Lorienne was recommended to me by the CEO of our company. As the Managing Director I found that most of our senior executives were not growing in the business as they should and as such I decided we should look at external coaching for development purposes. I too signed up for individual coaching and have found that this was the best training investment that the business had made in its 21 year history.

I would recommend coaching for all Managers and Business Leaders as it helps to put issues into perspective and gives you a professional external opinion with different outcomes to evaluate. It teaches and coaches you to behave differently, to look beyond the obvious and to keep an open mind.

As a business woman, Lorienne has an excellent grasp of the corporate world and the issues that business leaders and managers have to content with on a daily basis. She guides you in a professional manner to discuss these problem areas and to identify within yourself which tasks you shy away from and why. She teaches you techniques to change your behaviour to better master these areas that require attention and coaches you on the outcomes as you practice these techniques.
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She is a pleasure to have as a coach and I would recommend her highly for any business, professional or life coaching.

 

Lorienne is just a superb Executive and Life Coach.
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She draws knowledge and insights from many different sources in an effort to find an approach that resonates with the client – definitely not a cookie-cutter approach. She is a real ‘people person’ and makes one feel really comfortable to work with her, but she can also push one to achieve tough goals and deal with uncomfortable issues. She does not shy away from prodding and poking to help you face your demons, and face yourself, head on. I think she gets the balance between the carrot and the stick just right.
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I have gained a tremendous understanding of myself and how and why I have made certain life and work choices and how I can make better choices going forward. She is a wonderful Life Coach and I’m certain that she could guide anyone to get more out of themselves and their lives.

It was a real joy having Lorienne as my Executive Coach and I look forward to working again with her in future.

 

Lorienne operates with the highest integrity and has a wonderfully authentic prescence when working with clients. I have rarely worked with anyone as meticulous, conscientious and effective as Lorienne. She is flexible and gifted in her ability to create deep, lasting results in the lives of her clients.​

Her skills an knowledge leave me in no doubt of her exceptional ability to be a leaer in the field of life coaching, NLP or indeed anything she puts her mind to. ​

In short, Lorienne is a truly beautiful person who has touched my life in a very special way.

 

I was coached by Lorienne Barnard for a period of approximately two years. I was initially extremely sceptical given I was not a strong believer in ‘coaching’ and did not really believe that I could learn a lot given my position and experience. However, I am glad to say that I was completely wrong and the sessions with Lorienne turned out to be some of the most valuable, if not the most valuable, time I have invested during my professional career.

​Lorienne has an incredibly professional but understanding approach and she tailors her interactions based on individual personality and needs. She was empathetic but firm and what I really enjoyed (and benefitted from) was that her coaching had a genuinely practical application. It was not just theoretical and it was not just motivational – it was something that could be applied in my everyday business (and personal) life.

To this day, I use the techniques and approaches that I learned from Lorienne and my business career has most definitely benefitted from this. I struggled with procrastination and we worked on that for a couple of weeks – and I still apply the ‘visualisation’ method that I learned – and it still works. This has affected my productivity and focus tremendously. I also learned about conflict resolution and having ‘difficult conversations’ and again, I use this approach regularly in my role within the business.

​Perhaps the learning with the biggest impact was around visualising success and how that drives a completely different set of behaviours. I have used this to great effect in my Business Development role and my success rates in converting sales have improved dramatically over the years. To the extent that I apply this with my team whenever we are entering into a big pitch. So the benefits of Lorienne’s contribution were both personal and commercial.

There were a number of Directors in our business who were coached by Lorienne and we got to a point where our sessions were sacrosanct – and we didn’t postpone or cancel – they were that valuable to us.

I would recommend Lorienne without question – and although I am now in a different business – I would welcome the opportunity to work with her again.

 

Lorienne is an insightful and motivating person who facilitates important self-knowledge. She shares practical tools for coping with life’s situations and bringing out the best in you.

​This was my first experience of personal coaching and I found it quite literally.

 

 

My Coaching experience was great with Lorienne, she gets to understand you as a person as well as helps you to see things from a different perspective which in turn helps you deal with various scenarios in a professional manner within the work place.

 

 

A very big and heartfelt thank you Lorienne!! You have been amazingly supportive and so kind and constructive and I appreciate all that you taught me. I am so glad to have met and worked with you. I think you are great at your job!

 

Lorienne is a great coach and assisted me to have clarity about my future.

The coaching also helped me to understand my own style and areas where I can improve the relationships with peers and subordinates.

 

I have known and worked with Lorienne Barnard since 2012, she assisted me personally as well as in a business capacity in coaching myself and my team to success.

Her role within my media business was to assist in developing managerial roles for key staff members helping them deal with people management and address their career path within our business aligning to the purpose of the organisation. This assisted us with not only operational excellence within our business but ensuring retention of key staff within our business.

​In year 2 got involved in the agency culture development with all the staff across Johannesburg and Cape Town – driving the agency culture of how to thrive. Her relationship with staff allowed us to deliver the best value to clients and develop a culture that staff could thrive in.

​Workshops and material produced was unique to our business and customized to deliver on who we were. At all time’s I have found her to be dependable, reliable, hard-working, conscientious, honest, and helpful ensuring that MEC Group best interests were always represented.

​I’m happy to provide further information if required and recommend her as a valuable asset to any organization.

 

I recently was part of a team of people going through a year-long Leadership Development Program (LDP). The program was facilitated by Lorienne Barnard. During the sessions that we have had she gave us a safe space where we could express ourselves without prejudice.

She guided us with her expert knowledge and through her authenticity showed me what trust is. She would patiently listen to what I had to say, made sure that she understood what I meant and then provided me with guidance. Reminding me to have an open mind and to look at the same situation in a new way.

She also provided us with a vast amount of tools to use in our everyday life, working with and managing people. I can honestly say that after the yearlong LDP program I look at myself and life differently. I know myself better and I am more open to place myself in someone else’s shoes. I know this has made me a better manager.

I would like to thank Lorienne for unlocking this new world for me.

 

Mrs. Barnard facilitated the Leadership Development Programme (LDP) for SA Mint from November 2017 until October 2018. I was one of the beneficiaries of this programme due to my role in the company. Mrs. Barnard made the content of the course more meaningful for us all. Initially everyone was reluctant to open up and share with the group.

Due to Mrs. Barnard’s experience, she manage to get people comfortable (using different centering and breathing exercises) and everyone opened up and were more willing to share themselves with the group. This ensured a more meaningful environment for learning and we were all looking forward to the next sessions. Some of the great things Mrs. Barnard managed to do for the group are as follows:

– She made people feel safe to share their views and ask questions
– She made the content of the course meaningful
– She managed to generate group discussions around key topics
– She managed to elicit views from those less inclined to speak up
– She stretched delegates out of their comfort zones and into others perspectives
– She made the sessions memorable and enjoyable
– She share herself, her life and experiences with the group
– She encourage a change of thinking or behaviour from delegates

​Mrs. Barnard is particularly skilled in ensuring the group is fully focused and engaged. She always ensures that everyone is given an opportunity to voice their opinions on the subject being discussed and encourages team participation through various team exercises. Through this programme and her facilitation, I managed to understand my colleagues much better which assisted in breaking the barriers caused by work related boundaries, stereotypes and silos.

We thank Mrs. Barnard for all she has done for us as a company and I personally applied what I had learned from this course with my family and other relationships.

Though her facilitation, I also adopted some techniques to handle different situations at work and home.

 

Mrs L. Barnard is friendly, kind and able to get everyone to participate in her group. She is passionate about seeing change after each lesson. She has good personality which enables her to interact with everyone in her group. She makes the lessons so easy and interesting in such a way that a person wants to learn more and more.

She taught me how to set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely. One of the most important lessons she taught me is improving yourself through reflection and feedback.

 

Mrs Barnard is a passionate lecturer, who enjoys her work but not just work because for her it’s a calling. She is an interactive lecturer who is transparent, not judgemental and gives positive encouragement.

Mrs Barnard taught me skills of how to build Trust relationship and better listening skills , and I can safely say they have come in handy with my line of work.

 

I worked with Lorienne at Nedbank, where she created and facilitated a dynamic business transformation process to engage senior management teams and align departmental goals with the overall strategy.

Her strategic insights, drive, commitment and professionalism were highly valued by the executive team, as was her ability to build strong business relationships while simultaneously delivering concrete results.

I also appreciated Lorienne’s determination, ongoing support and her willingness to challenge the group to achieve more than we thought possible, when we worked together as members of the Retail Women’s Forum. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Lorienne, and would welcome the opportunity to work with her again.

 

Since 2017, Wits Enterprise has contracted Lorienne Barnard, owner of Business Actioneering to deliver the following services as and when required:

• One on one coaching services for the executive management of Wits Enterprise to afford them the opportunity of personal and leadership development;
• Team coaching sessions to assist in the development of a high-performance Exco team;
• Facilitation of a Strategic alignment process through the organisation to enable growth and sustainability; and
• Facilitation of Business Unit’s strategy and teamwork to reduce conflict and improve productivity.

We have found Lorienne to be structured, patient, innovative and professional. Her services have assisted us in clarifying our mission and vision, identifying key performance indicators aligned to strategic objectives, improving team dynamics, improving cross unit relationships, addressing interpersonal conflict and reducing “silo” behaviour. She has also successfully coached executive management to develop personal leadership capability.

 

We worked with Lorienne Barnard from Business ACTIONeering over the past year to reimagine our business, where we want to be, what we believe in, and how we would like to get there.

We each spent one-on-one coaching time with Lorienne as well as benefitting from team coaching in our facilitated workshops.

Lorienne was keyed into the differences in our personalities, drawing the best from us, getting us to learn from each other, challenging us to move beyond barriers.

Lorienne was keyed into the differences in our personalities, drawing the best from us, getting us to learn from each other, challenging us to move beyond our barriers.

Superficially, the outcome was a vision, a mission, and the definition of our culture, but the important stuff was growing as a leadership team and understanding how each of us contributes to making a whole. For that, we have Lorienne to thank.

Should you have any queries in this or any other regards, please do not hesitate to contact me.

icandi CQ (Pty) Ltd has used Lorienne’s services as a facilitator over the last few years. Lorienne has assisted us with a number of important client facilitating strategic workshops with senior executives.

These clients have included The Development Bank of South Africa, Old Mutual and Grofin to mention some. The work done with us has been of a marketing nature and has ranged from facilitating sessions to define a company’s brand strategy and value proposition to mapping out marketing and communication objectives and strategies to testing the validity of a marketing campaign.

Lorienne is always extremely professional. She ensures that she has a good understanding of the client and the task at hand. She is always well prepared and her approach to each session and her methodologies result in meeting the desired objectives. Without exception our clients have always been extremely happy with the outcome of the sessions and have found them both productive and enjoyable.

We continue to use Lorienne as our facilitation partner as and when required, particularly at a senior level within our various client companies.

 

Lorienne is a gifted facilitator. She combines an intelligent clarity of thinking, with heartfelt sensitivity, creativity and intuition. She is highly skilled and experienced. In the facilitation space, you will find yourself feeling engaged, at ease and enabled. She is interesting and interested in others.

Her warmth always creates safety and her insight always invites growth. You will consider yourself fortunate to encounter her as a facilitator. I can highly recommend her.

 

Dear Lorienne,

Firstly, I have to thank you sincerely for your guidance, your patience and your understanding during our coaching sessions.

The other “thank you” I have to say is for allowing me to be me. I’ve been told before that my energy can be a bit much to deal with (LOL!! J) so I thank you for allowing my personality to come through, and allowing me to be a true & authentic version of myself.

Thank you as well for also having such huge – and positive – influence on my life. As I said in our farewell to you, it’s not very often that I meet someone that makes a positive, influential and profound impact in my life, and I now count you as one of those who have impacted my life in the best way possible – and that is, to make me seek to be a better version of myself. I will forever be grateful to you for that!

The coaching sessions have been invaluable, and I will miss them – and our time together – very much!

I hope and pray that our paths cross again and that we will remain in contact. God bless you, and good luck in all your future endeavours!

 

In the past up till the moment I met you – I never toot my own hooter since I had very low gut and confidence… resulting myself to be the victim at my own hand of course and allowing other people to toot my hoot on my behalf….

You taught me how to crack out of my own egg shell and give birth to my very own thoughts and feelings never mind how it may sound or if people even understand what I might be trying to say…

So… while I only valued my responsibilities in the past, I now am valuing myself a little more as well.

Thank You for pressing me to toot my own hooter… it feels great!!!

 

I cannot put it in words how much I enjoyed the sessions and also cannot thank you enough. It was an amazing journey and time
with you.

My only hope is that we do cross paths again and will I leave you with the following 2 quotes of mother Teresa, one of my favourite people of all time:

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

“A joyful heart is the normal result of a heart burning with love. She gives most who gives with joy.”

Your words to me will be endless. Until we meet again.

 

Lorienne

I just want you to know from my side you have made a huge impact in my life and want to thank you for always encouraging the team and allowing us to express ourselves.

We have had many challenges through our journey but not once did you judge or create a negative impression and for that
I thank you.

You are truly amazing not only as a coach but as a person.

Like I said yesterday TILL WE MEET AGAIN!!!

 

Lorienne

Thank you so much once again for your time and patience. It has been an absolute pleasure to be coached by such an amazing individual. You have made me discover myself more.

Your sessions are not just coaching but it makes one feel safe to share everything and at the same time brings comfort to my soul. Our special journey has really touched my life both at work and at personal level.

I am happy for you to use my name.

I wish you everything of the best for the future. Till we meet again!