Ninety minutes, either in the Park Square rooms or on video. You bring the thing that is loudest that week; we spend the first twenty minutes making sure it is the real thing rather than the presentable version of it. The rest is worked through out loud — options, consequences, what you would need to be true. Every session ends with one commitment you have chosen yourself, and a written summary reaches your inbox the next morning so nothing depends on your memory of the room.

Therapy generally works backwards from where you are; coaching works forwards from it. We are not qualified to treat depression, anxiety or trauma and we do not pretend otherwise — if what you describe belongs with a therapist, we will say so in the discovery call and give you two names to ring. Plenty of clients do both at once, and we are happy to work alongside a therapist when you want us to.

Yes, without exception. When an employer funds the coaching we will confirm to them that sessions happened and that the programme is on track — dates and attendance, nothing else. What you say never leaves the room, we do not write reports about you, and your file is a set of your own action notes rather than an assessment. The only limits are the ordinary legal ones, which we set out in writing before the first session.

We build a review into the halfway point of every programme, and it is a real one: we put the goals we agreed at the start next to where you actually are and say plainly whether the gap is closing. If it is not, you can stop there and we refund the sessions you have not used. Thirteen clients have taken that review and decided to stop; we would rather that than an unhappy client running out the clock.

Both, and you can mix them. The Park Square rooms are two minutes from Leeds station; Ruth also works from Montpellier Parade in Harrogate on Wednesdays. Everything else is on video, which is how most clients outside West Yorkshire work with us. Sessions are the same length and the same price either way — we have never charged a premium for a room.

Roughly half of our work is funded that way. We invoice the company directly, with a purchase-order reference if procurement needs one, and Marianne handles the paperwork so you do not have to chase it. What the invoice shows is the programme and the dates. If your employer asks for anything more than that, we will tell them no, and we will tell you that we did.

Discovery calls are usually available inside a week; the first full session is normally within ten working days of that. September and January are the two months that fill first, so if you are aiming at either, book the discovery call four to six weeks ahead. If something is genuinely urgent, say so when you write and we will look at the cancellations list.

Ruth Halden is an ICF Professional Certified Coach with more than 1,400 logged coaching hours and fourteen years as an operations director before she trained. Daniel Okonjo is an ICF Associate Certified Coach and a former NHS service manager. Priya Raval is an EMCC Senior Practitioner and a chartered occupational psychologist. All three are supervised quarterly, insured to £2m, and members of the ICF UK chapter.