Reach Coaching offers a broad range of services, with a focus on the provision of executive coaching and customised courses and workshops, as a channel for leadership development, team development and organisational culture change.
We also provide general facilitation services for meetings and workshops.
Through a network of affiliated organisation development professionals Reach Coaching, led by Jenny Postlethwaite, is able to support both small and larger scale projects, ranging from coaching of individuals through to organisation wide culture change strategies and programmes.
We are located in Newcastle, NSW, Australia, operating locally within the Hunter Region and travelling across Australia and New Zealand, to deliver services in the locations required by our clients.
Jenny Postlethwaite (Principal)
Jenny’s experience and special interest is in building the capability of organisations through people development, leadership and business culture. This is reflected in her passion for organisational coaching and culture change, in which she marries her strong communication and people skills with her many years of practical business experience in diverse fields including corporate strategy, business analysis, process improvement, project management, governance and communication.
Jenny’s strength and flexibility as a coach and facilitator complement her skills and experience in organisation and system change. This enables her to take a holistic approach working with individuals and teams, to help them recognise and achieve their potential.
As a coach and facilitator, Jenny's warm, down to earth style, practical approach and highly developed people skills are an asset. She connects well with individuals at all organisational levels and across a diversity of industry sectors, including utilities, manufacturing, construction, higher education, finance and not for profit.
Jenny’s utilisation of Action Methods in group and 1 on 1 work facilitates a deeper and more powerful learning experience at both the individual and the collective / system level. She has the ability to meet any audience and create a learning environment that is safe, engaging and challenging.
She was a member of staff at the Psychodrama Australia Sydney Campus from 2020-2022, involved in training a wide variety of professionals in the use of psychodrama / action methods. Her prior business experience has been primarily in medium and large enterprises, including Telstra, Melbourne Business School and Hunter Water Corporation and she has a strong track record in major business change projects in each of these organisations. In her most recent corporate role, Jenny was the Manager, Culture and Leadership Development at Hunter Water, where she also had a focus on corporate strategy and business improvement.
Qualifications, Accreditations and Memberships
- Professional Certified Coach - International Coach Federation
- Executive Coach Accreditation Level 3 - Institute of Executive Coaching & Leadership
- Narrative Coach Enhanced Practitioner - WBECS
- Certified Sociodramatist - Australian and New Zealand Psychodrama Association (AANZPA)
- Post Graduate Certificate in Psychodramatic Techniques Level 3 - Psychodrama Australia
- Accredited Mental Health First Aider - Mental Health First Aid Australia
- Art Therapy Certificate - CECAT
- Life Time Accredited Practitioner (LSI, GSI, L/I) - Human Synergistics
- MBTI Accreditation – CPP Asia Pacific
- MSCEIT Accreditation – MHS Organisational Effectiveness Group
- B Economics - Newcastle University
- International Coach Federation - Member
- Australian and New Zealand Psychodrama Association - Ordinary Member
- Association for Coaching - Associate Member
Prior Career Experience
In her last corporate role, Jenny was the Manager, Culture and Leadership Development at Hunter Water, where she also had a focus on corporate strategy and business improvement. Examples of her roles and outcomes at Hunter Water include –
- Co-leadership of the Culture Change programme, including culture analysis (using Human Synergistics tools), development and delivery of ongoing education sessions and support for individuals and teams in development and delivery of culture change initiatives. The results from the corporation’s first culture retest (2008) show that constructive styles doubled and defensive styles reduced
- Ongoing provision of one to one coaching services to line managers, with excellent results reflected through an independently administered Coaching Effectiveness survey
- Planning and co-facilitation of a successful Coaching Skills For Leaders programme, including ongoing group and individual support sessions to facilitate anchoring of new skills
- Review and redesign of a range of corporate governance processes, including –
>> Revitalisation of the Strategic Business Planning process, including introduction of a structured Strategy Mapping approach (Kaplan Norton), with the resulting new Strategic Plan described by the Managing Director as being "the biggest fundamental shift in our direction in a decade“
>> Redesign and refocusing of the executive management meetings to provide a clearer focus on performance monitoring and strategic planning
>> Revitalisation of the corporate Delegations to better align accountabilities with decision making authority and to reduce hierarchical dependencies by moving decision making authority to more appropriate organisational levels
>> Development and implementation of new processes and reporting approaches for operational and strategic performance reporting, which significantly broadened and deepened the engagement of senior and line managers in organisational performance management
Prior to that Jenny was at Melbourne Business School, where she –
- re-designed and implemented a new financial management system, including the selection and implementation of a suitable software system to underpin and facilitate the new financial management approach; and
- worked collaboratively with senior academic and administrative staff and key external suppliers, supporting the cost and pricing analysis for new product offerings, such as the Executive MBA programme and the pricing and promotion of the School’s conference and catering facilities.
At Telstra for a total of 18 years, Jenny held a broad diversity of leadership and project roles, including in the latter years –
- A lead project role in the needs analysis, systems evaluation and implementation of an integrated SAP system solution to replace existing corporate financial, costing and project systems
- Management responsibility for and active participation in a breakthrough project in the Customer Billing division, to analyse and model the end to end process costs of customer billing across the corporation, which subsequently enabled the ongoing identification and understanding of unit cost drivers for new product and billing initiatives
- The role of Manager Planning & Projects in Telstra’s IT division, where she led the team responsible for –
>> the annual financial planning and budgeting process for the division across Expense, Capital and Balance Sheet components (order of magnitude budget $450-$600m),
>> as well as key technical projects such as a comparative review of labour costing rates for internal and external (outsourced) resources, which delivered major financial benefit to Telstra on the costs of IT outsourcing - Culminating in the role of Manager Strategy and Analysis on Telstra’s GST Implementation Project, where she played a key strategic leadership role in the implementation of the GST for Telstra, including cost and price impact analysis and management of all negotiations with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
