Converge is led by Christina Johnson. Christina is an experienced HR and learning and development professional with a background of nearly twenty years’ in a variety of commercial roles across FMCG, management consulting, banking, market research and professional services. After ten years in generalist HR, two years ago she made the transition into a strategic learning and development role. This reignited Christina’s love of coaching and she formalized her practice by studying for her qualification with the Academy of Executive Coaching before establishing an in-house coaching practice with a mid-tier City law firm. Her work there focused on team culture, talent management, organization design, performance improvement, and promotion and progression for mid-career lawyers.

Christina has undertaken additional study at the Gestalt Centre on organization design, and with Kate Ellis to explore embodied relational yoga therapy and working with the embodied self. She is MBTI qualified, an NLP practitioner, and has completed training with John Lees to develop her approach to career coaching.   In addition, she is completing an Advanced Diploma in Nutrition and Weight Management and has undertaken study with the College of Naturopathic Medicine. Given her background in commercial strategic advisory, interest in holistic systems, and clear commitment to her own ongoing professional development, it is perhaps not surprising that Christina’s approach is grounded in integrative and somatic coaching methodologies. She teaches yoga and loves working one-to-one with clients to help them find integration in their daily lives. Christina plans to study therapeutic yoga to add further breadth to the ways in which she can work with clients. Her approach considers whole person solutions to help you realise your personal ambitions.

Creativity

To really understand where you want to get to, I need to help you articulate that.  This offers the opportunity for us to find interesting ways to excavate some of your stories, and to do that I need to be able to think on my feet and ask you the sorts of questions you may not have come prepared for.  That also requires me to create and hold a safe, supportive space for you so that you know we’re in it together.  Through this process, you’ll reconstruct your ways of seeing yourself using a variety of different tools and techniques; some are tried and tested and others we’ll think up on the hoof to keep things interesting, varied and open.

Effectiveness

I can’t guarantee results – that’s down to you and the work you’re prepared to put in.  But I can guarantee that if you put the work in, and you commit to working with me through the coaching process, change will happen.  It might not be a seismic shift – that might not be what you need – but there might just be the odd change to your thinking.  You can’t change overnight, but you can change perspective and sometimes that new awareness is enough to change beliefs and belief change is what leads to behaviour change.  This is your process, and together we will create something that works for you.

Compassion

Coaching is a highly personal process.  Yes it’s illuminating, transformative, but it can also be really challenging and it’s my job to support you through that effectively.  My commitment is to maintain an open mind at all times, to respond to anything and everything you bring with an open heart and without judgement.  There are no silly questions, wrong answers, or bad decisions.  The brain is far too sophisticated to let that happen.  The law of unintended consequences is the thing that sometimes catches us out but the coaching space is a place to explore all of those in a safe, supportive way with curiosity and intention and to see where we can be more effective in our future actions.

Integrity

Working with intention and integrity sits at the heart of my practice.  I will commit to working with you to achieve your goals, and, in the spirit of enquiry, I may need to question or challenge your intentions, motivations, ambitions, beliefs to make sure I understand fully where you want to get to and ensure we craft and shape the sessions entirely to meet your needs.  Your confidentiality is paramount so that we can both bring our whole selves into the work we do together.

I started working with Christina during a period where my life was undergoing a number of significant changes, during which I desperately wanted to shift from the eleven-year career to which I had been committed, to explore something that I would feel passionate about.  Having spent a number of years thinking about career change, I had some vague areas within which I thought I might like to work, but I didn’t really know how to take them further. I had doubts as to whether I would find anything specific that I would like to do, which I was able to start with minimum training and that I would be able to make enough money from.  I was feeling fairly overwhelmed.

Working with Christina has changed the way I think when I want to achieve a goal. Christina’s style is very structured and it follows a flow that is natural to my own thought processes.  I loved the visualisation aids that she introduced a few sessions in, as working with these helped me to break through barriers by encouraging me to be less logical and more emotional in my responses. They moved me away from focusing on what I thought I should be doing to exploring and engaging with what excites me.

What I appreciated the most about the coaching sessions was that, with Christina’s encouragement, I ended up with a series of practical steps, with realistic deadlines, which I could start taking immediately to work towards my goals.  By coming up with these steps myself, I had complete confidence that they were realistic and tangible, and that left me far more motivated to tackle them than if someone else had advised me to. After only a couple of sessions with Christina, as I crossed each task off my list, I felt a huge sense of progress and realised that I was already on my way to changing my career.

I highly recommend Christina to anyone that is ready to make changes in various areas of their life.

Nia, coaching client

Having played football for 20 years, I have never been one to really cool down or stretch. Exercise and running in general has become more of an effort with muscles being over used and becoming rather tight.

Since starting yoga with Christina I have felt stronger and more relaxed when road running which has allowed me to run greater distances for longer.

I really look forward to my weekly sessions with Christina as she makes it enjoyable and very interesting and I would recommend her classes to anyone.

Scott, 1:1 yoga client