Northampton woman, who takes pride in ‘challenging the status quo’, wins business award

A Northampton woman, who takes pride in “challenging the status quo”, has won a business award.

Lucienne Shakir, the founder of Lucienne Coaching, was named ‘best coach’ at the Best Businesswomen Awards at the end of last month.

She has been praised for her work as a high performance coach and mentor, specialising in female empowerment and working with female business founders.

Lucienne took to social media after her award win to discuss her dedication to ethical coaching practices and busting the high performance myth – which she has also spoken to this newspaper about.

When asked how she would sum up her line of work as a high performance coach, Lucienne said: “I bust a lot of myths. The reason I won best coach is because I challenge the status quo.

“You hear the words high performance and you think of someone who gets up at 5am and does everything for everyone. That’s not what it is.”

Lucienne says her focus on female empowerment stems from the fact that “women have historically been responsible for caregiving” – and she wants to help them slow down and have the energy to be their best selves.

Though Lucienne first trained in coaching and mentoring long before she had a nervous breakdown 10 years ago, she believes this was the turning point.

Lucienne was clinically and chronically depressed, spending most of her time in bed, for around a year after she had her son.

“I always worked really hard to be at the top of my game,” she said. “I was working to be a leader in education, had a baby and lost my identity.

“I didn’t realise female empowerment was my passion until I was coached.”

Lucienne shared that from peer review research projects she has been involved in, it is clear that “women are manipulated in business very often”.

She wanted to stress that she does not say this from an emotional perspective as a woman herself, and that it comes from research.

Lucienne said: “Drawing boundaries is a problem in male-dominated environments. There are still a lot less women around the boardroom and diversity is needed.”

The high performance coach says she sees these patterns in the coaching world as well, and wants to raise awareness of unethical practices.

She spoke of “multi level marketers” who sell women the dream of running their own lifestyle business and earning thousands of pounds a month, often leaving them in debt.

“We need regulation in the coaching industry as we are working with livelihoods,” Lucienne added. “It lines the pockets of the business owner, at the expense of those paying for the services. All genders are doing it.”

When asked how it feels to have won her award, Lucienne says it was “so great to be recognised”.

She was also awarded silver in the ‘most inspirational woman in business’ category.

The awards ceremony gave Lucienne the opportunity to meet people running “phenomenal businesses”, which she found “inspirational”.

When asked if she hopes her award promotes the importance of supporting the achievements of women, Lucienne said: “There’s a lot of negativity, if you look for it, around women in business.

“Women’s networks are incredibly powerful and do not need to be dumbed down.”

Lucienne wants people to see just how powerful women-led businesses are, especially as the founders are typically raising families too.

The high performance coach’s proudest achievement in her current line of work is being able to “think bigger than she ever has before”.

Lucienne recently moved into offices at Vulcan Works and put in a bid for an institute for female founders in business to be located in Northampton.

Just recently, she welcomed 20 people from all over the world to the town for one of her programmes.

“Before, I was doing this in Manchester and Switzerland,” she said. “I’m so proud that people will travel to come and learn from us in Northampton.”

For more information about Lucienne Shakir’s work, visit her website here.