We help organisations turn new and emerging managers into confident, high-impact people leaders through coaching and interactive training.
We help organisations turn new and emerging managers into confident, high-impact people leaders through coaching and interactive training.
Born from a bold vision in 2000, Big Life Solutions exists to help people and businesses thrive.
We believe adaptability, resilience, and purpose-driven leadership are the keys to long-term success for individuals, teams, and organisations.
From upskilling new managers to building resilient leaders, Big Life Solutions combines business expertise with applied Positive Psychology to help people flourish at work and in life.
Upskilling new and emerging managers to lead people with confidence and impact.
Personalised coaching for professionals to build resilience, confidence, and clarity.
Engaging, practical sessions on resilience, wellbeing, and leadership.
Andy combines commercial expertise as a Chartered Accountant with applied coaching psychology. As an ICF Accredited Coach with a background in positive psychology and project management, he bridges the gap between business performance and people development.
PGCert in Positive Psychology & Coaching Psychology |
Certified Strengthscope® Practitioner | Accredited Spotlight Personality Practitioner | Certified Wellbeing Ambassador |
PRINCE2 Certified Project Manager | ICAEW ACA Chartered Accountant | ICF Accredited Coach
The ability to identify my strengths and weaknesses in relation to both my business partners and my clients in such a clear way has been transformative. The combination of insightful analysis and personal coaching is a winning combination.
The assessment and subsequent sessions with Andy provided insights into my character and preferences that has allowed me to gain a much more focused and deeper understanding of my strengths and which behavioural styles I need to actively engage with to enhance my performance and relationships with others.
I was able to discuss and understand positive shifts I could make in my behaviour to help in more complex and difficult situations across both my professional and personal life. The changes I have been able to make have improved my efficiency and reduced the effect of anxiety and doubt in situations where I would previously have felt uncomfortable.
Coaching with Andy was a gamechanger. It gave me a new perspective from which to consider my strengths.
In particular, I benefitted so much from memorising a few simple ‘mantras’ and applying a few straightforward strategies to encourage me to approach decisions from a different angle and perspective. It has been incredibly useful in helping me to lead in a more rounded and balanced way.
Having Andy guide me through the process provided a great opportunity to firstly recognise what my strengths and my weaknesses are, and how I lean on different response mechanisms in different environments and situations.
Having a deeper understanding of key drivers within, provided me the knowledge to reflect and activity consider my presence and approach and how the different elements of behaviour and attributes impact outcomes.
Dissecting the preferences I have for behaviour and mindset, and really taking the time to understand how this plays out on a day-to-day basis is so beneficial to every avenue of life. I was able to gain a deep understanding of why I behave, react and function in the way I do, which in turn enables me to move mindfully through spaces, whether this be work or personal life.
Andy was amazing at delivering this insight, allowing time and space to reflect on all the important elements of mindset and behaviour. I was able to better understand how my presence, beliefs and attributes impact a space. Being able to move forward with more awareness has helped me to better navigate how I communicate, deliver and perform.
Ultimately becoming more attuned with oneself has allowed me to get more out of myself and my team.
The content of the programs is outstanding. What you learn is relevant, practical, and easy to understand and implement, which makes the impact all the more real and long lasting.
One particular area that stands out for me is the quality of the content. It’s well researched, pragmatic and effective. That alone is a rarity in an industry awash with inferior content.
As a coach myself its this level of impact and quality I expect to deliver to my clients to enable them to achieve sustained change in their lives.
I was quite sceptical initially, as I’ve used lots of psychometrics and coaching tools in the past with very limited benefit. I have to say however I found the process Andy used, and the sessions we had, incredibly helpful.
The sessions gave me deeper insight into the narrative I tell myself on how I interact with the people and world around me, and revealed areas where things may not be as clearcut as I tell myself.
I had a number of “aha” moments during the sessions and the whole process has really helped me to take a fresh look at areas in my life where I’d like to remove some of the cognitive dissonance and bring greater harmony and self-acceptance to who I am and how I show up in the world.
It was so interesting to see the inner tensions going on inside of me & learn how to help my heart and mind align so that I can move forward in life.
Through this process I was able to see outside of myself and look at challenges in my life more objectively. It was an empowering experience which gave me motivation to move forward with authenticity.
Employees who are stressed take 2x more sick days than those who are not. Stressed employees are 2.6x more likely to leave their job. In the region of 17.9 million working days are lost to work-related stress, depression or anxiety every year. Poor mental health costs UK employers an estimated £56 billion annually.
But how much do you know about the causes of stress? Or how it affects the mind and body? Or what you can do to help yourself and your team manage the stress you experience, so those stats don’t become your personal and business reality?
Download a free copy of my book, Stress Uncovered and learn how to recognise, understand, tame, and manage stress.
Great question. While there are some similarities, the differences are important to recognise.
Training is about learning specific knowledge, skills, or processes. It typically follows a structured curriculum where an expert (the trainer) shares information with a group (the students), teaching them ‘how to’ do something.
Training is ideal when you want to build foundational knowledge or learn established procedures.
Coaching, on the other hand, is a more personalised, exploratory process. Rather than providing answers, a coach asks powerful questions that help you discover your own solutions.
Typically, a coach will work one-on-one or with small groups to help individuals unlock their potential and overcome specific challenges.
The fundamental difference between someone wearing a coaching hat and someone wearing a training hat is that a coach believes that you already have the answers within you – their role is to help you uncover them, while a trainer recognises that they have the answers you are looking for and their job is to share them with you and ensure you understand them.
Using a driving analogy, while training teaches you how to drive, coaching helps you decide where you want to go and the best route for you to take.
Both approaches have their place in professional development. Training is excellent for building core skills and knowledge, while coaching helps you apply that knowledge to your unique situation and challenges.
Training provides the tools; coaching helps you master using them in your specific context.
The fact that training and coaching can work so effectively together is why I offer the chance to combine both approaches – using training to establish foundational knowledge and coaching to support implementation and overcome individual (and organisational) barriers to success.
Absolutely. There is a group option for coaching and all the training programmes are delivered in a group format.
Each coaching programme is delivered on a one-to-one basis, but I also offer interactive Team Days, which are based on the output from the psychometrics used as part of the programme you chose. These build on the individual learning and insights and are aimed at helping teams apply their individual gains at a team and organisation level.
When it comes to the training programmes, these are always in a group setting, which can either be exclusively for you and the group you put together (for example your senior leaders, your whole organisation, your networking group etc.).
Or, you can join an open group where you attend with people from all over the world and all different sectors, which offers a great networking opportunity and a chance to engage with the perspectives and knowledge those other people bring that you may not otherwise encounter
In the main, coaching sessions are delivered online, although it is possible to have sessions delivered offline if that is preferable. Most people and organisations seem to prefer to have their sessions online, however, stating that it makes them less likely to have a detrimental impact on workloads and capacity as you and your team can schedule sessions at times to suit you.
If you take the team day option with your coaching programme, though, these are always delivered offline and face-to-face.
Training sessions are delivered online, too, which allows attendees to log in from wherever they may be. However, sessions happen at set times, so there is slightly less flexibility in terms of scheduling.
That said, if you are booking a programme for exclusive delivery (e.g. just to participants from your organisation) I will always work with you to ensure sessions are schedules at a frequency and at times that work for you.
All training programmes are delivered ‘live’ online. Each session is held via a Zoom Session, which allows active participation, enabling attendees to interact with me and each other.
Sessions are recorded and you have lifetime access to the recordings of your (and only your) group, enabling you to revisit topics as you need to. This also means that if you miss a session, you can still access the learning.
Each coaching programme uses a range of psychometric personality profiling tools, each of which has a coached debrief. Those sessions tend to be around 2-hours long. Once we move into actual coaching, however, the sessions are 60 minutes each.
Training programme sessions are scheduled at 2-hours each, but I always stay online for at least 30 minutes after the session officially ends so that you get chance to ask questions and, if you want to, network and share thoughts and insights from the session with other people in your group.
Absolutely. I always make myself available via email, so if you have questions or want to bounce ideas off me, all you need to do is drop me a line.
You also have lifetime access to all of the tools and resources linked to whichever programmes you have completed, so you will always be able to tap into those as and when you need to. And, periodically, I add new tools to the library, so you will also benefit from having access to those.
The short answer is “No.” However, while I have never been asked to provide a refund, I would treat every case on its own merits should that scenario ever arise.
The reason I have that policy is that I always engage with you before anyone signs on the dotted line and before any money changes hands. That enables us to get super-clear on what you want to achieve and how we will work together to deliver those outcomes.
This means that, unlike where you just take a punt at an online course that sounds OK only to discover it wasn’t what you thought, neither of us is going into the relationship blind = you have plenty of opportunity to explore what I am offering and whether it is a good fit for you (and, indeed, whether I am a good fit for you and your organisation).
That said, as an ICF (International Coaching Federation) accredited coach, I have signed up to the Global Code of Ethics for Coaching, so if ever a situation should arise where you were unhappy and wanted to explore a refund, we would have that conversation and be guided by what is set out in that code (you can see a copy of it here: https://coachingfederation.org/ethics/code-of-ethics).
FAQs are great, but chances are you’ve got more questions than I’ve covered here, so feel free to use the form here to drop me a line and ask away.