Coaching Story of Positive Success – Irial O’Farrell

Would you like to hear a story… a coaching story of positive success?

We’re often asked. What do graduates of the Executive and Life Coaching Diploma do afterwards?
Where do they use their coaching?
How do they apply their skills and knowledge in self-coaching and in their work with others?

Here is our second story – coaching story of positive success

Irial O’Farrell needed a change in her professional life, but it took a major change in her personal life for her to realize that something was missing.  While she was on maternity leave and facing going back to work at her company, she suddenly realized that she needed to do something different.  And thus her quest for professional development began.

The Corporate Sector

Irial already had extensive experience in the corporate world, having worked in the financial services field in the U.S., she gradually worked her way up to the operations manager position.  As a manager, she noticed that a major component of her success was how well-developed her team was.  She was always keenly aware of how important training and assimilating knowledge was to the overall success of the company.

In 1999 she moved back to Ireland, working again as an operations manager and then moving into training.  A year later, she joined the leading funds company in Ireland as the training manager, staying there for six years.  She started in technical training there and moved to management development.  During her time there, she noticed that some managers she trained grew by leaps and bounds, while others did not.  At that time, she fully began to realize that there was a step missing in the training process.  She felt it was important to work with managers on a one-on-one basis and help them overcome their fears of managing differently.  Coaching was the missing part of the equation.

The Birth of an Idea

Irial felt that the next logical step for her was to be able to develop effective management and leadership skills within her company, so she began to look into coaching diploma courses.  But what started out as a goal of professional improvement gradually began to turn to a goal of creating her own coaching business.  While taking the course, the idea for her own business, Evolution Consulting, was born.  Having her own coaching business enabled her to work with both individual and teams in a coaching context.

Since gaining her coaching skills, Irial says that she’s able to read people and various situations better.  “Personally, I am much better able to see more options and solutions to situations than I would have previously seen,” Irial says.  “Professionally, I am better able to read the ‘human condition’ and, as a result, I am able to hone in on the real issues my clients are dealing with, help them understand them, and see them grow as a result.”

Irial says one of her big wins was when she was working with a team leader. They felt like an individual contributor rather than someone managing the team. Coaching helped the client to become a leader and develop true leadership skills, with the team and across the organisation.

The Challenges

Of course just like anything else, there are certainly challenges in the coaching field.  For Irial, the challenge is setting aside the one thing she finds most important—at least for now.  “As a business owner, the main challenge is overcoming the resistance to spend money on leadership development during a recession, even if there is a huge need for leadership development,” she said.