meet the team

About Us

Emma Gooding and Vanessa Crow specialise in helping clients resolve and prevent conflict in the workplace.

an opportunity for change

Meet Vanessa

Vanessa began her human resources career at a global investment bank, before moving on to a well-known insurer and finally becoming an agile human resources consultant.

 

During a career span of over 20 years in human resources, she has spent countless hours dealing with the fall-out from workplace conflict, including:

  • dysfunctional teams
  • abrasive leaders
  • allegations of bullying and harassment
  • investigations
  • disciplinaries and grievances
  • absences due to stress
  • requests for transfers
  • valued employees leaving
  • blaming culture
  • employment tribunal claims

Vanessa began tracking the financial and human cost to business of these workplace disputes.  She became convinced that what was needed was early intervention to manage and prevent conflict, rather than just focusing on resolving it.

 

Following her passion for early intervention in workplace conflict, Vanessa trained as a conflict coach (CINERGY™ Conflict Management Coaching Method).  She is also certified in Conflict Dynamics™ Profiling.

 

Like Emma, Vanessa has a specialist interest in coaching abrasive leaders.  She is also an accredited workplace mediator.

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meet the team

Meet Emma

Inspired by “A Few Good Men” and “The Pelican Brief”, Emma decided at an early age to become a litigator.  She spent 10 years working for City law firms in London, New York and Hong Kong.  The work was exciting and glamorous, but at the end of a case Emma was always left with an uncomfortable feeling – that the only real winners in litigation were the lawyers. 

 

The turning point for Emma came after she worked on a high profile employment case between former directors of a global company.  An entire team had departed for a competitor, amidst allegations of:

  • bullying
  • harassment
  • blaming
  • ostracism
  • silo working
  • dysfunctional management
  • bad faith

The dispute was played out in public, over more than two years.  It cost both sides hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees, and seriously damaged their reputations.

 

Emma became convinced that early dispute resolution would be a far better way of resolving employment and workplace disputes.  She became a CEDR accredited mediator in 2008, and has been mediating employment and workplace disputes ever since.

 

Emma has been named a Leading Mediator in the UK by Legal 500 in both 2022 and 2023.

 

Emma is also an experienced mediation trainer.  She and Vanessa work with clients to set up internal workplace conflict resolution schemes (including training internal workplace mediators).

 

As well as resolving workplace disputes through mediation, Emma helps clients manage early-stage conflict.  Like Vanessa, Emma is a CINERGY™ trained conflict coach.  She has a particular specialism in abrasive leader coaching.

Before contacting Vanessa, I had been struggling with an ongoing conflict with someone I am in business with. It had been a constant battle to maintain a professional relationship and it was really affecting my confidence. Through conflict coaching, Vanessa helped me to shift my mindset and taught me to use different tools and approaches to clearly communicate what I needed out of the relationship.
Vanessa prepared me for a crucial meeting with an individual who I had been in conflict with. Through coaching, I felt confident to directly address a way to move forward. The meeting was successful and this gave me huge confidence in being able to shape this relationship moving forward as well as communication techniques that I shall take into all aspects of my life.
Thank you so much for this valuable coaching, I feel so positive about the future!
Vanessa was excellent at coaching me through a longstanding conflict. She was extremely professional, friendly and clear in her approach. I felt thoroughly supported to explore all options and reach my desired outcome. Vanessa is a superb coach, I can't thank her enough
As you know, I was not hopeful that things with my colleague would ever change. However, I wanted to let you know that we have managed to work on a small project together this last week and that we were able to communicate so much better thanks to the strategies we practised. This wouldn't have been possible without your coaching.
Emma approached the mediation with energy and warmth, encouraging us to actively engage in the process
Emma was excellent. She treated all the mediation participants with empathy throughout, which was very much needed after a difficult few months. With her help, we were able to find an agreed way forward, which I didn't think would be possible.
This dispute had been going on so long that we had given up on finding a resolution. With Gooding & Crow's help we were able to do exactly that. Thank you.
Emma is a sure-footed and accomplished mediator"
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