Coaching.

I am passionate about coaching design professionals. I cherish the one-to-one private space and the reflective capacity it unleashes. Witnessing individuals engage with challenging questions, gain clarity, and build confidence is profoundly rewarding. It’s a journey for them, and equally for me.

Design Leaders and Practitioners.

My coaching services cater to both strategic design leaders and practitioners in various stages of their career:

Becoming a Better Design Leader

'Better' takes on different meanings for different leaders. Some seek effectiveness, others organisational alignment, or planning for scale. Regardless, you aim to reassess and evolve your leadership style, challenging the status quo to become the best leader you can be.

Getting Unstuck in Your Design Career

You might be struggling with misalignment between your values and those of the people around you. You seek to enhance your design effectiveness without losing your essence. You're looking beyond managerial guidance, on a quest to find your career's next growth step.

Coaching on
the Job

You are handling a difficult project or programme and lack guidance and support. This may involve redesigning a service, creating a journey architecture framework, or launching a customer-centric programme. You need someone who can provide support, and sense-check your work and decisions.

My Approach.

I customise my approach to meet your specific needs, avoiding a one-size-fits-all framework. Our initial session is about understanding your needs, learning style, and the right mix of support and challenge you need. Subsequent sessions are tailored based on these insights.

Creating a safe space for meaningful reflection is crucial. My role is not to provide answers, but to help you discover your own questions and answers. I advocate for small, experimental actions to explore new paths. These ‘prototypes’ are designed for engaging with the world in novel ways. Be ready to fail, learn, and grow.

With over 15 years of experience leading strategic design teams and driving design-driven transformation in large organisations, I bring a wealth of knowledge to our sessions, as well as a wide international network to draw from.

A Bit of Theory.

For those interested in geeking out, my approach is grounded in the systems psychodynamic theory. It offers a framework that considers individuals and organisations within larger social and cultural systems. This approach helps analyse and explain human behaviour in complex environments. Its key features include:

Unconscious
Processes

Understanding and addressing unconscious thoughts and feelings that influence behaviour in the workplace.

Organisational
Culture

How the culture of an organisation shapes individual and group behaviour, and how individuals in turn influence culture.

Leadership and
Authority

How issues of leadership, authority, power play out in the workplace, and how they affect organisational dynamics/individual behaviour.

Emotional and Social Intelligence

The development of emotional and social intelligence to better understand and manage interpersonal relationships and conflicts in a professional setting.

Systemic
Thinking

A systemic perspective, considering the individual within the broader context of the organisation, including its structure, culture, and external environment.

Reflective
Practice

Encouraging individuals to reflect on their experiences, behaviours, and feelings to gain deeper self-awareness and understanding of their impact on others.

Testimonials.

To everyone looking for professional clarity in the area of design, I would strongly recommend talking to Marzia. I recently hired her to evaluate and challenge my current development stage as a senior service designer. She did a fantastic job helping me create a better alignment between my personality and my professional domain. Grazie, Marzia.

At one stage I asked Marzia to offer coaching to some more junior service designers in my group. I quickly realised I needed her help too. We met once every two weeks for about two months and worked through some activities she had designed. It was a significant moment for me, and set some patterns of reflection that I continue with today, and use with my teams.

Coaching.

Design Leaders and Practitioners.

Becoming a Better Design Leader

Getting Unstuck in Your Design Career

Coaching on the Job

My Approach.

A Bit of Theory.

Unconscious Processes

Organisational Culture

Leadership and Authority