Peak Positive: Strengthening Guernsey’s Human Skills for the Future

Innovation in Guernsey relies not just on great ideas, but on the people behind them. The Digital Greenhouse Startup Academy supports founders through this journey, helping them refine and validate their concepts. Peak Positive, founded by Michelle Winn, emerged with a powerful insight from this year’s programme: many of our biggest challenges start with the quality of our conversations.

Michelle’s background in mental health, education, entrepreneurship, coaching, and positive psychology revealed a pattern: many organisational issues (from retention to innovation) trace back to a conversation that didn’t happen, or didn’t happen well. When this occurs, ideas stall, talent leaves or disengages, and organisations turn to costly external solutions instead of building capability from within.

How the Startup Academy Shaped the Vision

Michelle entered the Academy with a broad concept around coaching and leadership development, but the programme’s rigorous structure, customer research, and crucial peer founder support helped refine the opportunity and test what organisations actually needed.

The Academy helped her sharpen her mission: to create an island-wide coaching culture, where we support development, feel safe to speak openly, challenge constructively and innovate faster - positioning Guernsey as a centre for coaching excellence by 2030.

This alignment of purpose, market insight, and ambition is exactly what the Academy aims to cultivate.

The Solution: Accredited Coaching Foundations

To move this vision forward, Michelle has launched the Coaching Foundations Programme—an accredited, evidence-based introduction to coaching designed to build internal capability across teams and organisations.

The programme offers:

• Accredited training – aligned with EMCC Global, one of the leading global professional coaching bodies, and delivered in-person on-island for the first time.
• Practical coaching skills – asking better questions, deep listening and respectful challenge.
• A shared language for collaboration – improving consistency, clarity and psychological safety across teams. 
• Local delivery – eliminating the cost and time involved in off-island travel or impersonal online courses. 

This approach provides a strategic pathway for organisations looking to strengthen internal talent and cultivate a culture of continuous improvement.

Invest in People, Invest in the Future

Peak Positive’s mission aligns strongly with Guernsey’s broader goals around innovation, retention, and resilience. By equipping people with high-quality coaching skills, Michelle aims to help unlock clearer thinking, stronger relationships, and more innovative solutions.

The first cohort is strictly limited to 10 places. Quick heads up: These limited places are filling up quickly for the February start date, and a special Founding Rate is available for this first cohort only.

As Michelle summed up in her presentation: “AI and tech may shape the future - but human connection will shape its success.”

To learn more, visit www.peakpositive.co.uk