I have been working with McEwan Associates since 2012.
During that time, the McEwan team has delivered very innovative and highly successful development programs for leaders, managers and employees across our organisation on:
- Leader coaching
- Leadership Development
- Leading differently through Empowerment and Values (VUCA)
- Difficult conversations
- Prioritisation
- Career conversations
- Diversity for Global Senior Leaders
- Communicating Across Cultures
Margaret and her team have been great partners to work with. I find their approach creative, cutting edge, highly experiential and most importantly, incredibly impactful learning experiences. The solutions that Margaret and her team have created have in many cases been completely unique, helping employees to engage, learn faster and apply learning.
The actors have always had a great ability to connect with the audience and help them learn in a deep way. Margaret’s facilitation is outstanding – able to engage challenging audiences and move them forward to connect with the topic.
I have no hesitation in recommending Margaret and her team as excellent learning and development partners.
Global Head, Leadership and Employee Development
Pharmaceuticals
Margaret has the rare ability to combine coaching with practical application – she takes the theoretical and transforms your business by helping you and your business to make breakthroughs.
I engaged McEwan Associates at two different companies – The Human Tissue Authority and at HSBC.
These two companies could not be more different in terms of sector, size, strategy but she was able to successfully navigate both the global corporate training at HSBC and the domestic management training at the HTA.
I would love to work with her again.
Ofa Mangan
Chief of People enterprise
Amerigo
I’ve had the pleasure of working with McEwan Associates successfully over the last 14 years and can thoroughly recommend them.
The programmes they create are thoughtfully designed to meet each organisations needs and are carefully aligned with the culture, processes, models of behaviour and organisational values. They’re written to take into account the behaviours experienced within each organisation at that moment in conjunction with the desired behaviours of the organisation and are therefore very specific. Where other training is being carried out internally or through other providers which may overlap in some way, they ensure that they build this into their programme to create a sense of harmony.
I particularly like the interactive nature of their work, which really helps those attending the sessions to understand complex issues easily and to learn through experience. The quality of their facilitation is always excellent and they engage incredibly well with participants across all levels of seniority. They’re friendly, flexible, accommodating and very easy to work with.
I’ve experienced a broad range of programmes designed by them, first at the Law Society and then in recent years here at AXA IM.
The programmes they produced for us at The Law Society ranged from management capability training, coaching and assessment and development centres to a company wide programme on values and diversity. Here at AXA IM they’ve provided us with a wide variety of programmes some for managers and some for other staff on subjects from assertiveness to prioritisation, to personal impact and difficult conversations in addition to providing one to one coaching for managers. We’re currently looking at ways in which they can help us with programmes in Europe working in the language of each region.
Global Head of Talent
Acquisition, Development, Engagement
AXA IM
McEwan Associates have been a pleasure to work with over the last three years.
They find a way to effortlessly blend deep knowledge of the subject of behavioural change in a given environment with an empathic, listening ear to the our needs in order to propose, develop and deliver programmes that really do transform the way people behave in the workplace.
For example, when developing a selling skills programme, they don’t simply look at a model of effective sales performance. Instead they bring on board knowledge with a team of world class collaborators to immerse delegates in an experiential learning environment. Delegates are given the opportunity to explore their own behaviour, consider the impact on others, then reframe their own approach so that they can become more impactful in the way they engage clients.
The work that McEwan Associates have done with our teams of managers and sales specialists has had a significant impact on the increase in sales. In one case, we conducted research with customers and found that post training with McEwen Associates, our customers had a significant increase in their willingness to use our product, compared to before the training.
Those attending the training have spoken very highly of it and as a result we have rolled out the programmes, which began in the UK, across Europe, with McEwan Associates running those programmes in various languages.
They also helped us to produce an interactive tool to help participants embed their learning and provided a written coaching document to support managers in ensuring that the learning was implemented, when coaching their teams.
The other component that is often overlooked is how the team of facilitators deliver in such a highly polished, engaging and empathic way.
Both Margaret and Gido bring all of this to light in an elegant, effervescent way that personalises them to their audience, connecting with those they work with to bring the good out in all they meet.
With their knowledge, compassion and enthusiasm to make lasting change, I would recommend McEwan Associates to anyone looking to evolve the behaviours within their organisation and themselves.
Associate Director Service Development
Pharmaceuticals
I’m really pleased to endorse McEwan Associates. They are a joy to work with.
We hired McEwans to write and deliver a management programme at LV=. Based on the success of that programme, we commissioned them to roll out workshops for the teams reporting to those managers.
I’ve always found Margaret and Graham to be client focused, experts in their field, and more than happy to tie in business strategy and context to their programmes.
The excellent delivery of their programmes, which balance expert content in terms of skills, psychology and awareness raising; are made doubly effective by their use of interactive training methods. It allows participants to experience the various behaviours being addressed and practice the solutions recommended, which improves learning and achieves lasting results.
We’ve received some great results through working with McEwans with a marked shift in decreasing absenteeism, staff turnover and performance following their interventions, to the extent that in 2014 we nominated one of their programmes for a national learning award.
Erica Farmer
L&D Programme Lead
LV=
I began working with McEwan Associates in 2015 on a program for the field force across Europe. We asked McEwan to design a program for us which addressed several behavioral change needs and which built into the delivery an extensive piece of research by a leading American psychologist who was working with us on this particular project.
Our challenge was that we had gathered compelling evidence through the research which could have a very positive impact on the productivity of our field force, but we needed find a way of actually putting it into practice.
McEwan Associates had already run a successful program for us in the UK and we hoped that bringing them in to design a similar training integrating the research insights might bring about a lasting behavior change in our sales approach.
We worked closely with them to create a program which did exactly that. As a result managers from a range of those countries asked that we work with McEwan Associates to run a similar program for their local teams.
They have worked very effectively with us internally and with members of the consultancy who were involved in the initial research to
provide a range of training programs tailored to each group. They also worked with another external supplier to help create an online interactive tool to embed the behaviors and provided a field coaching tool.
The use of forum theatre and film has really helped our teams to understand the concepts and how to put them into practice.
The quality of their actors is excellent and on more than one occasion the
actors have been mistaken for real hospital consultants; this is impressive given that the content of the scenarios and simulations was complex and medical in nature. The standard of facilitation is very high and Margaret and Gido have exceptional presentation skills which allow
them to engage their audience and create an energy and enthusiasm amongst the attendees!
It is a real pleasure to work with Margaret and her team, and I have learned a lot about mindsets and behavior myself! We’ve seen real change in the behaviors of many of those attending the programs across Europe with positive gains being made as a result.
Commercial Director MS, EMEA
Genzyme Europe B.V.
I have been working with McEwan Associates for over 10 years within three organisations.
I have always been impressed with the levels of flexibility, insight and professionalism no matter at what level within the organisation they have been working with. I have utilised their skills with sales people and with both first and second line managers.
One such first line manager who at the time was receiving individual coaching on their personal impact is now UK General Manager for a pharmaceutical company.
The programmes where I have worked with McEwan Associates include both basic and psychological coaching skills for managers, challenger sales programmes, facilitation training and individual coaching/networking skills.
I never fail to be impressed by the quality of their experiential approach and their ability to listen to the team they are working with, this ensures that the intervention provided absolutely meets their requirements and meets the desired outcome.
Over the years I have worked with a number of McEwan Associates Actor/Facilitators within forum theatre, film and other simulations and they have without exception been of the highest quality.
Their ability to bring the issues, behaviours and characters which reflect our organisation and our customers to life in an entirely convincing way – often I have been asked if they are in fact real customers.
The facilitation skills of the team have also been top class.
I would have no hesitation in recommending them to anyone looking for a professional and innovative company
Kevin Woodhams
Management Development Lead
Chartered MCIPD
Margaret has worked with many of our managers in the capacity of personal impact coach and, without fail, has achieved great results. The combination of expert skills in personal projection and interpersonal techniques, with a down to earth and humorous style means she builds trust quickly to meet agreed objectives.
Learning and Development Partner for Global Markets Infrastructure, and Global Client Management
Global Bank
The Human Tissue Authority has worked with McEwan Associates for nearly ten years, during which time they have provided a number of services, highly tailored to our specific needs. During the period when the HTA were starting up, Margaret and her team were a key part of the recruitment of our cadre of managers – bringing insights which allowed us to make more effective hiring decisions. More recently, they have helped to transform the way in which we train volunteers who work with living organ donors and recipients. Using innovative tools, such as forum theatre, has allowed these volunteers to get closer to the actual experience of managing sensitive discussions in a safe setting before entering a live environment.
Former CEO of the Human Tissue Authority
Allan Marriott-Smith
Working with McEwan Associates was an insightful and inspiring experience for our team. Their thorough research into our market and genuine interest in seeking to understand the people they would be working with led to a bespoke course tailor made to our specific needs with easy to measure outcomes. The result was a reenergised team, who might not have changed their behavior over night, but were willing to embark on a longer journey of personal development. This was the first training intervention our experienced team had received in over two years and the feedback following the training saw over 80% of delegates state they would like to go through the activity again and 100% requested a follow up to the learning. This was in no short part to do with the facilitation and credible acting the McEwan team put in over the two days.
Disease Area Manager
Pharmaceuticals