Andrew Leahy started out wanting to become a general practitioner. Ended up as a child and adolescent psychiatrist.
He discovered coaching having seen his wife become a coach and having sessions himself periodically to enhance and develop his work.
Andrew was fortunate in being able to start ILM 7 just prior to his retirement, qualifying in January 2015.
He has always been interested in how people may create positive change in their lives. In his late twenties he was influenced by what used to be known as “humanistic psychology” particularly by the work of John Heron, Eric Berne and Carl Rogers and to a lesser degree Gestalt techniques. He attended workshops based in these areas and found that they greatly benefited him as a person and his work. Much he learnt then he still uses today.
He has formal qualifications in family therapy, behaviour therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy and dialectical behaviour therapy. He also has a practitioner certificate in NLP.
He coaches / mentors for the NHS in various ways and does some teaching on coaching/mentoring for the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the West Midlands.
He has done courses with Michael Neill and Jamie Smart as well as more orthodox coaching education via the NHS Midlands Leadership Academy, “In Touch” and the EMCC.
He retired from mainstream medical practice in 2014, now does mainly regulatory work and acting as a trustee for a charity involved in children and young people’s mental health. He does occasional out of hours work and locums in the NHS locally.
He is in the process of staring a coaching business and reigniting a long held passion i.e. environmental issues. He has just rediscovered the joys of cycling.