About Coaching Café
The Coaching Café is a meeting of minds from very diverse professional backgrounds.
A fascination with language, psychology, and people process management, met with a profound understanding of leadership, design and facilitation across the whole spectrum of business and information strategy and architecture, leads to our unique take on learning design, facilitation and coaching.
We believe in founding client relationships on a deep sense of trust. Our coaching methodology is based on truly listening to and caring for the challenges our clients face; on creating opportunities for new ideas and inspiration for building relationships – both professional and personal – that allow them and the people they live and work with to achieve their goals and become the best versions of themselves.
It’s all in the name
We chose the Coaching Café name because it reflects the way we believe coaching should happen: in a relaxed, natural setting, ideally around a cup of your favourite tea or coffee. Coaching is a social interaction at its core, and we believe that an effective coaching session should be warm, comfortable and conversational.
But coaching is more than a normal conversation: there is a purpose – and often a challenge – which needs to be addressed or solved. We come to cafés to share conversations and to learn about (and from) one another. Similarly, for the coachee, a coaching session is a place to share dreams; to learn more about their unique strengths and opportunities, and to forge a path that helps them achieve what they need to live the lives they truly want.
Meet the minds behind The Coaching Café
Lynne Melis
Lynne Melis (ICF ACC Associate Certified Coach) is the Director of the Coaching Café® responsible for the integrity of the learning material design and process and an expert in designing and facilitating programs for individuals and teams at all levels. Lynne’s understanding of how true learning happens is complemented by her BA(Psych), MBA and a Secondary Teacher’s Diploma. Lynne qualified in Coaching in 2007. Lynne has extensive local and international experience in making learning material more accessible and inspiring others to design and facilitate in this way.
Mary Gardner
Mary Gardner (ICF MCC Master Certified Coach) is the founder (2005) and Director of the Coaching Café® responsible for the integrity of the coaching process. She has extensive experience facilitating the strengthening of leaders and their teams with True Leadership® coaching and development. Mary qualified in Business and Life Coaching in 2005. She has an Honours degree in mathematics and has in-depth local and international consulting experience in both IT and Strategic Facilitation.