Case Studies
More about what we do…
Case Study—Masterlease Group
“Suzie Sharpe has been working with managers and staff at Masterlease throughout an intensive period of change over the past four years. In 2003, she began working with senior managers to help them lead their teams through the beginning of a particularly uncertain and stressful period. The success of the programme clearly demonstrated that Max Focus should be rolled out over the following year to the rest of the staff within the company.
Having been through the training and the coaching process with Suzie, made sure that every member of my team attended her training courses. Even the most negative members of staff return after the programme energised and ready for anything. Being able to talk to each other in Max Focus terms gives everyone a common language, and an understanding of the impact their behaviour might have on everyone else.
When management trainees return from our management development centre I am responsible for their PDPs. Attending a Max Focus motivational change and assertiveness course with Suzie is always one of the first things I insist upon as part of their professional development. I know that individuals are going to come back from their training having learned how important it is to work towards their goals and to achieve them. It also encourages the individual to demand more from their own performance and to expect the same from the team.
On a more personal note, I found that Max Focus had a profound effect on how I felt about myself and the relationships in my life—both at work and at home. One of the biggest lessons I have taken away from the experience is that I am now completely in charge of my attitude, something I used to find very difficult. I also know how much of a positive influence I can be on other people if I choose to remain optimistic and confident in my own abilities.
I know that I am not alone in saying that Max Focus is a life-changing event. Everything in the programme makes good common sense and is completely energising to everybody attending. Suzie’s training style is challenging, interesting and always a lot of fun. As a coach, she is like a personal fitness trainer for your feelings and behaviour—she works you hard and leaves you feeling you have really accomplished something at the end of every session.
I can highly recommend Suzie Sharpe and the Max Focus programme to any organisation facing change and am proud to have worked so closely with her.”
Case Study—TNG Workskills
“Suzie Sharpe began working for TNG Workskills during a period of expansion in our Wigan Centre in October 2003. Over a three-month period she developed a tailor-made motivational programme for a considerably difficult client group, the long-term unemployed.
Her immediate rapport with clients made a strong impact on the amount of clients into jobs as well as their attitude towards finding work in general. Suzie’s motivational training sessions were always eagerly anticipated by the group, participants meeting each new challenge put to them with enthusiasm and commitment. Her professionalism and innovative approach to training also had a marked effect upon the staff in the Centre.
After three months of exceptional success with clients in Wigan I decided to role out the Maximum Focus training to both staff and clients in my centres all over the North West. Maximum Focus was met by managers and staff all over the region with vigorous enthusiasm. Working with the unemployed, although rewarding in its successes, can be both demanding and frustrating for staff at the ‘front line’. The motivational strategies and techniques used in the Max Focus training were immediately taken on by the teams to strengthen and reinforce their purpose in helping clients back to the workplace. Suzie’s natural enthusiasm for her subject is not only inspiring and professional but also a lot of fun. This combination of skills made her visits to centres across the North West extremely popular. This prompted me to make the Maximum Focus training available to staff and clients across the rest of the centres in the UK.
Suzie has used her highly developed coaching and life-changing skills in a number of sensitive areas within Workskills and across other divisions of the TNG Group. Individuals requiring further one-to-one coaching to improve morale, team spirit or advice of a more personal nature have found her unique subjectivity extremely helpful.
On a personal level, I have found Suzie Sharpe to be resourceful, imaginative and an excellent confidante. Her encouragement and inspiration to give everything in life one-hundred per cent commitment is impossible to ignore—even by the most hardened cynic. I hope her approach to training and personal development will continue to inspire managers, staff and clients of Workskills for many years to come.”
Own Situation Analysis summary of Max Focus:
“I’m delighted to have been involved in a motivational programme that has also influenced my life outside of work. Due to my work with Suzie Sharpe and Key Change Training, I am excited to be planning the continued development of both my own Emotional Intelligence and that of my friends and colleagues.
An exciting period of self-discovery in my personal life coincided with an opportunity to take part in the Max-Focus motivational coaching programme, and the experience of Emotional Intelligence measurement. Subsequent discussion about the results with our coach and my colleagues led to incredible insights about how relationships form and how we can choose our attitude in response to both internal and external influences.
Applying this kind of thinking to relationships enabled me to realise that many of the negative experiences in my past were caused by my own attitudes and behaviours. For the first time I became aware of my influence on people, both positive and negative. My opinion of people who didn’t follow processes had always been quite judgemental and this affected how I interacted with them. By carefully thinking about their motivations, and my attitude towards them, I am now becoming more able to communicate with people in a mutually beneficial way.”
Case Study—DARA Electronics
Brief:
The organisation was stuck between its deeply rooted past, which was Ministry of Defence and Civil Service, and the recently restructured commercial corporate environment that was its newly formed directive. It was decided that the level within the organisation to carry the most influence across the entire structure of the company was the Product Managers—each leading a key proportion of the organisation including team leaders, section supervisors and the entire engineering production staff and apprentices.
The product managers were reported to be demoralised, unwilling to undertake responsibilities outside of what they were instructed to do by the senior management team and were generally rooted in the grindingly slow Civil Service/MOD routines of which they had always been a part. The brief was to motivate the managers into embracing the change which was already in the process of happening and to empower them with the tools and techniques necessary to enable them to instil creativity, enthusiasm and involvement into their staff. The direction and growth of the organisation and its future success depended upon the removal of the fear of change inherent throughout the staff structure while replacing it with absolute engagement and a sense of ownership in the process of its development.
Method:
All of the product managers were asked to complete three Hogan psychometric assessment questionnaires and were then invited to attend a 1-2-1 feedback and “fact-finding” session. This was followed by an initial two-day Max Focus workshop designed around the needs of the individuals making up the group.
The workshop addressed Emotional Intelligence issues of self and other awareness and the importance of self-management and self-leadership before being able to effectively lead others. Leading others begins with managing the relationship you have with yourself and building an awareness of the needs of those around you—primarily other managers, followed by the rest of their teams.
A one-day “facilitated task” workshop quickly followed the initial two-day event with the managers exploring and sharing the strengths within individual personality that they could bring to the team. This was followed up with a series of motivational coaching sessions both individually and in pairs, during which time each of the managers developed their purpose and goals in their individual life plan—an itemised route map over a given period.
Outcomes:
- Energy and a huge influx of enthusiasm across the management team, including golf tournaments, regular think-tank/brainstorming sessions and a high level of co-operation and involvement across the teams and divisions.
- Support for each other and ownership of the changes being undertaken within the organisation.
- Personal professional development in chosen fields of interest, including study of management at masters level, management psychology and influencing skills, LEAN engineering techniques and Emotional Intelligence Practitioner Diploma.
Production levels across the board are up and continue to rise on a monthly basis. Morale across the entire site is heightened and a positive air of expectancy towards change has replaced uncertainty and confusion. The second “wave” of Max Focus is about to commence at the end of Spring 2008, taking Emotionally Intelligent behaviour to a wider group of managers.
Secondary content
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Email: suzie@keychangetraining.com
