Testimonials
We are only as good as the results we achieve. See what my clients have to say about what took them to their next level and how I was able to support them to be the best they could be...
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Lorelei Leslie Marie Saavedra, Proposal Team Manager with Arcadis Manila, Philippines, a participant of the 21st Century Manager training and development programme
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In December 2018, I received a surprise message from David Rush, formerly from Chase Bank, NYC. It demonstrates that you may never know how you can touch, move or inspire someone to achieve their ultimate goal...
EXECUTIVE COACHING
“My coaching sessions with Penny have enabled me to more clearly identify and state my professional goals and have led to me approaching opportunities and specific tasks with an increased purpose, deliberately exposing myself to core skill gaps and actively chasing roles and positions aligned with progressing my career. As my coach, I felt Penny quickly built a trusting relationship through which I was progressively challenged to understand my professional objectives and priorities and she guided me through developing a successful framework to progress towards these. I would thoroughly recommend her as your coach."
Trent Ericksen, Project Manager, Arcadis, Australia
"Working with Penny helped give me the confidence for a real jump in my career and to take on new challenges in a totally different sector. After having my second child I was finding that I felt a lack of focus, but with her support I was able to identify where I really wanted my career to go and analyze my strengths. She taught me how to break down situations into smaller, more manageable pieces and deal with them effectively. Penny is very easy to open up to and has a great ability to quickly see the issues at hand and help work with you to identify solutions. I definitely feel more capable following working with Penny and am now not afraid to reach out for new challenges when they come along."
Associate Director, global real estate investment management corporation, UK
“My experience of being coached by Penny Wood was a really empowering experience. I was a bit tentative at the start having never had a coach before, but I found the process easy and relaxing and Penny’s approach was professional but reassuring. The sessions enabled me to structure my thoughts and gave me the direction which I had been lacking. Seeing things from a different perspective and talking through the problem with a professional like Penny was enlightening and empowering. Penny didn’t need to say much, just steer me along my own thought process so that I could structure myself. It was very clever and I felt empowered by the ability to find the solutions myself. That expert guidance was amazing and I’d encourage anyone to seek out a professional coach like Penny.”
Jo Williams, Partner, Sanderson Weatherall Building Consultancy, UK
LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT FACILITATOR
"Penny partnered with Arcadis to deliver our 21st Century Manager management development training programme, working with over 200 leaders from different countries and cultures. Her ability to deliver the programme with a vibrant personality, infectious energy, huge commitment and confidence, provided the springboard for the participants to truly engage in the sessions. An advantage of engaging Penny for the whole programme was that she was able to build trusted relationships with the participants and global HR teams. She was able to develop and change portions of the programme to suit country or regional influences, due to her cross-cultural knowledge and extensive experience working in a global business environment, as well as being flexible and accommodating. On completion of the programme, we have witnessed tangible changes in the behaviours of our people, resulting in improved performance, innovative collaborations and the building of stronger, cross-functional relationships throughout the different regions of the business. Penny was truly committed to developing our people and maximising our business performance and we could not be more pleased with this exciting partnership. We would strongly recommend Penny as someone who delivers results and offers an extremely valuable contribution to any company's training and development requirements."
Jacob Grech, HR Director, Arcadis, Global Design and Australia Pacific
“It was very inspirational to have Penny Wood deliver the 21st Century Manager Training Programme to our line managers during the last 18 months. The training was very insightful, energizing, bringing lots of ideas, with both substantial and in-depth knowledge together with case studies, learning from experience and being fully practice-oriented.
Penny’s delivery style caught the attention of everyone in the room, she brought up for discussion many case studies from her experience as PM in construction industry, which helped better understand training concepts and facilitated line managers growth during this program. She was very energetic, friendly and communicative, managing to establish a full connection with each participant during these 18 months, enabling people opening up and sharing their thoughts, ideas and challenges in day to day activities.
She was very focused on enhancing the skills of our line managers, ensuring an optimum pre-training preparation was completed before each module, asking constantly for feed-back to improve/adjust content and delivery style, making follow-up on progress and providing support to participants at all time, being available to any requests/questions outside the training hours too.
I recommend using Penny for the next training cohorts since the benefits of her personality, delivery style and efforts lead to visible improvements of our line managers skills.”
Cristina Balteanu, HR Business Partner, Arcadis, Romania
“it was a wonderful 18 months journey with Penny. The content and presentation by Penny was consistently high and engaging. It left the participants with lots of energy and enthusiasm. Penny was very receptive to feedback and customized the programme to suit the Arcadis culture. This could happen only because of her passion for Learning & Development. Penny created an interactive atmosphere with some live examples (country specific) which was really refreshing. One of her best modules which received great responses and appreciation was “Sponsorship and Organizational Politics”. Penny was friendly and fun which helped her connect with each and every participant.
Wishing Penny best of luck!”
Soundaria Lakshmi, Human Resources Director, Arcadis, India
“Over one and half years and an enlightening journey with Penny Wood, having attended the 21st Century Manager Programme, I know myself better now. The programme had a wide spectrum of people and business management aspects, which were delivered with lot of insights and enthusiasm by Penny. Certainly for our technical people more focused on engineering/technology, we sometimes do not appreciate bigger picture (people, business environment, trust and communication). Awareness on concepts like controlling your “inner thoughts”, challenging the status quo and managing difficult conversations are lifelong lessons to practice. I strongly believe that agility and trust are corner stones for any manager to be successful in their role. Many thanks Penny for all your efforts and support.”
Amit Bohare, Participant - Technical Discipline Leader, Transport Modelling, Arcadis, India
PUBLIC SPEAKING COACHING
"Penny is a transformational public-speaking coach and has helped me from presenting to a few people to presenting to a huge global audience. Penny’s style and encouraging manner makes learning comfortable and fun, moving public speaking from a daunting prospect to one to look forward to. Penny has literally given me a passport to world with speaking invitations from New Zealand to New York. If you want to overcome your presentation fears, speak with confidence, clarity and personality, Penny is the coach to have. I no longer fear her sitting in the audience now as I know she has skilled me up with everything I need to make a great presentation."
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Emma Osmundsen, CEO, Sixty Bricks Ltd
"I attended Penny's public speaking seminar that was held at WSP in Exeter for the Chartered Institute for Highways and Transport. I really enjoyed her workshop and as someone who hates presenting, i took a number of useful points away with me. After incorporating some of these into my entry for the CIHT Colas Presentation Awards, I won the South West regional heat and was lucky enough to go on and win the national final! So thank you Penny for your insightful tips and advice – they definitely helped me raise the standard of my presenting."
Hannah Clark, Transportation Planning Officer, Devon County Council - Winner of Chartered Institute of Highways and Transportation UK, National Presentation Awards
"I took up the role as Women in Property Chair of the South West UK in 2017 and was asked to take part in public speaking events to audiences of 300 people. Totally out of my usual comfort zone. Penny offered support and coached me through a plan for these talks, I had the outline of what I wanted to discuss and material to use but her input helped to focus on the structure and really delve into the key messages I needed to get across. The results were incredible and the talks such a massive success with really unexpected feedback from the audiences both in attendance and across social media. I have since gone on to further talks and applied the ‘Penny strategy’ to these. I would fully recommend Penny for help and guidance if you are starting out into a new public speaking role or looking to really focus key messages to get further results from your talks."
Rachel Bell, Director, Stride Treglown and National Chair of Women in Property UK 2023
"Please pass on my thanks to Penny. This kind of event is critical to attract and retain quality people, keeping skills refreshed and/or current. Penny was more about the delivery; getting people to buy into your message, the body language, tone and delivery and I found these hints relating to delivery extremely insightful."
Participant from Bristol Water UK, attending my 'How to become an empowering speaker?' workshop
"As a young Entrepreneur I'm sure we can all agree when we start out we have no idea what we are doing but because of people like Penny Wood I felt fully equipped to approach my journey bold faced and full of fire" Penny is without a doubt good at what she does."
Hashim Ruan, Youth Ambassador, Global Leadership Coalition Competition, Barbados, November 2015
"Penny was a huge help during my preparation to compete in the World Championship of Public Speaking. While many people offered advice to do this, don't do that, Penny distinguished herself by helping me remember the big picture, which is often easy to forget when you're mired in the details of a speech. Ultimately, you have an audience to engage, entertain, move or inspire. Penny gets that, and more than once helped me to rise above the noise and remember all there is to enjoy about public speaking."
Mark Goldberg, World Semi Finalist, 3rd placed winner, World Championship of Public Speaking, Cincinnati, August 2013
"Penny took my speaking to new heights! I'm a professional speaker and 20-year Toastmaster veteran, and we worked together several weeks. She showed me new ways to use pacing, timing, authenticity, and energy to improve my speech. I was amazed how she helped me transform a great speech into an AMAZING speech! And Penny is FUN! I give Penny 10 thumbs up!"
Brian Robinson, Toastmaster and Author, District #46 New York, 2nd placed winner, World Championship of Public Speaking, 2014