Our People - Barry Cook
Barry is a freelance coach and consultant specialising in the development of people to achieve their maximum potential.
He is first and foremost a coach and holds coaching qualifications for the Football Association and Athletics. He has designed and delivers coach development programmes accredited by UK Athletics the governing body of the sport.
He has expanded his coaching skills into business and higher education. Barry has broad range of interests beyond sport and business including being vice chair of the Enfield Voluntary Services Council.
He has spent part of his career working for BT as an internal consultant implementing major change programmes, specialising in the design and delivery of Management, Leadership and Coaching programmes, with a particular interest in management development using e-learning.
Barry has extensive experience in the implementation of large and small scale e-learning programmes in the corporate world and is currently researching the role of e-learning in Leadership development.
Barry has had a life long love of sport and he has been ranked amongst the top dozen UK veteran athletes at 800 metres and was awarded the outstanding veteran athlete of the year by his club for 2003 season. He regularly runs marathons, and in the 2003 London marathon completed the course in 3hours 13 minutes.
Barry is a compulsive learner and strongly believes in an ethos that values mind, body and spirit. He coaches people so that they draw on all three to achieve maximum potential. One former BT senior executive that Barry coached says:
“Barry is literally a life saver. After many years of trying to change my life style, I only succeeded when Barry became my coach. His approach is unfussy, yet sophisticated in getting people to reflect on what they are aiming to achieve. Most of all his approach focuses on the person not the process. I guess Barry’s approach is to get people to lead themselves.”
Barry’s belief is that to achieve your goal one should take small steps that create great leverage, then, hold the gain before going on to the next step. This means that a natural part of Coaching is to help the individual to sustain the gains they have made and avoid the regression so common with many fads.
