Humanity at a threshold – working with deep relationships, and the insights of eastern culture

Helen Sieroda is a GameShift Thinking Partner.

She’s one of the most experienced coaches we know. Helen works on a lot of our coaching assignments, particularly where the Thinking Partner work calls for more sustained personal development.

Helen loves helping people to live more of their full potential. “I noticed this very early in my career in the motor trade”, Helen says, “I saw some people languishing and I wanted to make a difference”. This took Helen into her training in psychotherapy, where she later went on to be a trainer of other therapists. Big stage events are not Helen’s arena. ”I make my impact in the world by working at the individual level” Helen says, “It’s not grandiose work, it moves by paying attention to the small things”.

Helen says “small things”, but she’s been responsible for some big things happening. She played her role in nurturing the path of transpersonal psychotherapy training in the UK. In recent years she’s taken her skills into the coaching world, founding a highly regarded  school of coach training, Wise Goose. Alongside that, she’s maintained her international work – particularly in Sweden and the Nordic region where she’s regularly worked as a trainer and coach for 25 years.

There’s a silent confidence in Helen’s work, she sees this as work where humility matters: “there are no rounds of applause, but you do see the ripples of the work spread into the world”.

This is where you can see Helen’s training. Many years ago she became interested in Taoism and took up Tai Chi. She learned Mandarin. She studied Buddhism under Thich Nhat Hahn. Her awareness of the flow of energy running through all of life makes her a trusted Thinking Partner able to help leaders inquire into the systems they are part of, even in the most turbulent of conditions.

Helen is an outstanding person to have at your side in thinking about the relationship of you work, your organisation, and the wider living world. “These are uncertain times”, Helen says, and she doesn’t just mean the pandemic or trade realignment. “Humanity is at a threshold, and we genuinely do not know what will happen now. These are such important times. Small actions we take, in our teams and organisations, really matter”.

Helen quotes Thomas Berry; “We set out to create a wonder world, and we created a waste world”. Helen helps people to pay attention to the relationships between their, often excellent and ambitious intentions and the small actions and patterns that can undo the good work. “It’s so easy”, she says, “for things to go wrong, unless we pay close attention to the patterns, sensitive to the wider context of our actions, guided by care for the impact of small gestures”.

Helen is a generous and wise Thinking Partner, helping people to understand things that previously they simply hadn’t seen or understood. She is in demand as a top-level executive coach, and as a developer of coaching cultures across organisations. Her skills go beyond formal coaching roles. She is a wise presence in times of change, spotting patterns and attending to the systemic consequences of actions. If you are embarking on a change process, or stepping into new action, perhaps having Helen on your side will be exactly what you need.

GameShift. Your Thinking Partner.