Consulting

Consulting Services in Human Potential Development

(including Coaching, Training  and Facilitating)

Global speaker Sandra Ford Walston, The Courage Expert and innovator of StuckThinking™ is an organizational effectiveness and organizational development consultant. With over 20 years of consulting, training and coaching expertise, she has worked in a variety of industries such as healthcare, engineering, nursing, construction, associations, government, Fortune 500 companies, telecom, and airports. Sandra uses a client-centered consultative approach to recommend solutions to effectuate positive change, including diagnosing organizational development opportunities and evaluating the effectiveness of the approaches and their results including team development, coaching, planning, facilitation, role clarification and strategic planning.

Highlighted Achievements:

  • Denver Health Medical Center – Designed and delivered over a year intellectual capital programs on self-directed teams and adult self-directed learners to enhance collaboration and support cross-functional teams to provide the best care possible. This project yielded accelerated synergistic production and increased team effectiveness.
  • Formerly Qwest – Designed and delivered a series of intellectual capital programs for migrating teams with cross-functional representation across the country. The requested I apply the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® as a baseline to flow in and out of team assignments. The teams applied self-awareness to collaborate which diminished breakdowns and misunderstandings, retained/increased quality standards and revenue projections.
  • Wide Open West (WOW) – Designed and delivered a series of Enneagram leadership programs that merged the national leadership team members’ courage leadership behavior patterns. Assessed and defined the courageous intentions to achieve revenue projections. Integrating courageous leadership and the Enneagram, team effectiveness increased and yielded greater efficiency.
  • All Care Home Health – Designed and delivered intellectual capital to bridge the communication and time management preferences between clinical and non-clinical departments to achieve increased revenue, improve retention and morale. Coached the President/CEO to improve morale and applied the five linguistic speech acts as a cross-department communication tool.
  • Nolte Engineering Associates – Designed and delivered an Enneagram program for principals and spouses that highlighted the diverse worldviews and increased principal awareness.
  • IBM – Presented intellectual courage research called “Courage Leadership: Making It Work for You!” to the top executive women at their annual conference. This presentation yielded an understanding of the feminine behaviors of courage that could be applied immediately.
  • Career Service Authority (City and County of Denver) – Designed and delivered a series of training programs including designing and presenting four programs (out of thirteen) to the managers’ training series. This generated increased team effectiveness and unity.

Below are a few features of her consulting services:

  • Design and implement a variety of organizational and leadership development solutions such as 360 degree feedback. Many times this role partners with management and/or human resources to deliver comprehensive organizational and leadership development solutions.
  • Analyze the interactions of people and systems such as work groups, work culture and climate to increase the effectiveness using a variety of strategies.
  • Contribute to the design and implementation of key leadership development processes and programs.
  • Demonstrated knowledge and application of adult learning theory, instructional design, and curriculum development techniques to include blended learning.
  • Strong facilitation and presentation skills; proven ability to engage audiences in learning topics and to respond appropriately to audience needs.
  • Experience with Personality Instruments (MBTI and Enneagram certified and knowledge of Spiral Dynamics).
  • Identification of needs relative to core leadership capabilities; design and implementation of solutions; monitoring and evaluation of program impact/value.
  • Design and deliver appropriate OD solutions to meet organizational requirements.
  • Partner with subject matter experts from other Human Resources disciplines (e.g., Staffing or Talent Acquisition) to ensure fully aligned activities that help to attract, manage and reward the performance and development of a workforce capable of executing the business strategy.
  • Functions as an internal coach resource providing coaching directly to leaders/employees; to leaders and/or business partners developing their own coaching skills; and as needed, to external vendors.
  • Consult with leadership teams and deliver customized solutions on a variety of human resources/organization needs related to organizational design, team and organizational effectiveness and work/job design.
  • Manage multiple/complex projects; ability to prioritize competing demands.
  • Ability to work both independently and interdependently with the client/teams/department.

Sandra’s key attributes:

  • Strong critical thinking and analytical skills
  • Excellent oral and written communication skills
  • Ability to build and sustain senior level professional relationships
  • Excellent interpersonal and relationship skills needed to build not only strong client relationships but also strong working relationships within the HR function
  • Excellent organizational and time management skills
  • Ability to connect individuals to the context of the purposes and commitments of the organization
  • Results driven
  • Able to translate vision and strategy into clear actionable goals
  • Ability to prioritize tasks based on performance goals
  • Ability to apply outstanding cognitive skills in real-time, practical situations, ability to make the complex simple, make sound judgments and analyze data from various sources
  • Demonstrates a sense of urgency and is able to execute consistently with excellence
  • Courage to advocate unpopular position and take smart risks
  • Open to others’ perspectives
  • Does not settle for mediocre results
  • Ability to interact effectively with all levels within the organization
  • Mature, tactful team builder and a team player who possesses personal drive, passion and enthusiasm to successfully navigate the client’s goals
  • Oral, written and superior presentation and facilitation skills including concise and action-oriented communication
  • Evaluates training and development programs for effectiveness; implements improvements; examines training processes and systems; recommends and implements improvements
  • Evolved interpersonal relations, personal ethics and credibility

Areas of expertise include:

Courage Leadership and StuckThinking™ Facilitator * Executive Coaching * Team and Organizational Effectiveness * Assessing Organizations’ Level of Courage Consciousness * Building an Organization Spirited in Courage Leadership * Implementing the “Language of Courage” * Adult Self-Directed Learning * Certified in the Enneagram and Myers Briggs Type Indicator®