Dr. Shirley Turner, PCC

Shirley approaches coaching through the lens of Reflective Inquiry, which includes recapping, labeling, using metaphors, identifying essential or conflicting points, and recognizing emotional shifts. She also uses the Mind Story Map approach, which includes thoughts (topics), beliefs (self/others), emotions, behaviors, and outcomes. Strengths-based coaching is an often-used approach that Shirley uses to help leaders overcome barriers in their performance, often after a 360-performance review. Within the context of these approaches, Shirley helps her clients become more self-aware of themselves and their situations through various mindfulness exercises and self-discovery activities.

Shirley is committed to helping individuals, leaders, managers, executives, and groups move forward. Through thoughtful questioning, engaging exercises, and thought-provoking discoveries, she helps her clients get “unstuck”. As a result, clients can take the next step toward resolving personal and organizational issues while maintaining self-care.

LEADERSHIP ENGAGEMENTS

Shirley’s leadership engagements include executive coaching with directors and managers in HRSA, USDA, and GSA, as well as attorneys and educators in the private sector. These clients are principals, managers, team leaders, and managing partners in their organizations. Their coaching engagements center around assertiveness, self-confidence, transition, understanding leadership blind spots, maximizing strengths, self-development, and embracing agency and managing change in organizations. Shirley’s engagement with the African American Federal Executive Association (AAFEA) involves coaching/speaking engagements with groups of government employees on transition/change and professional writing skills in the workplace. She is also an instructor in AAFEA’s ECQ Bootcamp.

She is an Executive Leadership Coach and a retired educator with extensive experience as an instructional coach, professional developer, facilitator, and mentor. She has served on various DC Public Schools leadership teams. Her leadership positions included Change Facilitator, Instructional Coach, and Testing Coordinator. Her higher education involvement included Graduate Writing Coordinator and adjunct professor in the School of Education at Howard University. Dr. Turner is also a published author of the book, Catch the Spirit and Be Set Free, and peer-reviewed articles, including “Building Condition and Student Achievement: The Paradox” in Educational Facility Planner, 2014; and “From My Mother’s Garden” in The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: Collegial Exchange, 2025.

Select areas of specialization: strengths-based coaching, resilience, emotional intelligence, communications