about clare haynes and wildfire

award-winning difficult conversations speaker, trainer and coach

Clare Haynes helps leaders handle what's going on and say what they need to say. Pussyfooting around or putting it off makes it worse but strong conversation skills sort it out.

Do your teams get stressed, or have time wasted, by rude or difficult customers? Are you fed up with the arse-covering hidden behind strategy or policy?

💡She knows that feeling and quit her job because it felt like a fight, navigating what never seemed like straight-talking.

She went travelling and was serving steak in a Sydney jazz club to an ogre of a chap, which was a lightbulb moment about how to make it all easier. And so she started Wildfire, for people to have confident conversations, calmly and in control!

Since starting Wildfire 23 years ago, Clare’s worked with over 7500 people to conquer difficult conversations, speaking at conferences, through training and workshops and through executive coaching.

She set out to help people handle scenarios, using her coaching, Psychology, NLP, Marketing, Performance and Trauma and Complex PTSD training. But her management experience has been the best education.

As your very own conversation queen, she handholds, steers, and is there on-demand, fiercely cheerleading whilst you feel like you’re having a cuppa with your most trusted mentor.

multi-award-winning

2026:

Clare is a finalist in the inaugural Best SME Awards for the Best Impact (to the community or industry).

She has also made finalist for Coach of the Year at the British HR Awards. Both awards announce the winners in April.

2025:

Clare was named in the UK’s top 100 female entrepreneurs by Small Business Britain.

She won Best Coach/Consultant at The Ladies’ First Awards.

Wildfire was announced Service Provider of the Year at the Business Success Recognition Awards.

Clare won Silver in the Best Businesswomen Awards for Best Coach.

clare facts

Clare’ s a Black Belt 2nd Dan in Mixed Martial Arts

She walks a lot, hence offering walking coaching. And she loves a good podcast!

Clare’s holiday of choice is skiing with her 2 children

She believes in kindness (hence the orange heart emoji on her socials and messages)

Clare’s favourite colour is orange!

She’s worked in communications, sport, sales, fundraising, TV, charity and public sectors.

 

CLare quotes

“All poor behaviour is underpinned by fear”

“Emotions complicate conversations”

“People are brilliant when you look!”

talk to clare about how you can work with her

From Instagram:

Ghosting is cowardly and lazy in dating, but are you doing it at work without realising, and bashing your credibility and confidence in the process? Ghosting leaves someone hanging, without a word or explanation, as if they don’t matter. It&r
Not fit for purpose. That’s my condemnation of the International Women’s Day ‘Give to Gain’ theme. I’m all for Givers Gain (a nearly 40 year-old networking principle, kinda like business karma) but for IWD? Give&he
Blimey! Finalist for Coach of the Year at the British HR Awards. Wasn't on my radar and wouldn't have thrown my hat in the ring for this without a nudge.. so, if you're putting off putting yourself forward for something, hope it encourages you to!
Stop asking women to justify their worth. To explain their value. To demonstrate their effort. Last week I noticed how one arm of an organisation, that's for women (run by women!) stresses how it's expected that they do extra, that they give more, t
I'm a finalist in The Best SME Awards! And chuffed to say the least. The nicest thing about this award is that someone, who knows a lot about my work for the past 23 years, nominated me/Wildfire for the Best Impact category. Helping someone handl
What do I do? Loved being invited on the Small Business Big Network podcast by host @lizdruryvo the brilliant voiceover artist (just listen to her voice.. it’s sooo smooth!). We talk: How I got started, TV, charity sector then back to work p
It’s easy to only hammer a keyboard when you’ve had a bad meal or holiday. But reviews can mean the world when they’re good. Like this one, from a longstanding coaching and training client (the full version is on my LinkedIn profi
At the moment, job-seeking sounds like a battleground for many. Last week a client had feedback that they could've elaborated more. They would've. Gladly. It's the INTERVIEWER'S job to elicit answers. I learned this in my first management job, ov
To flip conversations like pancakes (the ones that go to plan, back in the pan!) then it’s about stacking up simple strategies. I love pancakes. I’m happy making a huge batch for weekend brunch, in my PJs, and freezing them for when we&
Big surprises for Valentine’s isn’t my thing; pizza and fizz suits me. In difficult conversations we don’t like surprises either and being heartfelt can stop it feeling heated or stone cold. These are some heartfelt principles we r
You’re mistakenly blaming someone else for abusing your time, effort and energy if you’ve accidentally trained them into it. We teach people how to treat us: Someone doesn’t talk over you; You’ve trained them that they can
Who isn’t grateful for positive feedback? It’s a bit of a bugbear of mine that people don’t receive enough. It’s not difficult. Really grateful when I get some. Here’s a recent snippet from a longstanding coaching an