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Develop leaders through coaching
Sunday, August 03, 2008 By Nicola Cooke
Years of experience in human resources (HR) led Kerry O’Keeffe to set up her own executive coaching and leadership development business at the start of this year.

While the company, People & Culture, is based in Cork, O’Keeffe runs her programmes throughout the country.

Employing life and business coach Joan O’Shea and leadership development consultant Carole McGuirk, the firm designs and runs training programmes covering management development, team building and customer initiatives.

Courses can run over one or two days, and refresher courses are also available. The programmes often include role-playing situations, using actors from the Live Theatre Group in Tipperary.

O’Keeffe briefs the actors about the company they will visit, so that the role-plays are company specific and allow company management to develop their skills.

O’Keeffe also runs personality tests on groups of employees, to find their strengths and weakness. Action can then be taken to build up weak areas and maximise strengths, she said.

People & Culture has worked with 25 clients to date; it works with six of these on an ongoing basis. These include multinational firms Vistakon, in Limerick, and Janssen and Centocor, which both have significant operations in Cork.

O’Keeffe hopes to expand her portfolio of regular clients to 15 or 20 companies. She has set up a website, but has not invested in other marketing or advertising as she believes that the company’s services are best sold through word-of-mouth.

‘‘I don’t think cold-calling companies is the way to build business,” she said. ‘‘I prefer to market what I do through addresses I give at Chambers of Commerce or, for example, to womens’ networks. I also have a lot of contacts from when I worked as a human resources director.”

O’Keeffe’s CV includes senior HR roles with companies including Johnson & Johnson, BT and IBM, and CSIRO, a government body in Australia.

‘‘The area of coaching is one that is growing in Ireland, and my company is designed to change the culture in the workplace, so that people work together to accelerate the performance of the overall team,’’ she said.

Her ambition is to work between Ireland and Australia, using her experience of working with multinational companies around the globe.

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