ABOUT THIS EPISODE

I had the joy of meeting Karen via an online supervision group organised by EY in collaboration with Henley Business School. Karen has written a book, Breaking the Coaching Code - how great coaches transcend the rules published in November 2025. 

In our conversation Karen offers valuable insights into:

• What it means to walk home to yourself. 
• The journey to and of self-acceptance. 
• And having a social conscience.

Karen’s key encouragements to Leaders:

1. Reconnect with your unique self rather than trying to be what you think a good leader is
2. Understand your strengths and be clear about your purpose 
3. Build your ability to have effective conversations with clarity, compassion, curiosity and courage

About  Karen:

Karen Foy has been coaching since 2003, her background before coaching was in the NHS working locally, regionally and nationally on policy related to patient experience. She caught the coaching bug on an Open University summer school whilst undertaking a module from the MBA on Creativity, Innovation and Change thinking about creativity innovation and change.

She heard about this thing called coaching and thought, that’s the thing she does when she’s supposed to be working and was blown away that she could do it as a career. She trained as a coach, built her business alongside her work, and then jumped in 2007 to become a full-time coach.

She already had a first degree in psychology and the next step for her was to undertake a master’s degree in Coaching Psychology which she gained in 2011. She is a Master Certified Coach with the International Coach Federation, a Certified Mentor for ICF Credentials and she has a Professional Certificate in Coaching Supervision from Henley Business School.

She has recently retired from her lecturing role at Henley Business School where she was the Programme Director for Accredited Coaching Programmes. Joining an academic institution was a crash course in acceptance as she is a Yorkshire woman from a ‘dyed in the wool’ working class background who left school at 14 with no qualifications.

She has come to a place where she is more able to welcome her gremlin of not being good enough as the gift it is to her coaching.

To connect with Karen:

Website: www.thecoachtribe.com

LinkedIn: @Karen Foy, MCC

To listen to other Leaders in Conversation with Anni Townend:

Go to my website, www.annitownend.com

A big thank you to SHMOGUS Media for the wonderful production and marketing of the podcast.

To contact me Anni Townend do email me on anni@annitownend.com visit my website www.annitownend.com, subscribe to my newsletter and follow me on LinkedIn. 

To find out more about Collaboration Equation, do go to our website www.collaborationequation.com and follow us on LinkedIn. I look forward to connecting with you, thank you for listening.

Hello and welcome to Leaders in Conversation with me, Annie Townend. I'm a podcast host and partner to Executives, leaders and their teams and co founder with Lucy Kidd of Collaboration Equation.

Together with Lucy, I have another podcast called Finding your Collaborative Edge. Today's guest on Leaders in Conversation is Karen Foy and the title of our conversation is Trust, Trust in who you are.

Becoming Leaders in Conversation is the podcast in which leaders weave together the threads of their life and leadership, the people, places and experiences that have shaped them, their values, beliefs, passion and purpose to encourage and inspire you to be even more confident and courageous in your leadership. If you're not already, please do subscribe to the podcast. Please review and share it. Thank you.

The time with Karen and our group was a highlight of the program.

Karen, I'm very much looking forward to hearing your valuable insights into what it means to walk home to yourself, the journey to and of self acceptance, and finally what it means to have a social conscience. Welcome Karen.

Thanks so much Annie. I'm so pleased to be here.

I'm delighted to have this opportunity to hear your stories, some of which I've had and know a little bit about from having worked in the supervision group with you. What does it mean to walk home to yourself Karen? And where was your first home?

I've stolen that phrase from Ram Dass about walking each other home and it just really spoke to me about my approach to what I hope I do in coaching is supporting people to come back to their own wisdom. So to me it means coming back to who you truly are.

And I think we often can spend time trying to fit into what others expect us to be and behave in a certain way. And it's been my lifelong journey anyway of trying to find out who I really am and bringing that out into the world.

So to walk home, you probably can guess from my accent Yorkshire.

So I was brought up in the 50s and 60s in a mining village and it's that real close knit community, everybody knowing what's going off, you know, all of that. But I think that's informed in good and not so good ways.

So what are some of the good ways and some of the not good ways that being brought up in a close community and a mining village that I imagine and know from my own experience probably doesn't exist anymore as it did then in the 50s and the 60s, what was it like?

You're absolutely right. They don't exist anymore. The village is still there. The industry's gone.

At that time, it was really quite an enclosed village in that everything was there. And so if as a child, you had a fall, a scrape, a bang on the head, the place to go would be the pit head, medical room.

You didn't bother with the doctors or A and E or anything like that. You went to the medical room. Feeling of safety, I suppose, because I lived in what was called at the time, years before, a model village.

And it was one of these experimental things.

And so it was called the squares because there was like houses that all went round in a set of square, and then in the middle was this grass place which was overgrown, always overgrown. Everybody in front of the house, different people would mow their bit in the front of the house, but in the middle it was just grass.

That was just a wonder for kids to run about, not be seen by adults. So it felt like a place of adventure and you could have run off somewhere in there, so it was great in that way.

In the square that I lived in, I had two sets of aunties and uncles and cousins, so it felt quite safe. That was the lovely thing about it.

And part of my growing up and part of where the social conscience comes from is my dad was at first the union leader for the local pit and then he became the area agent.

So my life was a stream of people coming in and out of the house with their problems, with their claims, whatever it was, with their fight with the num and the fight with mines and things like that, that kind of built up my dad's kind of level of service, and so that was great. My dad died when I was 14. It was a tricky old time because he, with all his faults, he seemed like the sensible one in the family.

So that made a bit of a difference and influenced me a lot. From being 14 to probably 20. I think I was at that time in trauma. Didn't know that's what it's called.

It's only in these later years, I look back and think it was trauma, really, but felt that I was very lost in that time.

That is tough, losing him. So at whatever age, but at that very young age. And how was it for the rest of your family, for your mum? And do you have siblings?

Yeah, I've got two sisters and a brother. My brother's died now, but two sisters still alive. I came very late in the family, so they're a lot older than me.

In fact, my sister's just had a 90th birthday. I came a lot later. So they were all grown up and in fact all married by the time my dad died. I suppose they went through bereavement as well.

But like I said, my dad was the kind of sensible one in some ways in the family, in some ways not so sensible. But my mother needed a lot of support. I got lost in the school system as well.

My dad died on New Year's Eve and I left school in the July, so I was still only 14 because my birthday's August. At that time you could leave school at 15. So I left school at 14. No qualifications, nothing.

At the time I thought I was grown up, as most 14 year olds do. But the only thing that was mentioned at school after my dad died was a needlework teacher who said to me, I'm sorry to hear about your dad.

I didn't like his politics, but sorry for your loss. That was as much as anybody said anything.

So I think that's influenced me in a lot of ways about supporting people with whatever they're going through. I always think about Brene Brown when she talks about everybody's got a story that'll bring you to your knees.

So my dad's social conscience, he was a communist and then he was a Labour Party member and that kind of idea of service and support and kindness.

And it sounds like he really did have an open door policy as well with people coming in and going out and that from an early age you were observing him, listening, asking questions, supporting people, helping them to find their way. So that when you lost him at that young age, you lost something of yourself by the sound of it.

Yeah, possibly for a while. And then I found it again and I did some great stuff that came after that. I always think you're whatever your journey is.

Everybody's got a story like that in different ways, but it prepares you for something. And so that's just prepared me for how I show up in the world.

And it prepares you to talk as well about loss. And like you say, hopefully a young person losing a close family member will be supported differently now.

However, I do think that it's still really difficult sometimes for people to talk about loss, whatever the loss and whoever the loss is of, and your early experience of losing somebody so close to you, enabling you to then realize and appreciate the need people have to be able to speak about their story and the people. And for me, that's why I started the podcast because like You. I work with teams. Confidentiality is really important.

And I've been inspired by so many people and their stories.

And when I started the podcast, it was an invitation to those leaders like yourself, to share your story more widely, for other people to be inspired and be helped to share their story on the basis that we all have stories and we all have a story. And that has often shaped us and made us who we are, shaped our values, our belief and our passion and purpose.

And it sounds as if your dad helped shaped your social conscience and your mum as well in that she needed your support from an early age.

So what was your guiding story that brought you that lovely warmth? What brought that out in you?

I was in my early 20s when I was invited to participate in a co counseling workshop. The woman who invited me to participate, I saw her as an older, wiser woman. She was probably in her early 30s.

And I thought she wouldn't have recommended I do this thing if she didn't think I would like it. I was very uncomfortable when I walked in to a group of people sitting on cushions on the floor in a circle.

I'd never experienced anything quite like it. And I very quickly felt safe. I felt well met, I felt listened to, I felt different.

I felt I was coming home to myself in that group for the first time. And I was already a keen observer of people and their behavior. I'd studied psychology. I was at the time training to be a child psychologist.

I had an amazing supervisor. So I was having this other experience of this way of working in a group of peer to peer coaching counseling work.

And I watched the facilitator and I described them as being an elegant facilitator. But my experience of feeling safe and what they did that enabled me to feel safe in that group and informed who I've become and my life's work.

Karen, really. I knew then that I had found my metier, that I wanted to work with people.

And then later I found I actually wanted to work with people in the corporate world and went on to do a master's and have worked in the corporate world ever since.

It was my supervisor who suggested to me that as part of it was a requirement as well as part of the training which I didn't complete because I found this other way of working, that it was my own childhood that I did need to walk home to myself. And years later, Karen, I was given a book called All Sickness is Home Sickness.

I've never been able to locate the book on my bookshelf, so it must have been lent to me and I have given it back to the person. But it was a book about walking home to yourself, of becoming myself. And it's an ongoing journey.

I never feel that we're a long way from the child that we are. And in fact it's a question that I ask the people I work with is what did you love doing when you were a child? And for me it is outdoors.

And I'm very fortunate to have incorporated the walk and talk in my one to one coaching work, but also in my teamwork paired conversations.

Reminds me very much of Sarah Hill's work about coaching, the childhood story and the executive. Lovely.

So what did you do after you left school with no qualifications and as part of this journey home to yourself, not knowing that you were on it, probably aged 14?

Oh, no, no idea.

So tell me, what did you go on to do? I think there's a line somewhere in your book that the question will find you. How did your question find you? Where did you go next?

I was like any typical 14 year old, I think we don't change that much, do we, over the generations where I thought I knew it all, I thought I was okay.

Because part of my profile is I found out very recently I've got ADHD as well, which explains such a lot. But at the time I was very good at mimicking and following whatever seemed okay.

So the next sister to me was 13 years older than me and she had gone into nursing. My cousin, who I was very close to and spent a lot of time with four cousins. Four girls were all sisters. The oldest one of those was a nurse as well.

So again it was, ooh. So nursing's the thing. I went off to Cornwall for two seasons working as a waitress, which I loved, I loved waitressing.

But after doing that I thought, I wonder if I could get in to be a nurse. So I went and took the test because I didn't have any O levels to share, so I went to be a nurse.

I was at the time was called a state enrolled nurse, so it wasn't a registered nurse and you could get in by just filling this IQ testing. So I did nursing. But it was always, when I look at it now, with hindsight, it was never my dream. What I loved about that was Talking to the patients.

I wasn't a great technical nurse. I enjoyed working with people. I realize now part of my adhd, I really struggle with numbers. I used to go into a panic.

I was just saying to a friend, we were away at the weekend and I said, I can still feel the panic. I used to feel when I needed to work out what insulin dose to give.

When you think about influences really in life, I met my husband Tom and that was a changing turning point in my life. And he was such a solid, inspiring person and his family as well.

So I met his family and having lost my dad and then at 20 turning up and being part of this family. And Tom is one of six, so a big family and his dad was the most wonderful, kind, caring, quiet person, loving person.

I adored him and my mother in law as well. So I felt like I could start to understand. And again, looking at what does being in a good family look like.

Tom and I got married when I was, I think 22 and by the time I was 28 I'd got four children, all under five and then went back nursing by need really I needed to get out of the house. But also we'd just moved into a house and stretched ourselves mortgage wise and just moved in.

We lived on his overtime. He's very methodical, he's not like me. And he used to put, when he'd worked and he also put SAT and son, that was his overtime.

And so they used to call him SAT son. And so we lived on overtime. And when the overtime ban came in it was like, how are we going to live?

So I went back to work when Laura, my youngest, was 8 weeks old, just part time but nursing. So that sustained me for a while.

And then after the strike and we did really well in the strike even though we'd got four young kids and we came out of that without any debt or anything because we just pulled together. But I thought, I never want to go through this again. So I went back to school.

I really had to swallow my pride and go back to school and think I never took any exams, so I don't know whether I'd pass or not. So I went and did five GCSEs in a year, then three A levels in a year and then decided I would go off and do a Degree in psychology.

So I went to Sheffield Uni and then I went back into care, as in social service and the nhs, but in a different role.

Well done, Karen. That is wonderful.

I'm a Yorkshire woman, too, and I think of myself as having grace and grit, but the grit and determination to study, to qualify, to do a degree.

And the way you and Tom came together and held things together during what was, I know, a really tough time, and for so many people, things did fall apart and they did have a lot of debt, but that you gritted your teeth and you thought, we're not going to go under, we're going to stay on top.

And I think that it's the idea of I could have just stayed nursing. I don't know how long I would have lasted. And we had a plan, and we always talk about this now because we had a plan that I would go back to school.

And then when I'd gone back to school and do whatever I ended up doing, then Tom would go back.

But then, of course, all the mines closed and he got redundancy and he ended up getting a job that he really loved and ended up traveling all over the world doing it. So he never went back to school. And he keeps saying, well, I'm supposed to have gone back to school, aren't I? But it didn't matter.

But one of the things that strikes me, and I think it's something that you, Annie, talk about as well. I've never thought I'm somebody who's got confidence. I've always had a lack of self belief.

But what I really found out is, like you say, that grit and that determination. I had the courage. And so I have to give myself credit for that and say, most of the time, I'm terrified.

I'm terrified talking to you, not talking to you, but being on a podcast and talking about my story. You're making it beautiful. Thank you. But it's okay. You're scared. Do it. And I know that's something that you think about that, having courage.

I don't think I've never built up this thing called confidence, but I have built up courage.

And you really show it. And you've got this book out, breaking the coaching code. And I encourage anybody listening to read it. It really is a wonderful book, Karen.

And I imagine that your younger self would have never imagined that you'd be writing a book, let alone having a book published. So there's something in your story there, that courage, having served you.

And it is something that in my work, particularly with Lucy, we talk a lot about curiosity, care and courage and bringing them together. And certainly my own journey is one of finding myself and having confidence in myself.

The belief that comes with having courage and care and curiosity.

I used to think I was the only person who didn't have confidence. I was the only person who didn't think they were good enough.

And there's something that I think the privilege of working as a coach and working with other people, we work on others to work on ourselves. We find out a lot of people that we think have all got this wonderful courage are still struggling with that. Am I good enough? I need to prove myself.

There's something I don't know that shared humanity.

And it's about that self acceptance, isn't it, that you talk about of accepting who you are, of when we are curious, we are less judgmental.

So getting curious about ourselves and about other people has us be less judgmental, but also appreciating ourselves and appreciating who we are and other people and giving appreciation. Haven't yet worked in an organization with a leadership team where people say, oh, we already give each other loads of appreciation.

No, we don't get enough.

And we give it in such small ways like you're smiling, albeit people are listening for listeners to know you're smiling, you're nodding, that helps me with my confidence. You are, you're letting me know that you're listening, that you're interested and I'm reciprocating.

I am interested and I'm listening and I'm curious and I'm enjoying our conversation. I want you to know that I'm communicating that to you and appreciating you in so many physical ways, non verbal ways as well as verbally.

So the importance of our doing that for each other.

We need feedback in order to feel confident, to know that we, we're on the right track, that walking home to ourselves, that we're on the path to that and we're helping each other along, we're on it together and how important that is. Certainly my upbringing wasn't one of loads of praise and appreciation. We didn't want to get too big for our boots.

We didn't want to show off, we didn't want to get above ourselves.

The gift of therapy, of coaching, of developmental work that enables us to come home to ourselves and to know that we're so much more than who we think we are. And we are our stories.

A good friend of mine, Julia Cardin, we're having a book launch together with Jane Moffatt and Julia and myself. Julia's work is all about self awareness and she did her PhD around self awareness.

We need to know who we are, we need to do the work on ourselves so we can be with people that our story is not getting in the way. I think it's really important that we think about ourselves without ruminating and it being all about ourselves.

It's about knowing who you are, who you're becoming, and it's about knowing why you're here. And I often say to leaders, there are two questions that we need to be able to answer for ourselves and.

And they're two great questions to ask other people. So I'm asking you about who you are, Karen, and you've asked me a little bit about who I am. How did you discover your purpose?

What led you from nursing to coaching? You've already signposted on this walking home to yourself that you like talking to people, but clearly you like listening to them.

I know you and met you, as I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation at Henley Business School, of all places, which probably neither of us imagined when we were growing up in Yorkshire, that we would work in the south of England and work at Henley Business School of all places.

I know I still pinch myself that I ended up there and ended up doing Programme Director there. How did this happen?

I was seconded into the Department of Health to do some work on patients involvement in policy and a lot of it was around Innovation and change. The Open University did a module, so I didn't do the mba. I just decided to do this module which was called Creativity, Innovation and Change.

And I went to the summer school and in this summer school there were these two guys there and they were talking about this thing called coaching, which I'd never heard of. And as they were talking, I was smiling to myself and thinking, oh, this is what I do.

So I was then saying to these two, because we weren't there learning about coaching, that just happened to be what they were talking about in their story. And so I asked them, what is this thing and where do you learn to do it? So it was from there that I went off and did some training.

I was still working nationally for the nhs, but started to train more and more in it, like nlp, coach training, all sorts of things. And eventually I thought, I want to do something that's a bit more academic, bit more evidence based, if you like.

Though I wanted to find something a bit more deeper. And University of East London were launching this new MSc in coaching psychology. And I thought I've got my first degree in psychology.

Why don't I go off and do that? So I did that, which really helped me and carried on with that for a while. And it was only in my 60s that this idea of Henley came up.

I'd been doing a lot of as an associate for another organization, a lot of coach development in different global organizations and realized how much I loved this idea of education and teaching. I just adored it. And so when I saw this job for Henley, I was so tempted. And at the time, Jonathan Passmore was the program director there.

And I knew John, I think he'd been my supervisor in my msc. So I had a conversation with him about it and I applied for it. I've always loved the idea of magic and fairies and fairy tales and the supernatural.

And so that kind of energy came in when I saw this job. It's gonna happen and I don't know how and it did. So I ended up there, this part time job that I was gonna do and only go when I needed to teach.

Not long afterwards Jonathan decided he was gonna move on and suggested I take on program director. So I ended up this full time job, 600 students a year and thinking how the hell did this happen?

So I was always looking around, they'll find me out one of these days. They'll find me out that I'm not clever enough. They'll find me out that I shouldn't be here, it should be somebody a lot better than me.

They'll find me out that I'm too old, I shouldn't be here working. But I just kept going, I just kept showing up. So that's what I did at Henley.

I'm so glad you did turn up, Karen, because otherwise we wouldn't have met. And I'm glad you believed that you could do it.

And I know from other people who've had the privilege of walking with you, walking home to themselves with you, what an impact you've had. And as we come to the close of our conversation, there are a few things I want to cover. One is your book.

And for you to say something about the book either for people who by the time they listen, have read the book and. Or people who are thinking about walking home to themselves, maybe leaders who are thinking about their own leader coach journey.

And it would be great for you to say share with us a few thoughts you have about the book that would be helpful for people.

Yeah, lovely. Thank you for that opportunity. It's such great, great opportunity. So the book is Breaking the coaching Code.

I started writing it from two perspectives, really. One was I had been reading a book by somebody I really value and admire, Richard Rohr, who's a Franciscan priest.

And it was a book called Falling Upwards. And it was about the two halves of life. And it dawned on me that, oh, this actually fits with coaching as well.

That we learn in the first half of our coaching careers. We learn the rules, we learn how we should do it, we learn what we need to do.

And then some of us, some coaches get to the second half of life where they look at that and then start to think it's probably not doing it anymore and we have to then grow into ourselves. So that's that, growing into being who we are and using our own wisdom. So that was one guiding force in this book.

The other was the idea that I mentor so many coaches. And like I said, I've had the privilege of doing that with hundreds and hundreds of coaches because of my exposure through Henley and Karen.

If I might add, because of who you are.

Oh, thank you, that's kind. I'll let that land.

And what I was seeing was people were ignoring their wisdom in coaching to follow the rules or their interpretation of what the rules and the competencies say. And I just thought this is not doing coaching a service at all.

It's not for the coachee, the clients, it's not serving them either because people are self censoring. Yes, we need to learn the rules and they are there for a reason. But there has to be a point where you come in with your own wisdom.

And so I think the book is really encouraging people to do a couple of things. Learn who they are, learn why you've come into coaching, learn what your triggers or what agendas you've got.

And then once you know them and you can let them go a bit, trust yourself that you're going to be okay. Even when probably the rules say one thing. What if you just bend it a little bit? So that's what the book's aiming to do.

There's a reason why we listen more than we talk, or there's a reason why we ask questions rather than give advice. But let's just hold them lightly. So that's where the book came from.

Lovely. And I think the book does that. It's beautifully organized into those two parts and everything that you've just spoken about.

And I think what the book does as well is there's the doing, which is learning the rules and which is so important grounding.

And then there's the being and being Confident in who you are being and bringing more of those insights, wisdom that you've gained through experience and the privilege of working with people in the way that we do. Karen, finally, what are your top encouragements, not only for coaches, but for leaders?

Reconnect with who you really are, not who you think a leader should be. I've worked with people who have this image of what a leader is and try to be that. And like I say, I'm the world's worst at doing that.

I've tried to emulate everybody and there's some good in that. I've learned such a lot from lots of people. But we've got to come back to who uniquely we are and value that. Understanding your own strengths.

And again, just in my experience, when we've got strengths, I think they are so natural to us and so easy that we don't see them as strengths or gifts. Being able to allow somebody to just be seen and heard and understood and feel valued is a real gift.

Build your ability to have effective conversations.

With a lovely friend of mine, Suzanne Hayes Jones, we developed our own kind of model of conversation because we're keen to say it's not just about coaching.

Actually, this is any conversation and we do it in a heart, really, but on the outside of it is get some clarity, know what the conversation is about. You can't go anywhere until you're really clear and you're really at the heart of the conversation.

And then meet people with compassion because they all have these stories. So meet their story with compassion. Help them feel seen, heard and understood. Be curious. And that's the thing about the question. We'll find you.

That's in the book that you kindly mentioned. We spend so long what's the right powerful question? The right powerful question is going to find you because you're just curious.

And that's the same in leadership. What's the question? And then the courage again, bringing that courage in.

And I think that's about having the courage to ask that question that's popped in. It's a bit edgy, but having the courage and sometimes having the courage to share your own vulnerability when it's right, when it's appropriate.

Thank you for your vulnerability today and for sharing as much as you have. It is all about the conversation. And I'm wondering, who are you going to have a conversation with as a result of our conversation today?

What will it be about?

Oh, what a fabulous question. Because the first person that pops into my mind is Tom to say thank you, because I don't say it often enough.

I think it quite a lot and think I take him for granted quite a lot of how much he believed in me when I didn't have anybody to believe in me. So I think that's the conversation I need and want to have more than anything. Thank you.

Thank you. How best for people to contact you?

Karen, I'm just in the process of getting my website built which will be the coach tribe.com because I'm building up a membership platform for coaches to learn and grow and collaborate.

But until that's up and running, I guess with my email address@karen sboyoutlook.com and your LinkedIn and my LinkedIn, I would love to connect with anybody and hear.

Their stories and share and people will be able to buy the book through Amazon and all good bookshops.

All good bookshops, I hope for sure. All from me and I will send it and sign it.

Yes, wonderful. Oh well, I would like one of those, Karen, very much signed by you.

I will gift you one of those.

I'll have two then. As in, as in I'll have the one you're going to gift me.

But I've also got one that I will give away and I've recently read this wonderful book which was given to me to say thank you to me called the Gifts of Reading and it's by Robert MacFarlane. I recommend it to you.

That's great. Thank you.

Thank you.

And a big thank you to you, the listener to listen to other leaders in conversation with me, Annie Townend, do Visit my website annietownen.com A big thank you to Smogus Media for the wonderful production and marketing writing of the podcast.

To find out more about Collaboration Equation that I co founded with Lucy Kidd, do go to our website collaboration equation.com and please get in touch with me via my email address, annieannytownen.com thank you for listening and a huge thank you to you, Karen, for being a wonderful guest and for our conversation today.

Thank you, Annie. It's been an absolute privilege.

Thank you.