When Carolyn asked me to write a few words as a testimonial for her new website I was delighted to assist. I thought how hard can that be, just a few simple lines on how she has influenced me in a work environment and how she has supported and coached me along the way.
How wrong I was! It is very difficult to summarise the impact Carolyn has had for me in the few years we have worked together
I met Carolyn when she joined the company I worked for in 2017. She took on the role of Head of Human Resources whilst I was a Regional Operational Manager. The organisation we worked for is a Community Interest Company in the Health and Social Care sector. I had been with the company since 2014 and this followed thirty + years working in various roles within Health and Social Care Public and Private Sector
Right from the start I found Carolyn an amazing, warm, talented and generous human being. Extremely knowledgeable, focused and hardworking from a professional point of view but also as our working relationship developed I found her more and more to be a sounding board, mentor and a person who I could always turn to if I had issues that needed some support with.
For example, the pace of work in the sector we work always produces a high level of pressure with expectation from senior management team to deliver outstanding world class services. There was a point where I was beginning to feel that the demands upon me and my colleagues were becoming unreasonable. Carolyn recognised that me and my peers were struggling with this expectation and she facilitated a series of “away days” with the whole middle and senior management team
These sessions were a turning point for me with the company. I was looking for different positions elsewhere and the way that Carolyn got us all to look at how we interacted with each other, how we all had different strengths and weaknesses and how we all could “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” was nothing short of remarkable. For me personally it changed the way I approached my work pressures but also how I was able to interact with my senior management team
When the Covid pandemic presented the biggest challenges ever known to the Health and Social Care sector Carolyn was there front and centre with her calm nature, ability to see problems ahead, an amazing skill of being able to absorb ever changing information and make sense of how we could interpret and implement this in the workplace was remarkable.
I had worked for over thirty years in this sector and I honestly don’t know how I could have got through this incredibly challenging time without Carolyn. She was an absolute rock for me and my teams. Calm, assured, able to listen, guide, advise and have shoulder to lean on when I needed it
As I said I was delighted to be asked by Carolyn to write a few lines. These few paragraphs are just a tiny glimpse into what Carolyn has to offer and I could not speak any higher of her.