Meet Lucinda Shaw

I started my working life in charities purely by chance when someone I knew asked me to do some voluntary work for what was then the snappily titled The Guys Hospital Cerebral Palsy Appeal. After a while it became One Small Step, which certainly made life easier.

So, unlike many young people today who actively choose fundraising as a career, I fell into it. After a few years I moved to Sense, which was growing at an incredible rate and I was able to develop and learn with it.

I was soon managing a team across the UK and it was this aspect of my work that particularly interested me. I always loved working with people, enabling them to learn and grow and do the best job that they could. I’ve hugely enjoyed working in the voluntary sector and have been inspired by all the work that my and other charities do, but my heart was always with the teams I was a part of and how best I could lead and support them.

After many years in some fantastic organisations, I took myself off the career ladder, got a lovely part-time role at the Stroke Association and trained as a Coach. Again, I stumbled into this while looking for a way of focusing on developing people and teams and as soon as the training started I knew I’d found my happy place.

I now work with people, and teams, who are stuck in some way, have a challenge they don’t know how to crack or who want to make a change in how they work or how their life is going. I work with a lot of brilliant women (men too!), who I often say have forgotten how amazing they are.

What I love about what I do is the fact that it’s sustainable rather than one-off support. In coaching, people figure out their own solutions: they learn about themselves and tap into their strengths and resources to access tools and strategies, which they can use for future challenges.

As one person recently wrote, “Although it's been a few years since our last coaching sessions, I still use the learning from this many years later.”

My many years’ experience in charities large and small means I understand all aspects of working for charities: the great stuff we do as well as the pressures and challenges that can erode our resilience. I’ve done a lot of coaching in the sector, including delivering a large coaching programme for over 30 fundraisers, as well as in the private and public sectors. I’m currently working on a few contracts with the NHS, so am experiencing just how exhausted and overwhelmed people are from frontline to support staff.

On my website I talk about believing in your greatness. This isn’t just some flip line. I know from years of working life, and now in my coaching, that people are truly brilliant but sometimes we lose sight of it because life is hectic and we can lose confidence.

We all do our best work when we feel good about ourselves. I’m committed to supporting anyone who wants to make the time and space to get in touch, perhaps for the first time, with what makes him or her great.