Coaching people has given me confidence to try new things

A BACKGROUND in chemical engineering and management consulting helped to forge the right ingredients for a local entrepreneur to establish a career coaching initiative.

Gráinne McDonagh set up Fugacity Coaching in January this year, which provides one-to-one and group coaching with client teams.

Her own career journey has been quite eventful, having previously lived and worked in London and Brussels, she returned to Dublin for further education at UCD Smurfit School for a Diploma in Business and Executive Coaching.

“It was transformative. I learned how to coach but I also learned about myself and what makes me tick. The best bit was having the opportunity to coach some wonderful people as I was training. And so I eventually came back to the psychology-related career that I’d decided not to pursue in university,” said Gráinne.

The name Fugacity itself is a tip to her background – an engineering term about ‘escape’ or as Gráinne sees it, a nice parallel with coaching to “look at the bigger picture of your career, or escaping a pattern of behaviour or moving to your ideal role or job.”

Gráinne almost studied psychology at university but changed to engineering at the last minute.

“Maybe a little bit on a whim – having talked to a lecturer in Trinity who reminded me that psychology was not an exact science. That decision shaped my career but I never stopped being interested in people and how their minds work.

“I became a chemical engineer and worked in development and then in design consulting in the biopharmaceutical industry. But something was calling to me about working in other industries so I made the leap to management consulting and spent more than a decade working on great projects with a variety of clients between the UK and Ireland, working for Capgemini and Accenture respectively.”

Being coached herself a few years ago provided some unexpected personal insight and Gráinne learned that the favourite part of her week was talking to colleagues in the team about their roles, their careers and how to navigate them.

“My ideal coachee is someone who is maybe mid-career and trying to figure out what to do next – whether that’s about figuring out how to find your voice in work, or find the right role in an organisation, or about achieving the right balance between work and personal life, or maybe people contemplating a bigger change.

“There’s also something about the knock-on effects of figuring out what you want out of life because that clarity can improve how you feel and your outlook on life. From my own experience of coaching it has opened up new ideas (that I didn’t even know I had) and given me confidence to try new things – such as setting up my own business but also going back to my artistic side, which I try to use with my coaches,” said Gráinne.

Coaching circles are facilitated by a trained coach who guides the team in how to have coaching conversations. So the team will walk away with some coaching skills. The other benefit is that it provides a space for a team to cooperate, bond and learn from each other outside of project work.

“I found Gráinne to be a fantastic business coach. I worked with her over a 6-month period, meeting on zoom and face to face once a month.

Gráinne listened intently to everything I discussed about trying to find the best work life balance and how to better navigate our family run business as I pursued a second career.

She offered great advice and practical tools that I implemented and continue to use to this day, giving me great clarity on my role and future in the family business, helping me with my new venture and how to juggle all the different hats I wear, which resulted in a better, more productive, work life balance.

I would highly recommend Gráinne as a coach for both professional or personal challenges you are facing”. – Emma Kennedy MD The Echo Newspaper.

To learn more visit fugacitycoaching.