Sometimes, when you’re in the middle of it, it’s hard to know where to start. Running a business, doing all the things required to make it grow is a bit like a bowl of noodles – finding the start of the noodle is key to success but it’s also difficult! Tracy-Anne helps me find the start of the noodle so I can help my business grow! Working with her, I gain clarity on what my next steps need to be so I can work through them progressively. She helps me work through challenges and gives me practical advice on how to handle pricing, tricky situations, awkward clients, etc. I’m so pleased I found her, I’m sure my business would not be as far forward as it is today. She holds me accountable and gives me confidence to move forward. Everyone in business needs a Tracy-Anne!

I’m the CEO of a global software company listed on the AIM stock exchange and I’ve been working with Tracy-Anne from TA Barker Associates for the last 9 months. At the end of 2019 I felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the workload I had with regards to growing the company and making it a huge success whilst balancing this with family commitments. Someone suggested that I look at hiring a coach to help me with this and I engaged with Tracy-Anne. Tracy-Anne has been an amazing coach over the last 9 months and has helped with all manner of challenges. From the business perspective, she’s made me accountable to do all the things I needed to do including making some very difficult decisions. She has also helped me become more organised so I can optimise my time from both a business and personal perspective. I could go on with a huge list but in essence, I have found that working with Tracy-Anne has enabled me to get the right ‘tool kit’ in place to deal with anything that business or life throws at me.

I really recommend the training with Tracy-Anne. I attended the virtual Essential Management programme and it was excellent. The activities, the pace and quality were all excellent. The opportunity to discuss how to deal with situations with other managers, with Tracy-Anne’s guidance really helped me to understand and learn how to be a better manager. Tracy-Anne is an excellent Trainer.

I’ve worked with TA Barker Associates on a number of initiatives including collaborating on a CSR forum and Tracy-Anne has also delivered Management training to our business. She is a knowledgeable, professional individual with a wealth of experience who is able to engage and work efficiently with any target audience. We look forward to working with her in the future.

TA Barker Associates are professional, personable, knowledgeable and instinctively understood the aims and objectives of the project and exceeded expectations

I enjoyed the course very much, the three things I will implement are, not to micro-manage, confirming check in points with staff, staff language and training. My employees thoroughly enjoyed the experience and have already put into practiced a lot of what they learnt. I am very pleased with the personal touch and obvious passion that TA Barker Associates has for its clients. Thank you so much for the workshop.

I attended a Power Hour coaching session with Tracy-Anne. The session was very good. It was relaxed and I didn’t feel pressured. I felt at ease and that I could be honest about my challenges. Tracy-Anne was able to coach me to find solutions to tasks that were overwhelming me. Straight forward solutions with the time to talk these through and realise that I have the skills and knowledge to go forward in my role has given me confidence and also the determination to manage my workload in a better and more efficient manner. I realised in the session that it was only me that was holding myself back and that my way of working needed to be more streamlined. I now understand that I have the power to manage demands on my time and move forward.

We have enjoyed an effective working relationship with Tracy-Anne for over five years. When a client approached us to complete a substantial project Tracy-Anne was an obvious fit for our project team. A consummate professional, Tracy-Anne also added value to the project through coaching client team members to understand and use data to inform decision making. The project was completed on-time, within budget and received positive client feedback. I would not hesitate to engage Tracy-Anne for future client work

The Managing Remote Working session run by TA Barker Associates was delivered in an easy to understand way, with time to reflect upon afterwards. The ideas were very interesting, some of which we can introduce. The ability to discuss and feedback ideas that would suit our organisations best was good. I scored the session as Excellent.

Tracy-Anne is an excellent trainer, she created a relaxed environment for learning remotely on the management skills course. Everyone had the opportunity to be involved and listened to. The pace of the course was excellent and the content very good for me. My takeaway action will be about being prepared to manage, delegation and that it is ok to get it wrong if we can learn from it and progress.

I attended the Management course, Tracy-Anne was excellent. I really enjoyed the coaching session to help with specific management problems and sharing ideas. My three takeaways for my role are motivation, conflict management and consistent communication across my team.

Tracy-Anne is currently my mentor; helping me to develop my strategic development and management skills. My sessions with Tracy-Anne are well structured and in line with agreed SMART targets agreed at the start of my mentoring programme. I am encouraged to direct my own learning in which Tracy-Anne takes role of facilitator. Her guidance & mentoring are invaluable and in a few sessions my confidence and knowledge in my ability to think strategically had increased. I also welcome Tracy-Anne’s pragmatic approach to my sessions; providing me with practical ways to develop my skills and in line with my preferred learning style. I highly recommend Tracy-Anne.

Tracy-Anne’s power sessions provide a great opportunity to identify and work through any issues that you may be experiencing whilst working on your business. Using the GROW model, she is able to help you better define the root causes, find possible solutions and formulate an action plan for moving forward. I’d recommend Tracy-Anne’s coaching without hesitation!

Tracy-Anne is a professional, reliable and very experienced consultant. The Essential Management Skills training course I attended, helped with lots of practical tools that I put to use immediately in our organisation.

I attended the Essential Management Skills Course, it was very good. It was very useful content, the session and pace was excellent. The extra coaching sessions were really valuable and allowed us to share problems and our experience. My takeaways were motivation, working with staff to find out their motivations, delegation and improving my productivity. I recommend the course.

I joined The Manager’s Circle in January 2021, the process was straight forward, no hassle and I really like the website, the tone and feel of it. I joined to find a structure and a supportive network within which to grow my vision and purpose as a manager and a leader for my future. To learn and grow more, with support. What’s the biggest difference The Manager’s Circle has made in your life and role? I already feel more confident in my current role and am gaining more confidence for next steps towards my future role too, it helps me feel excited rather than overwhelmed. Hearing from the others in the group, with Tracy-Anne’s guidance, is very uplifting, The experience of giving and receiving support, is just what I was looking for.

The course was excellent and I really enjoyed learning more about peoples attitudes and the ways to manage other people

Very good course, I attended the Essential Management Skills course in February. From the outside looking at a managers role it can be a bit daunting (and still can be) as the role is vast, however, this course has served well to demystify a lot of it for me.It was interesting learning about the management techniques covered whilst not being in a management role, there were definitely some things that can help with how I work currently and things for the future. My main takeaways from the sessions are: 1) Ownership of processes ad discipline are super important. 2) Consider where I can apply the skills learnt in my role. 3) Management roles are vast, but not impossible.

Working with TA Barker Associates has been amazing! I’ve attended an amazing CSR Forum as well as hearing Tracy-Anne present with clarity and vision at another recent event. All very informative.

We have completed some fantastic management training at Pathway CTM this week, delivered by the excellent Tracy-Anne Barker MCMI. I would highly recommend her and I am pleased that our team have had this start to the year. She consistently exceeded our expectations. She is a great trainer, the content was bespoke yet had enough flexibility to allow us to relate the content in real time which was important to us.