Although I consider myself first a doer, over the years I have accumulated management responsibilities in a variety of job settings, duties I don't always relish or feel able to perform at the highest level.

Deb Howard has helped me immeasurably as a management coach, enabling me to leverage my strengths as a professional and a person, providing perceptive insights into the people I manage that helped me spur them to greater productivity, and giving me a much more accurate sense of what behaviors of mine motivate—or demotivate—people I work with.

Deb was especially helpful in working with me to develop a results-oriented performance evaluation tool, by far the best model I have worked with, and a strategy for following up with staff.

By taking some of the worry out of management and helping me get results more efficiently, she's also helped me find more time to do the kinds of projects—writing, media relations, planning—that I have always gotten the most joy out of.

Jeff Wakefield
Asst. Director, University Communications
University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont