/ retirement). Clients comment that Joy’s coaching style is approachable, analytical, perceptive/intuitive and supportive, whilst being challenging – with a dash of humour! She has coached leaders in many different sectors including financial services, legal and professional services, government departments and agencies, transport/logistics, education/research, new media and the not for profit sector. She has over 20 years’ experience in the design and delivery of training including for internal coaches. She has been a speaker, in the UK and internationally, at coaching and learning and development conferences and webinars and is the author of articles in this area. She has represented the ICF on Government and coaching industry committees in the UK, including the Learning Skills and Improvement Service: Coaching and Mentoring Panel, setting national standards in coaching, and the Coaching Bodies Round Table.

Professional qualifications / affiliations

  • Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coach Federation
  • Graduate of the Advanced Corporate Coaching Programme of Coach U Inc
  • Certificate in the Psychology of Coaching; CIPD
  • Certificate in Systemic Team Coaching
  • Certificate in Advanced Facilitation Skills
  • MBA (Distinction), Bath University
  • LLB (2:1) and Solicitors’ Professional Examination
  • Certified in Leadership EQ-i (measuring emotional intelligence in leaders) and MTQ48 (assessing mental toughness)
  • Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
  • Member of Bath University Change Management Forum

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