Carol Pickering BA, PGCE, AMCIPD, NLP Practitioner, Associate of the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement

Carol has 20 years consultancy experience across all sectors, both in-house and as an independent consultant. She combines her independent work with a complementary role in the NHS, as a consultant in the Organisation Development and Leadership team of Yorkshire and the Humber Strategic Health Authority.

Her background includes over 8 years’ experience as a manager and team leader; roles as an internal Organisation Development (OD) consultant in the Civil Service, the NHS Modernisation Agency and the former South Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority; and as an English and Drama teacher. She is passionate about diversity and has specialist expertise in women’s leadership development. She is an experienced facilitator and Executive Coach; qualified to use the Myers Briggs Type Indicator; and is currently taking a diploma in Coaching Supervision.

Competencies & Experience
She has extensive experience of developing transformational leadership skills with new and experienced leaders at all levels, usually within the context of organisational change. This includes facilitation of 360-degree feedback to senior leaders on their impact and helping them to make links to organisational priorities and challenges. She creates a climate that is both supportive and challenging and is able to coach leaders to address both the internal and external barriers to change.

She is skilled at designing and facilitating workshops that draw on a wide variety of approaches that are creative, engaging and appeal to both the head and heart. Her experience as an OD practitioner and coach enables her to bring first hand insights to her work with those who want to develop their ability to coach, consult and bring about organisational change.

Her work in the NHS at local and national level has centred on developing the skills of others to lead, influence and manage changes in service delivery. In her current role she is responsible for developing strategic alliances with non-NHS organisations from whom we can learn about leadership, innovation and quality improvement; for evaluation; and for commissioning development on behalf of senior leaders. She is also a coach and assists with Board development, through a programme of 360-degree feedback.

Example assignments & experience in leadership development & coaching:

• Design and delivery of workshops for managers to address leadership style, organisational climate and performance, including climate surveys and workshops to address key performance issues (in utilities, construction, social housing, central government);
• Design and delivery of a range of workshops to assist leaders, including: influencing, managing change, handling challenging conversations with staff, and coaching for high performance (public sector, construction & IT)
• Design and delivery of an 18-month programme of Action Learning for leaders from the public, private and voluntary sectors, whose aim was both to improve their effectiveness as leaders and to teach them facilitate change using Action Learning techniques;
• Design & delivery of a leadership and action-learning programme for those aspiring to senior roles in community development finance institutions
• Design & delivery of a wide range of development workshops for leaders in both clinical and managerial roles in the NHS;
• Delivery of a wide range of action-centred leadership development interventions for women aspiring to more influential roles on behalf of the Chartered Institute for Personnel & Development, Public Service Management Wales and the Learning and Skills Councils in South and West Yorkshire. These have included leadership workshops that are supported by project-based learning and/or been accredited by ILM; and
• Development of project management, IT, HR, finance and quality improvement specialists to enable them to lead internal and external consultancy assignments through the development of their process consultancy skills
• On-going executive coaching to a wide range of senior leaders on a variety of issues key to high performance in their role.

Career history
February 1988 to date: Principal, Carol Pickering & Associates
Leading a People & Organisation Development Consultancy, working with a wide range of organisations and people at all levels across the private/public/not-for profit sectors on management and leadership development, team-building, organisational development, competency framework development and executive coaching.

April 2005 to date: Yorkshire & the Humber Strategic Health Authority
Employed (P/T) as an Organisation Development and Leadership Consultant to develop change agents and leadership capability that delivers improvements in healthcare.

October 2002- March 2005 NHS Modernisation Agency
Employed (P/T) as an Organisation Development Consultant with the NHS Modernisation Agency, working on clinical systems improvement at national level.

1982-88 held middle management and internal consultancy positions in the Departments for Education & Employment, & Health and Social Security. This included setting up and evaluating government training initiatives, staff development, and staff and contract management.

1976-1981 teacher in Secondary Education.

Liz Cross	Liz Brooks- Allen	Maggie Riley	Mags Porter	Lynn Harrop	Karen Flear	Peter Buglass	Carol Pickering	Catherine Thomson	Kanika Selvan	Dick Bunning
Leoni Antoniazzi	Fliss Bridgewater	Ben Blunt	Kirsty Holt	Theresa Hackett