Richard Phillips

Richard believes that all interventions should provide tangible benefits to the business. He is therefore committed to making the learning experience a pragmatic one for all delegates.

He believes that John Heron’s model of facilitation is a useful one: creating the climate to move groups from hierarchical through to autonomous learning.

Richard’s approach is both energetic and engaging. He incorporates a variety of techniques including accelerated learning, experiential learning and one–to–one coaching.

Richard focuses on helping people to develop strategies to improve their communication, interpersonal and influencing skills

Career background

Richard spent 1983 at the Institut Européen d’études Commerciales Supérieures in Strasbourg, France, where he specialised in Marketing. He graduated a year later from the Bradford University Management Centre with a B.A. (Hons) in Managerial Sciences and French.

He initially worked as a Project Manager for a large communications company before working in sales within the IT industry.

Other qualifications and experience

Accredited user of the Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI)
Qualified Assessor NVQ D32/33
Postgraduate Diploma in Training & Development

Specialist field – Influencing & Persuasion

Richard has developed and run a wide range of programmes addressing the specific needs of diverse groups; he works at all levels from new graduates through to senior teams.

He also runs 1:1 coaching sessions to help people develop a more strategic approach to the situations they are aiming to influence.

Examples of recent projects

• A national organisation was looking to refocus its business strategy from being product led to being customer led. I worked with the marketing team responsible for leading this change to help them to develop strategies for influencing the traditionally powerful regional sales team.
• Richard helped an investment bank to develop an induction programme that would help its graduates to make an effective and successful start to their careers. Also, ensuring that the graduates could make a valuable contribution to the business quickly.
• Richard worked with an oil company to develop its first line managers ability to deliver tough/unpleasant messages. This helped them to better communicate and implement business strategy.
• The complete redesign of a 3 day Influencing & Persuading course for an Investment Bank for which he is now responsible for the global delivery quality of this programme; this has taken him to New York, Tokyo and Singapore.