A decade of providing leadership development support

Certified Executive Coach Amanda Reynolds established Blend Associates 10 years ago this spring. Here, she explains how they have provided leadership development support to all sorts of organisations – from the NHS to charities in New York – over the past decade

Ten years ago, I established Blend Associates Ltd.

We provide executive coaching and leadership development support across the NHS, education, local government, charity and the private sector and we offer a range of supporting tools and Psychometrics to embed our offers.

The Blend coaching faculty was created in March 2020 to support leaders in healthcare, education and not for profit who were facing the unprecedented challenge of responding to the pandemic. As I worked with the senior leadership teams of the UK and New York City, I became aware of a huge leadership challenge emerging and limited support for those leaders who would be rushing towards the pandemic. 

I’m particularly proud that we delivered that service at cost. On the back of that service, the faculty was established to offer high quality executive coaching online to leaders and their teams more widely. Schools went to remote learning, payroll went to kitchen tables, and hospitals set up multiple ITUs.

Blend has grown rapidly over the last four years. We now have 30+ executive coaches and a supporting office team of nine. All our coaches bring with them a wealth of experience and depth of knowledge in Executive Coaching, hold executive coaching certifications, have completed hundreds of hours of executive coaching with individuals and teams and offer a breadth of experience. 

I’m particularly proud to be headquartered in Norwich. I was born and raised in Norwich, then went off on my career but came back again in 2000. Blend is a member of Buy Local Norfolk, and we use local suppliers as our first choice. I think Norwich is a great place to live and to grow and expand a business.

What led you to setting up Blend and what were you doing before?

I turned 57 last month so quite a lot! The two most significant jobs I had before I set up Blend was holding the position as a Senior Civil Servant for the Department of Health where I ran policy support. All government policy that was developed in Whitehall then had to be implemented locally. I had a large team, supporting local systems to deliver those policies and support local authorities that were challenged.

My time was split between Norwich, Cambridge and London. In the three years immediately before I set up Blend, I was an Executive Director on a large NHS board providing mental health and community services. My role was policy and strategy and working with other organisations. I set up Blend when I left full time employment, and I completed my Masters in Coaching.

What is Blend and how can it help healthcare leaders and others working in high stress environments?

Great question! Blend is now a much bigger organisation than it was 10 years ago. Prior to the pandemic, I had two or three coaches working with me as associates and what it became at the beginning of the pandemic was a very proactive and responsive executive coaching service to NHS leaders under phenomenal pressure.

Our coaches are all professionally qualified. They have the correct qualifications, and they have to be certified by a coaching body. That’s usually the European Mentoring and Coaching Council or the International Coach Federation. They all work to a professional code of conduct, and they have regular professional supervision and continuing development provided through Blend.

I describe Blend and our core staff as holding this beautiful big pot in which all our amazing coaches float. Our core staff support the coaches with all the stuff to get them in the room with clients. Most executive coaches are Sole Traders or Sole Directors in limited companies, and it can be quite lonely. When you want to spend your life coaching, you want to coach, you don’t want to spend your time on the bigger business aspects. We are also able to scale up what our coaches can offer. A coach may be interested in working with a client, but they may only want to do 20% of the contract. We can offer them the opportunity to work with other amazing coaches from our faculty so we can cover the whole contract.

Where are you based?

Although we’re based in Norwich, we are a 95% virtual company which enables us to work all over the UK and internationally. We are currently providing services in Scotland, Wales, the Midlands, London and the East of England. We also work in New York City which is very exciting – the energy is great. We work with a couple of clients there – The British International School of Manhattan and St. George’s Society, the oldest British charity in the US, providing a social work service to expats and commonwealth citizens who are pensioners and suffering pensioner poverty.

Several of our coaches worked with the School last year, providing psychometrics, one-to-one coaching, and leadership development webinars for their aspiring teacher leader program. Our one-to-one coaching and psychometrics remain virtual because that’s the most cost effective and accessible way to deliver them.

How have you celebrated 10 years in business?

Cake has been involved! We arranged a team meeting where the core staff all got together in person where we enjoyed a very nice cake from a local vegan baker. This also gave us the opportunity to have some individual and team photographs taken with local photographer Mary Doggett, because we’re going to be refreshing our website this year. We have also celebrated with our clients by offering a special 10% discount to existing or new clients for one-to-one coaching.