Testimonials

“I worked with John during the rollout of an Operational Excellence programme within our design team working on one of the most advanced engineering design projects in Europe, in mid-2022. John was my coach during this period.

One of the key benefits John helped me with was reflecting on what the role of a leader really is. John’s approach is very collaborative and tailored to the individual as a leader. He sets clear expectations and ensures he always holds the mirror up to your approach, making you confront the reality of how your team and peers see you. He is challenging and supporting at the appropriate points during the journey of improving your leadership approach.

We transformed my approach to interactions with my team and ensured my ability to engage, enable and coach my team was at the forefront of everything I do. During my time working with John, my department achieved improved confidence and clarity in our delivery of key milestones and boosted the morale of the overall team.

I would like to work with John again and feel if I was able to spend more time working with John, it would improve my performance even further as a leader and take my approach to coaching to the next level.”

“I first met John when working at Tata Steel when he was assigned as my coach during an operational excellence training and coaching deployment at Tata Steel, Shotton. What started out in my mind, as John being there to coach my team, soon became a realisation that John was there to coach me and that I would coach my team! This sounded like hard work, but we quickly set and agreed on our expectations of each other and created an outline of a plan. John then held me accountable to that plan, and we reviewed and analysed the team trying new styles and behaviours to engage them to change to new, more effective ways of working.

There were two personal aims I had whilst working with John: to understand coaching and become a better coach myself and to develop my team to solve problems and empower them to work at the right level. The first objective was the key to the success of the whole process. John helped me to understand my own style, giving me feedback on what I was doing well, but more importantly where the message wasn’t getting through and therefore not being put into action by my team. We spent a lot of time working on high-trust behaviours – this became the foundation for how I approached my leadership style and made it easier to have the required open and honest conversations.

Just before the project commenced, I accepted a new role at another company. Working with John for 13 weeks allowed me to practice my leadership styles, hold myself to account and set my team up to be in a sustainable place going forwards without me and put me in a confident position to tackle a new challenge on my own.

John is incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about business improvement through leadership. He has a wealth of experiences and has the art of storying telling to bring the theory to life. I asked him to hold the mirror up to my style and he did, but in a way which offered ideas and support to make the improvements I wanted to make. He is very much a coach and not a consultant, he will ask you what you want to achieve and then acts as your conscience, reminding you all the time and asking, ‘how can it be better?’, ‘what are you going to do?’, all whilst making it a fun and enjoyable experience, so it doesn’t feel like too much hard work.

I worked with John pretty much daily for 13 weeks and he taught me so much, made me reflect on issues which I maybe knew deep down but didn’t want to admit and helped me work through challenges to build my personal confidence in both processes and my own leadership.

John is someone you want to have alongside you to bounce ideas off, practice problem solving, and help review your plan before you have a communication session. He really knows his theory but doesn’t overcomplicate with lots of different models. He builds trust and is open to feedback. He is a family man and a Dad who tells you stories about trying out his coaching theory with 4 & 5 year-olds using visual management reward charts!

His energy, passion, and enthusiasm are infectious, he’s just a great guy to work with.”

“John is an innovative CI leader with a world-class ability to lead teams to identify and resolve issues and embed sustained change. John possesses an uncanny ability to read people and adjust his style to deliver results.

John’s facilitation skills make him the best CI leader I have worked with during my 23 years in the manufacturing industry.”

“I have known John (Edisbury) since he began working at my steel plant in 2019, coaching me in rolling out Operational Excellence to the workforce. My turn came in September 2019 when John, the warehouse teams and I began to roll out continuous improvement principles, tools and techniques to improve our place of work and workload. John’s knowledge and proficiency as a trainer and coach were clear from day one, but with his strong interpersonal skills, he could get everyone on board and was able to introduce some quite complex topics in a user-friendly and accessible way that interested us all.

Instead of struggling to grasp things by ourselves, John guided us clearly through the process and set us on the road to sustainability – not by telling us but by showing us how to discover solutions for ourselves. On a personal level, John made many long-term friends here and is welcome back anytime to see how we have progressed further.

Today we are still using all the tools and techniques introduced at the outset of our journey: Holding Effective Meetings, Gemba, Visual Management, Problem-solving and more. Thanks for your guidance, John”

“Through the course of our Operational Excellence transformation, which lasted for a full year, John has demonstrated he can adapt to different environments, i.e. both within the operational organisation and supporting departments.

I characterise and value John as a team player, always looking and seeing coaching opportunities to improve things and persevering in the most challenging moments. John’s background in the industry, combined with his coaching skills made him an asset in addressing the challenges we faced within our large-scale manufacturing organisation.

Additionally, John was instrumental in my coaches’ 1-2-1 coaching and development and setting up and implementing a system to further develop them. Thanks, John. It was great working with you!”