About Hazel
I’m Hazel, a business psychologist and executive coach who has spent almost three decades working with human behaviour and complex change. I’m driven to find a better way to be in business, combining a business head with a social heart. In the process, I’ve become fascinated with two things – complex systems and endings.
Like many advisors, I’ve spent most of my career behind the scenes. A colleague and I founded a wonderful firm of business psychologists in 1999. Since then, I have had the privilege to be a visiting lecturer in leadership for Manchester University, joined international research projects, and have led senior management and board development programmes for some of the world’s most recognisable organisations. I have coached across Whitehall, worked in three of the four UK parliaments, working with some amazing people.
Learning is a lifelong passion, from initially studying Engineering, through a business studies degree to a degree in psychology with a post grad diploma in management learning. I have since layered many skills from coaching, assessment, emotional intelligence, conversational intelligence to systemic coaching and family systems and even couples counselling.
I like understanding how things work – and I can never know enough! I research, read, and now I’m starting to write and share what I’ve learned.
My fascination in systems grew from seeing that everything is connected. The past shows up in the present, including other family members’ stuff. At the heart of system dynamics is the one system you cannot leave – your family. The picture is my dad with his brothers and sisters, and I love being part of a big, sometimes messy family.
Invisible threads are the strongest ties.
Nietzsche
A fascination with endings comes from surviving three near fatal accidents, my business partnership ending, two divorces (I’m still married to Ian, third time lucky!) and not being able to have children following brain surgery which left me no longer able-bodied.
The eldest of three, my siblings are brilliant in different ways, my parents are still going – just not together – and mum is towards the end of a less than fair fight with dementia.
Right now, I’m a happy auntie, godmother and cat mum to Milo and Zac – I just walk with a stick, and, like many people with a chronic condition, have good days and not great days. Very little slows me down though.
I’ve developed a particular set of skills along the way, dealing with the emotional and messy parts of life – which hold no fear for me, and helps my work. I recognise that the cost of passing on life is high, so I won’t waste it doing things that don’t really matter.
I believe that a more socially connected, fair and kind world, where people can handle whatever life serves up and no one feels alone, is worth spending the rest of my working life on.
So that’s my purpose.
In the spirit of not just sharing my good bits – my weaknesses are a tendency to swear when excited, and I am terrible at spelling and darts. As an ADHD’er, my timekeeping is not always perfect, but the creativity usually is.
My philosophy is straightforward – I will be fair, candid and kind and I ask the same in return.
