ABOUT THE PEOPLE ACADEMY, INC. PRESIDENT, TONI REECE

My name is Toni Reece. I'm a coach (business and personal) and President of The PEOPLE Academy, Inc. (based in the United States) and co-founder of The PEOPLE Academy, U.K.

Our flagship product, The PEOPLE Model™, is not merely a product. It's a collection of resources created by real people for real people in real situations.  But that statement starts at the end, and I need to start at the beginning.

I've been coaching people in some way my entire life; from a very early age and from a necessity that the world be happy and right.  The early stuff is what we call ‘accidental coaching’; one who is a great listener, a good friend, the one that gets the calls in the middle of the night to help with a personal disaster. 

As I grew, these skills became more purposeful and intentional. As I matured, I could see the connections between skill and result. I found that there is power in helping others: the power of happiness. In the evolution of my life — in the growing process of becoming me — I discovered amazing riches and personal fulfillment I could have only dreamed of as a child.

I've always been a friend’s friend, and I take deep pride in my close relationships. But where I really discovered the power was in the course of my professional career.

I am task oriented, and in my early jobs I was given tasks and performed them well. As I developed and the jobs became more dependent on the involvement of others, I found those skills of facilitation and coaching incredibly important in working with others. It was my introduction to engagement.

Short story: my last job before starting my company over 15 years ago was Manager of Customer Quality for an international battery manufacturer. One ‘task’ was to get 5 plants, 33 service locations and the corporate headquarters ISO certified. We did that in two years. That is incredibly impressive for those who may not fully understand the scope of the undertaking.

But here’s the thing. The only way on earth to have accomplished that (and many other ‘victories’) was through the power of the people: in the plant, in the office, in the field. I was on the manufacturing floor, face to face and in meeting after meeting; exchanges that relied on the needs and wants, hopes and dreams, of each and every individual. It was building trust and showing respect that got the job done.

That epiphany led me to start my company so that I could teach what I came to believe and do it in a way that was grounded in results (I did start out as an ISO Lead Auditor and that stuff never leaves you!).

My business was billed initially as a consultancy. But it didn’t take long to see that I wasn’t a consultant. I was a coach. You see, it’s not my power that produced – it was theirs. And there are significant and fundamental differences in those approaches.

My coaching business (Baysix Training, Inc. — a play on the word getting back to “basics”) was a 15-year journey of working in and with all industries (and all levels within those industries), and the common thread of those 15 years was the human experiences. 

Coaching CEOs, Plant Managers, Managers, Leaders, teams and individuals — whether it was in the United States or internationally — the combination of coaching skills, performance resources and the individual people who were at the heart of the experience we were working on became the recipe for success. Their success.

One of the experiences that I had along the way was to work with an international franchise.  The franchisee wanted to be more PEOPLE focused.  That is where I met a colleague who would introduce me to two people who would take the next steps with me to build a new business — The PEOPLE Academy, UK.  Neil Annis and Linda Harland were two very like-minded people who ran a very successful coaching business in the UK.  We decided to take our collective 60 years of experience (personal and business) and create a PEOPLE focused product – The PEOPLE Model™.

My story is relevant to you because of who you are and what you want to do. I know from my own life story how very important it is to have a champion that you trust to guide you in reaching your fullest potential. That’s the coach you want to be.

Remember — as you consider the aspects most relevant to you — that The PEOPLE Model™ is not just a product. It is a collection of resources used by real people in real situations; built from a collective 60 years of people-focused business and personal experiences — literally hundreds and hundreds of experiences. These experiences are The PEOPLE Model™.