Team Development and Training
I hired Karen Wade to deliver a “Developing Personal Resilience” workshop for my Senior Executive Staff. Karen delivered a great workshop that was very well received by all attendees. The staff felt that the material was relevant and positively impacted their personal and professional lives. The workshop helped in team development and communication among the staff as well. I would recommend Karen to anyone looking to improve their organization.
-John A. Berry, CEO, Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Atlanta, GA
Karen has been immensely helpful to our organization in helping our retailers understand the importance of the woman conusmer in their businesses. She presented several seminars and wrote numerous articles on the topic and was instrumental in guiding retailers toward changing the store experience to focus on the needs of the female customer. Karen is an innovative thought leader in many areas and a pleasure to work with.
- Sharron Bradley, Executive Director, Western Home Furnishings Association, Sacramento, CA
Coaching New Executives: Accelerated Learning
When I met Karen Wade I was transitioning between the role of a regional sales vice president in the field, to a vice president role, in operations, at our company headquarters. Having Karen’s coaching during that first year made this challenging transition go much smoother. She worked quickly to understand our business, to help me to understand the relationships I needed to develop, and to increase my effectiveness with my boss and my new executive peers. Three years later, I felt more than prepared for my recent promotion to a senior executive role, with responsibility for our national sales organization. I attribute a lot of that preparedness to what I learned from Karen. I believe that our successful partnership worked because Karen sincerely cared about and understood me as a person. This gave her the insight to know how to give me the ‘pushes’ I sometimes needed to become an enterprise-level leader. Karen and I stay in contact, and I will use her services again in the future.
- Alan, SVP, National Dealer Sales, Internet Advertising, Atlanta, GA*
At 36 years of age, with academic rather than management experience as background, I became the senior executive of an organization with more than 500 people and an annual budget of more than $100 million. The executive coaching I received from Dr. Karen Wade helped me to quickly ascend up and over the learning curve. Her candid yet constructive feedback has helped me to grow as a leader and as a person. Through my own professional development, I learned the power of growing and developing other people as a major key to an organization’s success. I also learned to identify my own leadership weaknesses and to minimize their impact. In summary, I found Karen’s coaching to be an invaluable contributor to my success and to the success of my entire organization.
- Jay, Senior Executive, National Health Marketing Organization, Atlanta, GA*
Coaching Seasoned Executives: Renewed Inspiration
Having Karen Wade as an executive coach during a critical time in my career was heaven-sent. I was in a challenging leadership role and needed someone who could provide for me the reflection of my thoughts and feelings and put it all in perspective. Because of this relationship, I was able to see beyond the moments of stress and I made a career decision to move forward confidently, taking on a new, even more challenging role in my organization. I believe this experience was life-changing in that I don’t think I would have made this move without the coaching relationship with Karen. I am a better leader as a result.
- Susan, Senior Executive, Tertiary Medical Centers, Phoenix, AZ*
The executive coaching experience I had with Dr, Karen Wade gave me the opportunity to slow down, look introspectively, and assess the impact my actions were having on my leadership team and the staff at the healthcare system I led in Western New York. I felt very fortunate to have Dr Wade coaching me through that growth opportunity. Through candid feedback, thorough assessment and good humor, she was able to hold the mirror up to me and show me, objectively, how my words and actions could have unintended consequences for those around me. The changes I made have stayed with me and I have received positive feedback from my colleagues. Specifically, my attention to detail has improved, as well as my ability to genuinely listen. My focus on our leadership team improved not only the quality of our work life, but increased our communications and improved our medical center’s outcomes. I don’t think I could have made those personal changes without a present, engaged, and objective executive coach and I feel Dr. Wade was just that individual.
-Mike, Senior Executive, Tertiary Medical Centers, Grand Rapids, MI*
The work I’ve done with Karen has been valuable in helping me realize that some of the behaviors that led to my success to this point in my career may not necessarily continue to be strengths, or worse, could become detriments to my future career growth and opportunities. While I’ve heard some of the same points in feedback from those that I work with on a daily basis, Karen helped bring the full picture in focus in a way others could not. Perhaps more importantly, Karen helped me build a plan for shifting my behaviors over time – a difficult challenge when my current patterns were so deeply entrenched through years of positive reinforcement. In short, Karen challenged me to think more deeply, see myself from an outside-in perspective more clearly, and build action plans for change that were realistic and effective. It’s clear to me that none of that would have happened without her deep knowledge and expertise and her ability to push me to step up to the challenge of changing my leadership behaviors.
- Len, SVP, Finance Executive, Banking Industry, Charlotte, NC*
As a relatively self aware business leader, for years I had developed elaborate mechanisms to manage around my ‘development opportunities’. Working with Karen Wade provided me with the insight and motivation I needed to move from “coping” to “changing” – something that no one else had managed to do over the previous two decades of my business life! Karen’s understanding of my personality type allowed her to deliver the messages I needed to hear in a way she knew would register with me. The bottom line is this: 12 months have passed since we first started working together and I am enjoying work more than I ever have and am told by others that I am a better leader and business person today than ever before. All this wouldn’t have happened if not for the guidance I received from Karen.
- Martin, SVP, Credit Executive, Banking, Ottawa, Canada*
*Names/enterprises protected by contractual agreement. Full references available upon request