Case Studies
Whether you are considering offering Purpose sessions as a benefit to your team, or are looking for counselling / mentoring for yourself, here are 5 recent examples to read. All names and images have been replaced to maintain confidentiality.
Case Study 1: Recruitment business of 18 people
Since January 2024, I have been supporting an Engineering and MedTech recruitment business in Scotland. The company had 15 staff in January 2024, including the Managing Director, 12 billing consultants (a mix of perm and contract) and 2 people in finance / office management / marketing. As of March 2025, the company is now 18 people, having hired 5 new consultants and had two leavers.
Following an initial trial, where 3 individuals in the business had a series of 6 sessions each, Purpose Mentoring has now been rolled out across the organisation and is openly promoted as a staff benefit. The company pays for a certain number of sessions per person per quarter, and if any individual chooses to have additional sessions then they pay 50% (deducted as a pre-tax employee benefit on the payroll) and the company pays the other 50%. The Managing Director takes regular feedback from the team about the effectiveness of Purpose sessions (not discussing the content, but the value each person feels they are getting), and Purpose Mentoring is seen as a positive investment by the business in the whole team’s mental wellbeing and personal / professional development.
For an initiative like this to work effectively, it requires the business leaders to be fully engaged in the process. Not only do they need to provide the time and physical space for people to access private online sessions (some people have them in the office, and others at home on WFH days), but they need to trust in the process from an ROI perspective.
Purpose sessions may not have an immediately noticeable impact, but over time they are proven to significantly improve people’s communication, their resilience, their mindset, and their ability to focus at work by managing issues outside of work more effectively. For this particular company, they have reported reduced absence levels, an increase in consistent billing, and a reduction in staff turnover compared to previous years.
Not everyone in your team will want to have Purpose sessions - and this is ok. In this particular company, the majority of staff have had at least 3 sessions, but it is entirely voluntary and would never be compulsory.
Case Study 2: Solo Entrepreneur
In Summer 2024, I started working with “Ben”, who had worked in Business Development and Recruitment Sales positions in large companies for around 20 years, and made the decision in 2022 to set up his own consultancy. The services he offers include executive search recruitment and leadership development consultancy.
Though he is clearly a capable, experienced and entrepreneurial individual, Ben has been struggling to maintain his focus and positive mindset. 18 months into having his own business, he began to lose motivation, disheartened by the lack of new inbound business or referrals. Ben and I began meeting weekly, for 6 weeks initially, helping Ben firstly to understand where his lack of motivation was coming from, before gradually starting to look at practical ways to maintain a positive mindset. Outside of work, Ben has been going through a difficult period in his marriage, alongside losing a close family member, and part of the work in Purpose sessions has been to support Ben from a counselling perspective, providing a safe space in which he can process his recent loss, alongside understanding the changes in his marriage, physical changes he has been experiencing at his time of life, and the lack of support he has now that he is not surrounded by colleagues like he had in his previous business.
This is a good example of how Purpose sessions provide a safe, private environment in which people can talk about what is going on for them both personally and professionally.
Case Study 3: Team Leaders in a large recruitment agency
I am proud to partner with a recruitment agency in London who employ around 80 staff, across sales and non-sales teams. As part of their expansion, in late 2023 they promoted 4 individuals into leadership positions, as well as moving a team leader up to Associate Director.
I met separately with each of these 5 individuals, for Purpose sessions once a week for 6 weeks initially, and am now continuing to work with them for a monthly ‘check-in’, with the option for them to get in contact any time between sessions if they would benefit from further, ad-hoc support and decision-making.
In the past, when the company had promoted people into leadership roles, their own billing tended to decline after 3-4 months. My remit was therefore to mentor each of the new leaders so they gain the confidence to set clear boundaries, being present and supportive for their teams while also staying organised and efficient to maintain their own billing. The key to this has been to identify what each person’s unique blockers are, helping them to understand their obligations as leaders and giving them the tools to work through different situations in a clear, focused way.
One individual in particular (“Jack”) has struggled with the change of status from being “one of the team” to being in charge. Jack used to be very sociable, but his initial instinct following the promotion was to become ultra-serious, no longer engaging in banter 0r light-hearted behaviour in the office, and no longer attending after-work drinks. His mental wellbeing was suffering as a result and he quickly began to resent the promotion. In Jack’s Purpose Mentoring sessions, we have been working together to uncover the reasons for Jack’s extreme change in behaviour, helping him to still be the Leader whilst not shutting off completely from the fun side of recruitment (which is an important part of the company’s culture).
Purpose sessions don’t have to be rolled out across the entire organisation. They can be used strategically, with particular effectiveness in new leaders or people who are being earmarked for future promotion. This wouldn’t be ‘leadership training’, but an additional supplement to your existing training which may not cover the huge personal impact that becoming a leader can have on an individual.
Case Study 4: Clinical Trial Project Manager
I have been working with a Clinical Trial Project Manager (“Anne”), who has a pressurised job with long hours and also has a lot of personal challenges at home.
Anne and I began with a single Purpose session in April 2024, in which we explored the reasons why Anne felt that she now needed some support. Over the last year Anne had gradually felt more and more overwhelmed by her workload, often leading to working longer hours in her office-based days, and not being able to switch off at an appropriate time on her home-based days. She finds herself constantly checking her emails, even on weekends; and she has started taking on more and more workload herself, where she used to delegate more to the junior members of the team.
The work extended to a series of 6 weekly Purpose sessions, which has since settled into a monthly catch-up session throughout 2025. Anne and I have started to uncover some difficulties that Anne experiences in setting boundaries (both for herself and her colleagues), which link to a reluctance to trust others. Anne realised that this lack of trust may link to the arrival of a new manager who joined the business around 18 months before, and who has a tendency to criticise Anne’s quality of work. Feeling under increased pressure, Anne has begun to take on more responsibility herself in order to prove her value; and the lack of trust in others seems to stem from some issues from Anne’s relationships with her two siblings growing up.
This progress with Anne is a good example of how Purpose sessions can help to identify the cause of work-related issues, acknowledging the impact that these can have outside of work, and helping gain a deeper understanding of the root cause of someone’s stress and anxieties.
Case Study 5: Area Manager in a Mid-Sized Recruitment Agency
I have worked with a Divisional Recruitment Manager (“Jane”) since June 2024, meeting with her on a weekly basis since she was introduced through a mutual contact.
Jane has had a successful recruitment career over the last 12+ years, working her way up steadily from Graduate Trainee to Team Leader in one recruitment business, before taking on a Sales Manager role in a slightly larger company, where she was then promoted to Area Manager in mid-2023. Jane is now responsible for business development functions across 3 recruitment offices in the Midlands and North West of England, with 5 direct reports and around 20 indirect reports.
Jane was referred to Purpose Mentoring because she has found it a challenge to step up from having a relatively straightforward and linear position (driving sales in one branch) to being split across 3 sites, two of which have had a disappointing first half of 2024 (partly due to market conditions, and partly due to inconsistent leadership). Jane has therefore had to adjust to spending a lot of time on the road, without the regular daily contact she used to have with one single time in one location. She also now reports directly to the CEO and is involved in senior leadership meetings, which she wasn’t before.
We have worked on a range of personal challenges that Jane is experiencing, including these 4 main issues:
‘Managing up’ (having the confidence to challenge the CEO and senior leaders on strategic decisions).
Being assertive with people she doesn’t see every day, where standards have slipped and performance needs to be improved.
Time management, and improving efficiency within limited timeframes (especially being split across different sites). Jane is a natural ‘people person’ and enjoys getting to know people; so it is a challenge for her to have to limit her time with certain individuals, recognising that she is now unable to fix other people’s problems and needs to work on how to delegate and empower others.
Being able to switch off from work when she gets home to her young family (this has become more of a challenge for her in recent months; so we have been looking at practical ways in which she can ‘finish’ her work at the end of the day, even when so many things remain ongoing).
Our work is ongoing, meaning that we can work together in real time to help Jane with ‘live’ challenges - all the while we are gradually getting to the bottom of where her need to ‘fix everything’ comes from.