Louise is an experienced coach, school improvement advisor, former headteacher and founder of Volant Coaching.
“I help leaders and school teams to increase effectiveness, enhance wellbeing, manage workload and improve outcomes.”
Louise Norris
Louise has twenty years’ experience as a teacher and trainer and more than a decade of senior leadership experience, including two successful headships. Her professional coaching encompasses ten years developing coaching for professional learning in schools, implementing programmes of peer coaching within teams and conducting research into the use of coaching to improve wellbeing and performance.
Louise offers a powerful blend of theoretical knowledge and personal understanding of the challenges faced by leaders working in dynamic, relationship-driven contexts. She supports leaders and teams to find a better way of working through coaching.
Coaching Approach
Coaching is a partnership for facilitating change and development. Louise offers leaders a safe space in which to examine current patterns, build on personal strengths and resourcefulness, overcome barriers and take practical steps to increase impact.
The core principles underpinning Louise’s work are a deep respect for the individual experience of pressure and challenge and a firm belief in each individual’s capacity for growth and transformation.
Testimonials
“Louise’s warm and approachable manner enabled staff to feel at ease with the coaching process. The coaching sessions helped leaders to clarify goals and priorities, to evaluate existing behaviours and to ultimately feel more in control and become more effective in aspects of their professional role.”
“My coaching sessions with Louise helped me to clarify a difficult situation and see how we needed to move forward. Louise helped me to rethink my default responses; I’m now less inclined to jump into ‘rescue mode’ as I realised that, although this may be easier in the short term, I’m inadvertently perpetuating the problem. Having time to think about the issues currently facing me was valuable to my own professional development, as was knowing we had a date and time set to return to the conversation to revisit agreed actions and review progress.”
Qualifications and Training
Coach Training Course for Business and Personal Coaching - Barefoot Coaching - 2020
MSc Learning and Teaching - University of Oxford - 2019
Primary Certificate in Stress Management - Centre for Coaching - 2019
Primary Certificate in Positive Psychology Coaching - Centre for Coaching - 2019
Primary Certificate in Problem Focused Counselling, Coaching and Training - Centre for Coaching - 2017
Certificate in Coaching - Centre for Coaching - 2016
National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) - National College for Leadership of Schools - 2009
Post Graduate Certificate (Education) - The University of Plymouth - 2005
Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) - The University of Plymouth - 2001
BSc Hons Psychology - Sheffield Hallam University - 1995
Professional Memberships
Louise is a member of the International Coach Federation (ICF) and works in accordance with their code of ethics.
Academic Papers
Norris, L. (2018) Teacher professional development: an enquiry into have far the introduction of a programme of peer-to-peer coaching can improve teacher performance and well-being. Unpublished paper.
