Role: Executive Coach And Mentor
Company: Workplace Solutions
Track Record:
‘Powerful coaching results in clarity of thought and commitment to taking action and achieving progress,’ says Alana.
What does your job involve?
I provide a portfolio of services providing valuable and effective solutions to work-place challenges.
I work as an executive coach and mentor, independent workplace investigator, and provide mediation and training services. My service provision is focused on providing solutions, building capacity, and supporting organisations and individuals to achieve.
What qualities do you need to do your job successfully?
My job is very people focused. I am energised by working with others and I think that is key to success in what I do.
Coaching and mentoring is based on building a good rapport and being fully engaged in the provision of both support and challenge in a one-to-one setting.
Training involves a lot of preparation, but its delivery is all about sparking and holding the interest and will to learn. Mediation is also all about the parties involved, exploring and understanding their expectations and needs and weaving a way to enable them to achieve an agreed resolution of their dispute.
The conduct of a workplace investigation typically involves undertaking a range of formal interviews and reviewing relevant documents, prior to drafting a report on findings.
What does your job entail?
There are a number of stands to the services I provide.
The executive coaching provides leaders with a safe environment for development.
Through a series of one-to-one confidential conversations, coaching facilitates the exploration, testing and evaluation of ideas, options and possible solutions. As coach, I don’t provide the answers. I support and challenge the thinking process enabling the individual to find their way forward.
Powerful coaching results in clarity of thought and commitment to taking action and achieving progress.
Training covers a broad range of learning models but I most enjoy lively, interactive sessions. Topics frequently addressed range from dignity at work, handling disciplinary matters or conducting an investigation.
Delivering training on legal issues often means comprehensive reference materials need to be provided but they will be forgotten about if the attendees are not actively engaged during the session.
Workplace mediation is a useful tool for the early resolution of disputes which could otherwise lead to long-term absences, poor morale and productivity and costly litigation.
I also offer mediation services to resolve disputes between employers and individual employees or former employees and between business partners.
I also undertake independent investigations in a wide range of workplace situations, such as in the context of disciplinary, grievance, harassment or whistle-blowing allegations, external complaints and reviews of operational issues of concern.
Employers often face difficulty, or de-feat, in employment tribunals due to the inadequacy, or apparent lack of impartiality, of the internal investigation.
Is it 9-5?
No. My hours vary greatly from day to day and week to week.
How did you get into this line of work?
After some 20 years practising as a solic-itor specialising in employment law, I changed direction as I felt a need for change and wanted to offer a fresh and positive approach to workplace challenges. Often the litigation process is destructive and unproductive in the context of workplace relations.
Alternative strategies are required to support success in dealing with the complexities, pressures and need to evolve in today’s work environment.
Outline your career to date?
I worked on a part-time basis whilst at school and university but my first post graduate job was as a lecturer in jurisprudence at Queen’s University Belfast.
I worked at C&H Jefferson Solicitors whilst undertaking my apprenticeship as a solicitor and remained there specialis-ing in employment law for almost eight years. I then established, and grew, my own niche employment law practice prior to merging to establish Jones Cassidy Jones Solicitors.
I left my role as senior partner in that practice last year so I am still buzzing with the excitement of establishing Alana Jones Workplace Solutions, offering new services built upon the depth and breadth of my previous experience in the employment/HR arena.
Tell us about your career/ training?
I studied law at Queen’s University Belfast and prolonged student life by staying on to complete my Masters in human rights and discrimination law.
After a spell as a law lecturer and then working in a solicitors’ office, I gained my Certificate in Professional Legal Studies, the vocational qualification for practising as a solicitor.
More recently I have undertaken training as a mediator and at present I am in the midst of the Institute of Leadership and Management Level 7 Certificate in executive coaching and mentoring.
I’m a true believer in lifelong learning!
What do you like most about your job?
I like working with people and enjoy the positivity of building capacity, facilitating the development of individuals and supporting organisational change.
Where is the most interesting place your job has taken you?
Sadly nowhere tropical. The committee room of a certain working man’s club comes to mind.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I have too many interests for the time available! I love spending time with our two dogs.
I am a very keen walker, preferably up mountains, and really enjoy baking.
Tell us something interesting about yourself
I have completed a number of far-flung treks as charity raisers. I have trekked in Cuba, Costa Rica, Borneo and Cambodia. It’s really addictive and I am already planning next autumn’s adventure.
Who has inspired you most in your life?
The single most important influence in my life and career was my dad. He was a real gentleman, which is a lesson in itself. I inherited his love for adventure. It was my dad who told me that there was no point complaining about a situation if I was not prepared to change it myself.