Andy Matheson, FCIPD

Andy has 20 years experience in training, coaching and developing senior managers, as well as being a high-level business consultant. He divides his time between coaching individuals, consulting with organisations and teams on business planning and delivering strategic thinking and leadership training.

He has worked with organisations such as Amadeus, BT, Barclays, B&Q, Duracell, Gillette, Hampshire County Council, IBM, Fortis, Peverel, SAGA, Volkswagen and Woolworths on a variety of assignments.

Andy brings a robust knowledge of business strategy, leadership and team development to his training and consultancy work. He is author of the Strategic Map model, The Leadership Stars Model, The Challenge And Insight Portfolio, The Change Leadership Model and the Team Stars Model, which build entrepreneurial culture, and business excellence within organisations. He has worked to executive level throughout Europe.

He has an engaging style, which manages to carefully balance the need to facilitate, and the need to challenge

Andy is fully trained in many supporting tools and techniques such as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, the Leadership Practices Inventory, the Strength Deployment Inventory, Situational Leadership to name but a few. He will bring these techniques into the session as appropriate.

Career History

Andy has been Managing Director of DTC Ltd since he started the company in 2000. He has worked with many leading organisations on strategy, leadership development and organisational change. During this time he has acted as a business coach to key executives and facilitated management development programmes for senior leaders and for those with high potential. He has also been at the forefront of DTC’s drive to develop new tools and techniques for managers, leaders and facilitators. More recently he has been passing on coaching skills and techniques to in-house experts so that they can be less reliant on external support.

Before starting the company, Andy worked as Learning & Development Manager for Zurich Financial Services for 10 years where he was responsible for all manager and leadership development within the UK as well as working at a global level for the development of managers and leaders worldwide

Andy started his career in Local Government where he worked in learning and development, HR and Finance.

Ann Akers

Ann has more than 20 years experience of working at Board and Executive level. Her interest is in “success through inspirational and effective leadership”. Ann is an accredited coach with The Leadership Trust and is also a tutor on their Leadership Programme. She is also co-author of The Challenge & Insight Portfolio.

Ann’s recent coaching assignments have been at CEO, Director and Senior Management level within Financial Services, Publishing, Technology and Construction. A qualified and experienced coach, she brings commercial reality into the coaching sessions when required.

Ann also works with top teams on strategy development and consults on leadership, performance management, team dynamics and organisational change programmes.In addition, she will help to embed coaching techniques within the organisation she is working with.

Her core values are integrity, passion, courage, innovation and confidentiality.

Ann is a member of The European Mentoring and Coaching Council and abides by their code of ethics.

Career History

Ann’s executive career began in 1992 when she was selected to become a member of Zurich Financial Services UK Executive and Board with responsibility for HR, Corporate Marketing, Communications, Legal, Corporate Planning and Data Management. During this period she managed the HR aspects of a major acquisition, designed and implemented an integrated HR strategy which included executive and senior management leadership programmes, graduate schemes, performance management and a succession planning strategy. Ann also designed and delivered performance management sessions at Zurich’s Executive Programme at IMD Lausanne. In addition she led the team to gain Investors in People across all sites in the UK.

In 1995, she became Managing Director of the Zurich UK Personal Insurance Business. Ann worked with her executive team to reverse the trend of shrinking premium whilst maintaining profitability. In 1998, they won Personal Lines Insurer of the Year.

In 1998, Ann was appointed Managing Director of Zurich’s Strategic Partnerships business. She led and conducted a review of two loss making businesses, integrating them, retaining key clients, returning to profitability and ultimately improving employee satisfaction by 33%.

in 2003, Ann joined Cofunds as a board member with responsibility for business development. During her time at Cofunds, Ann led and implemented a strategic review of distribution strategy resulting in a segmented approach to the market resulting in a new client facing structure and culture.

Ann’s last role before moving full time into coaching and leadership consultancy was managing a large transformation programme for Liverpool Victoria. This included leadership development, coaching programmes, technical and management development, culture change programmes and retention and succession planning strategies.

Ruth Colling, BA (Hons), MSc

Ruth started her career as an HR professional, working firstly for British Steel and later with UBS Warburg. Upon transitioning into the consultancy field as a Business Psychologist, Ruth has worked across most sectors and has helped her clients to deal with a wide range of business and people-related challenges. Ruth is a qualified Business Psychologist, has a diploma in Performance Coaching. She is also trained in a number of psychometric instruments, including MBTI, FIRO Element B and MAPP.

Professional Skills & Experience

• Coaching senior executives to help them develop the mindset and competence to reach their true potential.

• Designing and facilitating assessment and development events for succession planning, promotion and recruitment.

• Researching, designing and facilitating workshops to help teams to operate more effectively and achieve their objectives through the development of the necessary skills and attributes.

• Developing competency frameworks to help drive organisational change.

• Developing and honing the individual competence and confidence of company leaders through modular group workshops.

• Training and coaching internal client facilitators in facilitation and problem diagnosis.

Coaching Style

Ruth’s style:

• Has been described as empathetic yet assertively challenging!

• Draws upon a broad knowledge of psychology, which is then applied in a business setting.

• Challenges people to understand the issues, why they may be there in the first place and how they might start to handle them.

• Drives people towards stretching goals and targets.

• Facilitates the individual’s thinking and encourages them to think beyond the obvious.

• Sometimes pushes people outside of their comfort zone to stimulate well considered personal change.

Ruth has worked in a number of sectors, including:

• Public sector – both Local and Central Government

• Investment and Retail Banking.

• Insurance industry.

• Professional services (consultancy, accountancy and legal).

• Automotive industry

Brian Stansbridge

Since 2003 Brian has been working as Consulting Director with DTC specialising in working with top teams and team members helping them to think and behave more strategically and perform more effectively. He works as a personal coach and as a group facilitator working on business issues and personal development. Brian’s recent clients include BT, Cofunds, Liverpool Victoria, Peverel, Zurich Financial Services and a wide range of public sector and not for profit organisations. Brian is most valued for:-

• Helping people to recognise and value their own worth

• Helping people to develop their confidence, capabilities and performance

• Stimulating and supporting talented people

• Bringing focus to unfocused operations and functions

.
Brian’s core values include:

• Identifying and addressing issues freely and openly and not avoiding ‘difficult’ issues

• Keeping an open-mind and not being judgmental

• Strengthening confidence and self-reliance, not creating dependence on the coach

• Facilitating tangible change focusing on outcomes not process

Career History

Brian started in the public sector, honed his skills in the private sector (financial services) and made regular part-time forays into the not-for-profit sector, academic institutions, theatre, music and the arts, along the way

Prior to joining DTC he was a senior manager, skilled in strategic thinking and planning and with a track record of creating and running highly talented, well motivated and successful teams. His career was built on foundations in HR and human resource development, but Brian diversified into quality management, operations management, programme management and business planning. He therefore benefits from being experienced at the ‘sharp end’ of a business and has personally had to deal with tough decisions, demanding executives, too much work and too little time, office politics and the need to balance operational demands with building a long term future.