We offer a range of interventions to improve business and individual performance. We see this as our ‘asset bank’, which we share with our clients. We seek to work collaboratively with our clients, their colleagues and ourselves. Sharing ideas, learning together, and developing opportunities for business and individual continuous improvement. If you would like to see an example of a workshop in progress please click on the video button.

Our specific experience is in:

• Leadership programmes
• Management and Graduate development programmes
• Coaching – individual and team
• Negotiation and Influencing programmes
• Training Consultancy

We also have considerable experience in facilitating in-company workshops to improve senior team development, and management employee relationships.

Across our team we have accreditations in the following psychometric instruments and profiling reports.
MBTI®, 16PF5®, FIRO-B®, CPI260®, Benchmarks®, Skillscope®, CDP® (Conflict Dynamic Profile), CSI® (Change Style Indicator), Insights Discovery®, 360byDesign®, Apter Motivational Style Profile (AMSP ®) and Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-I®).

Matthew has worked as a learning & development facilitator since1986 following a 10-year career in international project management and business development. His international experience included extensive work in the Middle East, USA, Japan, Korea, and South East Asia.

Matthew’s first major learning and development work was as a senior management development trainer for the Agricultural Training Board. He was responsible for project managing the whole of the regional management training programmes for the England and Wales, and for evaluating the programmes and those running them.

He has worked with senior management and shop floor teams on major change programmes for companies such as Goodrich Actuation Systems, Rolls Royce Aerospace, Honeywell, and Lucas Automotive. On many of these he worked with Philip Crisp and Jim Blenkinsop (see below for Philip and Jim's profile).

Since 1993 Matthew has worked with the L&D and Employee Relations teams at National Grid PLC, facilitating a range of programmes and workshops to help improve communications and understanding across this major international business. Other clients have included the Economic Development Team at the Corporation of the City of London, and Logica PLC, where Paul and Matthew have worked together on a range of negotiation programmes.

Matthew is a member of the coaching panel for Land Securities PLC. In 2006 he became an associate faculty member of the Center for Creative Leadership facilitating leadership programmes in Europe, Africa, The Middle East and South East Asia.

Matthew is a graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. He is a Member of the Institute of Business Consulting, and an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development.

Matthew can be contacted at:
matthew[AT]matthewhunter.co.uk (replace the [AT] with @)

Paul’s career has been predominantly focussed on developing people and has consisted of two distinct phases. Firstly an extensive corporate career with BP in professional and leadership roles in the HR and L&D functions of a number of different businesses. He lived and worked in a many countries spending considerable time in the Gulf and in sub-Saharan Africa. He developed his passion for coaching while with BP and his last role for them was as Senior Business Advisor and Leadership Coach, based in Cape Town.

Paul then became an independent coach and learning consultant, focussing on developing leadership behaviours over a wide range of organisational levels using coaching and formal learning programmes. He also coaches and trains in specific interpersonal skills, particularly those connected with negotiation, relationship-building, influencing and conflict management.

Working for Management Development Services Ltd., Hong Kong, he recently completed a major, multi-module people management skills programme for leaders of the world’s largest clothing and accessories merchandising organisation. This involved delivering programmes in Turkey, Portugal, Guatemala and the UK. Paul and Matthew have worked together designing and delivering negotiation programmes for Logica, the international IT consultancy and services company. Paul has also carried out an extensive learning needs analysis of negotiation skills for senior leaders in Logica [one and two levels below the executive board]. The detailed report received an enthusiastic response, which resulted in an invitation to design and deliver learning processes to meet most of the identified needs.

He has a BSc[Hons] in Applied Chemistry, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Personnel Management and a Certificate in Training and Development. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (FCIPD), and a Member of the Association for Coaching (MAC). He is also a licensed practitioner for the MBTI®, Insights Discovery® Personal Profile, Emotional Quotient Inventory® (EQ-i®), Margerison-McCann Team Management Profile and Apter Motivational Style Profiling.

Paul can be contacted at:
paul[AT]aldebaran-international.com (replace the [AT] with @)

Claudia Coory is an experienced facilitator and trainer based in Brussels and working with clients across Europe.

She is an Associate with the Center for Creative Leadership, presenting leadership development programmes for clients in Europe and the Middle East. For her own clients, Claudia designs and delivers management development programmes and facilitates problem solving and strategic planning sessions for companies and not-for-profit organisations.

She also designs and facilitates off-site meetings and conferences for teams and organisations. She has extensive experience and knowledge of employee communications having worked in the field for more than ten years.

Claudia is certificated for many individual and team development tools such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, FIRO-B, CPI-260, and a range of 360-degree feedback tools including Campbell Leadership Index, BenchMarks and SkillScope. In addition she has certification in the Kirton Adaption and Innovation Inventory (KAI), an invaluable tool for problem solving, change and creativity styles.

Originally from New Zealand, Claudia moved to Brussels from the UK in 1987 and has both a Masters (Hons) degree in English Literature and a graduate Diploma in Teaching. She is currently studying for a Masters degree through Surrey University in Life Planning and Retirement Planning.

Claudia can be contacted at:
c.coory[AT]thecncgroup.com (replace the [AT] with @)

A geoscientist by training, Peter worked for BP in a number of senior HR and learning & development roles including 3 years in Angola managing a capacity building project. This was followed by a year in South Africa as Organisational Learning Manager for 12 African countries.

Peter now works as a Learning & Development Consultant, working with companies in the UK, US and Africa, undertaking projects such as:

• Designing and delivering bespoke training programmes.
• Facilitating groups to establish goals, build teams, and solve problems.
• Working with leaders and their teams to set direction and inspire others.
• Coaching leaders and training people to coach.

Supporting the tsunami relief effort in Sri Lanka for a month in early 2005 was an experience in international aid and has led to further work in the development sector with NGOs , which Peter finds is both challenging and satisfying.

Peter can be contacted at:
peterc[AT]explorerconsulting.co.uk (replace the [AT] with @)

Jane has her own practice in Oxford as an executive coach and facilitator with a focus on international work. She provides leadership coaching and team facilitation for managers from multinationals across a wide variety of industry sectors, often in a cross-cultural context. She also works regularly as a coach for various business schools and the Center for Creative Leadership. Her working languages are English, French and Italian.

Jane has had direct experience of leadership at the sharp end, having in the 1990’s co-founded and built up a consultancy with teams in three European countries. Change and organisational development projects, often related to the integration of different country cultures after mergers or acquisitions formed a core part of her work throughout this period. She also gained extensive experience in the design and delivery of customised leadership and team development programmes, drawing on a range of approaches including psychometric profiling, facilitated peer coaching and action learning groups.

Jane is a highly qualified and experienced user of a wide range of psychometric instruments including multi-source feedback tools and regularly trains new Myers Briggs practitioners throughout Europe on behalf of occupational psychologists, OPP Ltd.

Jane can be contacted at:
janemillarml[AT]aol.com (replace the [AT] with @)

After completing a degree in Modern European Studies Philip decided to do something a little more active and joined the Army. After Sandhurst he became a Troop Commander responsible for 40 soldiers and as many vehicles. He worked for several months as part of the United Nations Force in Cyprus, supporting both the multi-national peace keeping force and providing humanitarian relief to refugees. Following a posting to Berlin, Philip was a Training Adjutant responsible for training some 600 junior leaders at a time, on a one-year course. His final role was as a Headquarters Staff Officer in the Falklands. On leaving the army Philip had a number of management roles including head of management, supervisory and technology training at the Automobile Association.

Philip uses and encourages others to develop their informal, influential leadership to get things done. This includes helping many businesses in aerospace, engineering and construction improve performance by developing a culture of customer focused lean team working. The key has been to help leaders at all levels engage with people to embed behaviours focused on continuous improvement. Other activities have included coaching of owner managers of small businesses in many sectors. Success has always been achieved by ensuring that a few simple things are done extremely well - and by remembering that simple and easy are rarely the same. Philip and Matthew have worked together on a number of continuous improvement programmes with major UK and USA manufacturing companies.

Philip is a graduate and a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and is currently Chair of the Leicestershire and Rutland Branch. Philip holds the internationally recognised CMC qualification and is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultancy. He is also qualified by the British Psychological Society to use a range of psychometric profiles including 16PF5, MBTI and FIRO-B. P He holds the internationally recognized CMC qualification, and is a fellow of the Institute of Business Consultancy.

Philip can be contacted at:
Philip[AT]developmentprofessionals.co.uk (replace the [AT] with @)

Jim is an engineer with over 20 years at senior level in automotive and aerospace manufacturing. In 1994, after key roles in the Dowty Group and Reynard Racing he joined Productivity Europe where he gained a wide experience of delivering valuable business benefits through the implementation of Lean manufacturing improvement tools and techniques.

Over the last 10 years he has developed a collaborative and participative style that helps make his interventions both effective and sustainable. At senior level his careful listening and understanding of the business needs and ability to facilitate consensus, commitment and supportive leadership ensures robust ‘plans for change’ and management behaviours that encourage a CI culture. At the operations level his thorough understanding of Lean and CI combined with carefully designed workplace activities ensure real positive engagement with teams and supervisors.

UK clients include Rolls-Royce Aerospace, Ford, Crown Aerosols, PALL, Perkin Elmer, Northern Foods, Nestlé, Campbells, Jacobs, Hawker Energy. He also works extensively in Italy with Videocon, C S Gomma & Richard Ginori.

Most recently he has developed a powerful Lean Assessment tool based on Kobayashi’s 20 Keys for an Italian automotive manufacturer. This is helping benchmark performance and plan a group-wide CI programme.

Jim has worked with Philip and Matthew on many large culture change and CI programmes.

Recent achievements

• Used a full range of lean tools so that Reynard Racing Cars could design, develop and manufacture F3000 & Indy Cars in 4 months (from last race to the first race of the new season).
• Developed and delivered bespoke ‘TPM for teams’ training and consultancy to a major canned food manufacture that resulted in a 20% increase in line efficiency (OEE).
• Designed and managed the implementation of 6 lean manufacturing cells (from a traditional process layout) in a opto-electronics company reducing lead-time from 4 weeks to 4 days.
• Designed and delivered a company wide teamworking programme for a prestigious picture framer. Also developed & implemented systems for their annual appraisal and performance payment.
• Delivered a lean programme in a tier 1 supplier to Caterpillar improving OTIF from 85% to 98% with stock down by 50%.
• Developed 5S for Offices, an interactive programme to help support staff benefit from improved workplace organisation.
• Transformed an unengaged and very traditional workforce in a building product factory into more motivated and effective teams through.
• Used the ‘5-day Kaizen Breakthrough’ to transform a TV assembly line to small ‘U-Cells’ with productivity doubled and build quality close to ‘perfect’.

Over the last 10 years Jim has successfully completed more than 50 programmes with manufacturing companies across the UK.

Jim can be contacted at:
james.blenkinsop[AT]sky.com (replace the [AT] with @)

As an entrepreneur and skilled communicator Jim runs his own successful businesses, which include a brewery, restaurant and property business in rural Northumberland and Scotland. He has worked as management trainer / facilitator since 1982 and as Managing Director of his highly regarded nationwide people development company from 1989 to 2001. From 2001 to 2005 he worked as a Director of the UK Lake District based development organisation Dove Nest Group.

Working at senior manager and partner level current and recent clients include: KPMG, BT, St Gobain and the Jewson chain, Riverford Organics, Premier Foods to name a few. His work has taken him around the world with global organisations and recently completed assignments in Brussels, Bangkok and Dallas, USA.

Jim’s career began after an Honours degree from London University led him to Papua New Guinea as an agricultural development specialist. He then joined the Agricultural Training Board in the UK, which was his first introduction to management development. This was the grounding needed to provide a springboard to set up his own management and team development organisation using initially outdoor based training exercises as a medium to provide experiential training to delegates.

Jim is widely sought after as a highly effective facilitator who can work at board level in global organisations. He is particularly well suited to working cross-culturally and has the sensitivity and experience to work with those for whom English is not their first language.

Jim can be contacted at:
jim.hick[AT]virgin.net (replace the [AT] with @)

After leaving university, Nick worked as a chartered accountant for nine years, for Ernst & Young in London and Paris, and for Decathlon in Lille.

Nick has been working in management development since 1994. Having been a participant on an outdoor leadership training programme on Vancouver Island, he returned to the UK and worked for the Outward Bound Trust, delivering outdoor management development programmes in Scotland and the Lake District.

Nick has wide experience of working with senior management teams, middle managers as well as shop floor teams in organisations such as Halifax, QinetiQ, the Environment Agency, Amec and the NHS. He has designed and delivered programmes looking at team development, leadership development, behavioural and cultural change, and coaching.

Nick is an associate trainer for the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in Brussels, the Coaches Training Institute (CTI), and Interaction. He has also had his own coaching practice since 2003, working mostly with small business owners. He still loves the outdoors, and whenever possible takes his coaching clients walking on the Malvern Hills for their first session.

Nick has a BA in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford, and an MSc in Management Development and Training from the University of Bristol. He has a coaching certification from the Coaches Training Institute (CPCC), and is accredited to use a number of psychometric instruments, including MBTI, FIRO-B, Benchmarks, and the Team Diagnostic Assessment. He speaks fluent French.

Nick can be contacted at:
Nick[AT]questhills.co.uk (replace the [AT] with @)