A bit about me
Prior to setting up my coaching business, I spent much of my 20-year career in the executive search industry, specialising in executive and non-executive leadership appointments in the not for profit and public sectors. Helping leaders and emerging leaders to secure roles that play to their strengths and that allow them to make a positive impact in their organisations and the wider world has always motivated me. I love seeing people fulfil their potential and find success, whatever that means to them.
Having relished the opportunity to get involved in career transition coaching programmes and workshops for people facing redundancy, changing careers or building portfolio careers in addition to the informal career coaching elements of my work, I embarked on my coaching certification several years ago with a leading training school. Now an ICF credentialled and career and leadership coach, I support leaders and emerging leaders on a daily basis in my business: Joanna Thornton Coaching.
Like many of the clients I support, I have experienced periods of transition in my own career. Adjusting to being a working parent and returning to my demanding, fast-paced role recruitment role on a part time contract after the birth of my first child was a steep learning curve, which taught me a lot. I put myself under a lot of pressure to manage things by being ruthlessly efficient, priding myself on delivering as much in three or four days as I had on a five day contract.
There was a flaw in this plan from a wellbeing perspective and I felt it starting to bite after my second maternity leave when I began questioning the long-term sustainability of the way I was living and working. I realised that some of the drive and determination that had made me successful in my earlier career was holding me back from the life I really wanted to live. I discovered the power of coaching in my own life as I worked with my own coach to identify my strengths, set some boundaries and think about how I wanted my own career to develop over the coming years.
Other professional transition points include changing my focus from interim leadership recruitment to executive search, followed by my move into coaching several years later.
When I’m not working, I'm generally to be found enjoying the chaos and fun of family life, spending time with friends, going to yoga classes or strolling in the green spaces near me. On the very rare occasions I have a quiet house all to myself, you will find me sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee and a good book.