About Jo Lee - The No Stress Success Coach
Hello!
Coach and Coach Supervisor.
Dyspraxic Mum of Two, Lover of Life, Coffee Addict, School Governor, Leicester City Fan, Gardener, Pianist, Master Juggler, Accredited Coach. Not necessarily in that order.
I’m passionate about helping ambitious people with ADHD or other neurodivergent brains achieve the success they want in their work and their lives as a whole – on their own terms, not anyone else’s. So their success makes them happy, not stressed and burned out.
As well as being an experienced, qualified professional coach, I have very much walked the talk as a successful neurodivergent leader. Before becoming a full time coach in 2016, I had a successful 20 year career in marketing, business management and senior leadership that culminated in running a well-known £50 million company while raising my two young daughters… and somehow incorporating a voluntary role as governor at my local primary school into the bargain.
I use that blend of first-hand experience as both leader and of lived neurodiversity, married with my coach’s knowledge of the psychology of success, motivation, change and happiness, to help others achieve that often too elusive combination of professional success and a low-stress, happy work life balance.
I have two daughters, and run my coaching practice from my home office in Leicestershire…although thanks to the wonders of Zoom or Teams, I can meet and work with you wherever you are.
Excuse the photo by the way – I’m more authentically grey these days, so please don’t be shocked when you meet me!
What's it like working with me?
- A down to earth, practical and straight talking approach
- To be challenged and taken out of your comfort zone
- Absolute honesty: about the good, the bad and the ugly
- Unconditional support and belief from me, even when you’re not sure you’d support and believe in yourself
- Solution-focused, evidence-based approaches based in various areas of psychology
- The unexpected, including thought-provoking questions and creative exercises (don’t worry no leotards required!)
- Anything in any way hippy, trendy, woo-woo, wishy-washy or alternative (I’m sorry, if you wait for the Universe to bring it to you, you’ll be waiting a long time)
- To get the results you want if you aren’t prepared to take responsibility and put in the work needed
- That I live a perfect, problem-free, not-had-a-lifelong-battle-with-my-weight kind of life
- An agony aunt, who’ll feed you all the answers to your woes
- A stiff, corporate suited-and-booted executive in high heels
- Perfection. It doesn’t exist.
Before becoming a coach, I built a career over twenty years that started in journalism and moved into marketing and then general business management.
I spent more than a decade as a director at the fabulous retailer Bravissimo, juggling raising my children with the demands of work and a lengthy commute. Seven hundred employees relied on my leadership and decision making and we set ourselves stretching targets.
It was always full-on, often stressful, and I became the proverbial master at burning the candle at both ends. It was intensely rewarding and I loved it.
What I’ve just described wouldn’t have been a recipe for happiness for everyone, but for me it was the right mix.
Thanks to some time with a coach early in my senior management career I worked out how to stop feeling guilty all the time, and I was fortunate to have the support of my husband, my mum, a fantastic childminder, an understanding boss and two kids that thankfully rarely needed time off school. I made it work – my work life balance felt right for me.
Then things changed. Not just one thing, but a number of small things, which together added up to, well, something much bigger.
I realised one day that I was no longer happy. Not just that, I felt trapped. Suddenly, the balance in my life was all wrong for me.
It’s hard to pinpoint an actual moment or single thing that tipped that balance, but I came to realise with an odd mixture of sadness, terror and relief that, at the heart of it all, I no longer loved my job (and what it took to be good at my job) enough any more to make it worth what I was giving up.
I wasn’t just tired, I was exhausted. I was several stones overweight and eating junk food on the run on a regular basis.
The combination of stress, constant juggling and challenge that had brought me such excitement, happiness and success for a decade or more suddenly felt, well, just stressful and overwhelming. I was totally burnt out.
I recognised I had to make a change of some kind.
Working out what to do was one of the hardest and most terrifying decisions I have ever made.
I left the world of corporate employment and retrained as a coach.
Since 2016 I have coached full time, and have amassed more than 3500 hours of coaching experience. My passion, as a coach, has always been to help ambitious people take responsibility for their career and personal happiness, and find a way to balance the demands of professional success with their (not unreasonable) desire to be present in their own lives.
I began working with neurodivergent clients in 2018. I did some additional specialist training and discovered the dyspraxia I’d always known I had was actually a neurodivergent condition. Suddenly, the challenges I’d faced that had led to my burning out made sense in a whole new way!
Since then, I’ve helped hundreds of people of a variety of neurotypes (including some neurotypical people!) make changes and decisions in their careers and lives to help them achieve the balance they want. And along the way I’ve developed particular interests in helping people who are struggling with Imposter Syndrome and work-based stress and anxiety.
Resonate? I’d love to hear from you.
My Promise To You
- Honesty and Integrity
- Respect
- Positivity
- Flexibility
- Creativity
- Challenge and Bravery
- An open mind
How My Coachees Describe Me
- Very easy to talk to
- Radiates a can-do attitude
- Calm, caring and inquisitive
- An amazing ability to put you instantly at ease
- Really approachable and non-judgemental
- Gentle but challenging
What My Best Friend Says
“You are always a glass half full kinda girl, honest and kind. I know you’ll always see the positive in any problem. You are just vibrant”
