1) Favourite way to kick-start your working day? 
Up early, find the sun is rising and read the cricket news that England has beaten Australia – again!

 2) Marmite: love it or hate it? 
  Love it!

 3) Best thing about working for The Wilsher Group? 
 Hardly feel I’ve worked a day in my life. I enjoy releasing talent and working with exec teams who have taken risks to create something extraordinary. 

4) The Wilsher Group journey
Simon grew up in Zimbabwe where he developed a passion for adventure and an interest in people. Having graduated from Cape Town University in 1974 with an Economics degree, he later decided to go travelling. Meaning to stay in the UK for just a short time, he ended up staying for good after meeting his future wife Sue. Joining Carnegie in setting up and running one of the most successful practices outside the USA, he went on to establish The Wilsher Group in 1990. 

Simon is passionate about igniting talent and enabling people to harness their true potential. He believes in transparency and integrity, investing in worthwhile causes, and never doing things by halves! He lives in Bath with Sue. Simon doesn’t do DIY. He does do church, tennis and cooking.  

His role nowadays involves more high level planning, both for clients but also for our three businesses, C-me Colour Profiling, T15 and Waterhouse Bath. 

 1) Favourite way to kick-start your working day? 
A run through beautiful countryside or a cup of tea in bed.            

2) Marmite: love it or hate it? 
Love it! 

3) Best thing about working for The Wilsher Group? 
Seeing individuals and teams develop and working with others passionate to enable that. 

4) Day to day role
Sonia studied at Cambridge University, gaining a Starred Double First in Anthropology and Theology. Her interest in communication led her first to television programme making, including for the South Bank Show, a multi-faith programme and ITV’s Sunday Morning. Sonia later moved into training and professional development, including working with Macmillan’s helpline team. This led to two consecutive roles as Chief Executive of national charities. Seeing the importance of strong teams and good communication, Sonia has joined us to develop our C-me Profiling tool. She is passionate about people knowing and using their strengths, and communicating effectively with others.

Associate Coaches

+ Meet Alison Bennett

My passion for coaching and mentoring was ignited during a corporate career in Human Resources. Over a 20 year period, initially in generalist HR roles, and then specialising in Organisational Development, I gained an in-depth understanding & experience of people in organisations, and a strong desire to be a catalyst for positive change in the workplace. Whilst heading up a 3 year project to introduce ‘a coaching culture’ to my organisation (a large multinational healthcare company), I discovered the power of coaching, through The Wilsher Group with whom I've worked for 7 years, to bring significant and lasting change to workplaces, and as a result, stepped into being a  professional coach / mentor.  

I am now a qualified, experienced and skilled Coach & Mentor who, over many years, has facilitated significant positive change in both individuals and organizations. I have a desire to see the potential in people unlocked, and seek to inspire people to take ambitious steps to move both themselves, and their organisation forward in a positive direction.

I have an Advanced Diploma in Coaching & Mentoring from OCM and I am also a qualified mediator, working with people and organisations to resolve workplace conflict.

+ Meet Geo Roberts

Born in Kansas and raised on a cattle ranch in Nebraska, Geo spent 15 years in the USAF, 11 of those years as a fighter pilot and instructor. This inspired Geo’s passion for helping others achieve their potential. Geo joined The Wilsher Group as a co-founder in 1990 and went on to become Head of Instructor Development.  Geo is an inspirational coach who has a passionate belief in the ability people have to make the permanent changes in attitudes and behaviours that lead to lasting performance improvement. Whilst with The Wilsher Group, Geo has coached individuals and teams across a wide range of local, national and international organizations such as Visa, Orange, Baxter Healthcare, PGA European Tour, Domino Printed Images, Fuji, Marks and Spencer, Ramboll Environ, MJ Mapp and John Lewis.  He has logged over 30 years of coaching which inspired the book, “IMPACT! How to Make a Positive Difference”.  It is an autobiographical workbook and manual to help motivate people from all ages and backgrounds to make the changes necessary to lead even richer and more fulfilling lives.

Geo lives with his wife of 47 years, Heidi, in Colorado Springs. They have two sons, Nathan and Timothy and wonderful daughters in law and five grandchildren. As well as being a devoted husband and grandfather, he enjoys golf, bridge and being actively involved in social entrepreneur initiatives.

+ Meet Nicol Chaplin

Nicol is in demand from her clients because of the insights and experience she gained from working with senior management and boards over 25 years. As a marketing communications expert, Nicol had a track record in turning corporate strategy into actionable marketing programmes with major international companies in the financial services, telecoms, insurance and utilities sectors. Today she is accredited as an executive coach by Ashridge Business School.

Nicol works with organizations that want to develop the personal effectiveness and impact of their senior executives. Her past career along with her executive coaching experience means she is ideally placed to help her clients establish strong relationships and manage the evolving demands of their roles. Her passion for effective communication sits at the heart of her coaching work.  Nicol has worked with The Wilsher Group for the last 2 years.

Having recently graduated with an MSc in Executive Coaching from Ashridge Business School, Nicol is also accredited in the psychometric tool, Extended DISC. She also is a practitioner in NLP and is certified in stress management from the Centre of Stress Management. Nicol is an ongoing  member of the UK Association of Coaching and has regular coaching supervision.  

+ Meet Chris Sanders 

After an initial period in marketing and sales, Chris spent the next 25 years of his working life in the advertising industry.

He worked with clients of many different types and sizes, from professional partnerships to large industrial and technical organisations including Sony and British Aerospace. His specialism was the development of marketing communications strategy in collaboration with senior members of the client team.

In 2001 he was elected a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and until 2008 sat on CIM’s Holdings Board, which he chaired until 2006.

In 2003, he made a lifestyle change, moving to Somerset to run holiday cottages with his wife and retraining as a business and executive coach whilst working with The Wilsher Group. Since qualifying in 2006, he has worked with several hundred individuals and teams in the areas of personal performance, leadership development and high-performance teamwork, across organisations of all sizes and types, including within the charitable and not-for-profit sectors. He is also an experienced facilitator.

Chris believes his role as a coach is principally to create the space within which clients can develop powerful visions for themselves and their organisations, and then be energised and focused to realise them. 

+ Meet Sarah Crayford Brown 

Sarah qualified as a barrister in 1988 and is now an accredited mediator and coach. After 20 years of working within the public sector as a criminal prosecutor she became a business director in the private sector.

Sarah was a senior manager for 17 years with responsibility for implementing substantial organisational change as well as managing HR issues including poor performance, sickness absence and disciplinary issues. 

Sarah seized an opportunity to train as an in-house mediator in 2007 and has since mediated with staff at all levels. Sarah trained as a coach with The Wilsher Group at the beginning of 2010 after experiencing some personal coaching that helped her to recognise that to achieve what she really wanted she also needed a career change.  Her passion for coaching led to the development of her coaching practice; this, combined with her passion for helping others to resolve conflict using mediation, led her to set up Mediation in the Workplace Ltd.

Sarah has coached in a wide variety of areas over the past 5 years, helping people to define their goals and achieve them including a senior manager who wanted to change behaviour and gain promotion to board level and a director who had been made redundant and lost their way over a 12 month period but wanted to regain their confidence and secure a new position.

Sarah won the ‘Independent Mediator of the Year’ category in the National Mediation Awards 2014 and was awarded Mediation Champion of the Year in 2015. Sarah has contributed a chapter examining the use of mediation in The Handbook of Dealing with Workplace Bullying (2015).

+ Meet Sarah Maggs 

Sarah is a chartered occupational psychologist with over 20 years human resources experience within the manufacturing and telecommunications sectors.  Prior to be coming a freelance consultant Sarah was Group Head of Talent Management for Orange.

Her initial coaching experience was at Bowater where she coached the Managing Director and some of his board members to enable and assist them in managing a major change in the business, fundamentally changing the way they worked.  Whilst both Head of Learning Development, UK and Group Head of Talent at Orange she coached a number of senior managers and board members.  Some of these coaching agreements were focused on individual development plans resulting from attendance at a development centre and some were as a result of needs identification during job reviews.

Since becoming a consultant, Sarah has coached a number of senior managers through transition including Swiss RE Regional HR leader, Kroll Partner, Sony UK HR Director and Environ Senior Partner.  She has also run career development workshops culminating in individual coaching sessions to work through resulting action plans and 360 programmes at Kroll with follow up coaching for the UK, European, American and Asian businesses.  Sarah has worked with The Wilsher Group for the last 2 years.

Sarah has attended Coaching Training with the British Coaching Foundation, Career Counselling with CCS and Coaching Skills for Business Using Psychological Models with OPP.  Sarah has a BSc in Mathematics and Management Science and an MSc in Occupational Psychology.