The GoodBoss Company

At last! A development tool focused specifically on developing better bosses!

About Us

The Good Boss Company helps a wide range of organisations to improve their performance by focusing on the many benefits of developing their bosses. It was founded by Andrea Gregory and Lisa Smale. In reality most organisations have and need few real “leaders” but many “bosses” and yet much of the focus of management development and training has been primarily on leadership. Good Boss focuses its efforts on the huge impact that can be made by developing not just the leaders but bosses throughout the organisation to manage and motivate their people more effectively.

Recently the management team has been strengthened by the addition of Tony Bennett who has many years experience as a Director in large companies and who has substantial first hand experience of developing the people management skills of bosses at all levels in an organisation.

Research Insights

Examining the issue of bosses behaviour from a wide perspective is really important to us. Applying expertise from a range of different disciplines we believe is critical to unearthing the causes as well as applying the remedies to the symptoms of behaviour demonstrated by bad bosses. To give our work an additional dimension we work with an occupational psychologist, Tony Borkowski.

To find out his perspective please click here.

Andrea Gregory
Founder
Enabling people to give of their best in organisations has been Andrea's passion for the last 15 years working with a host of clients in the retail, media, leisure, manufacturing, Private Equity, E-commerce, travel, media, energy, and healthcare and not for profit sectors.

Lisa Smale
Founder
Lisa has over 16 years experience in providing a broad based management development portfolio to Managers at all levels to organisations large and small. She has held many corporate roles including Training and Development Director, and works as a coach at Board level. In addition to the Good Boss Company, Lisa runs her own Training Consultancy Headfirst Associates and the Talent Pool.

Tony Bennett
Managing Director
A passionate believer in the central importance of people in making businesses successful, Tony has had director level experience in several successful large companies including 5 years as Managing Director of Going Places, a 5,000 people £1billion+ turnover company. Throughout his career Tony has always had an active interest and involvement in people development.

More about Andrea...

Andrea believes that enabling people is the most effective way of improving the performance of organisations so that they consistently deliver business objectives. Inspired people, with a clear sense of what must be done can deliver extraordinary results. With an M.B.A. and significant experience of the essential HR disciplines Andrea achieves a healthy mix of innovation pragmatism.

Andrea offers significant expertise in all aspects of HR and People Development, whether it's putting in place a strategy for organisational change, Management development, Executive Assessment or Executive Coaching. She has refined the process of producing lasting behavioural change working primarily with those responsible for others - Senior Managers, Managers, Team Leaders in a host of development areas including the following:

Leadership
Management
Influencing
Negotiating
Communication
Culture Change

An NLP Master Practitioner, qualified to use a number of psychometric tests including the Firo B and Myers Briggs Type Indicator, she always offers practical support in a professional but relaxed way to help her clients deliver the best possible results.

Her clients include: AOL, Clinphone, Co-Op, HG Capital, IPC Media, Learning and Skills Council, Megabowl, My Travel, Siemens, Somerfield, STA Travel, Tesco, Transport For London, Viacom Outdoor, Virgin Holidays

Also experience in Energy, NHS, Housing Associations, Local Authorities.

More about Lisa...

Lisa is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. She is a NLP (Neuro linguistic Programming) Master Practitioner and is qualified to administer a range of Psychometric instruments including the Myers Briggs Type Indicator step I and II, FiroB, the Good Boss Questionnaire and the Emotional Intelligence Competency Inventory.

Her background within the highly competitive and dynamic retail industry ensures that the development activities she provides are both practical and realistic. Her training has been shortlisted for a National Training Award and she has won the CATS award for training in the Tourism Industry.

Lisa uses her highly flexible approach to design and deliver innovative development solutions which are tailored to her clients needs. She is determined that her work with clients should make a practical and measurable difference to organisational performance of the clients she works with.

Lisa has found coaching to be the preferred development tool for many clients. She is an experienced and highly effective coach working with a wide range of clients at the most senior levels in organisations.

Lisa’s clients include Royal and Sun Alliance, Bath Spa University, The Serpentine Gallery, Gulliver’s Family Theme Park group, Somerfield Stores, The Science and Technologies Facilities Council, and CERN (Particle physics Institute in Geneva and originators of the World Wide web). Current and recent Coaching clients include the Chief Executive of Bristol City Football Club, Managing Director of Gulliver’s Theme Park Group and the Managing Director of Mercedes Finance UK.

More about Tony...

As Managing Director, Tony led the transformation of Going Places – following its creation through the merger of several underperforming businesses – into the sector’s leading performer in terms of both customer service and profitability. This transformation was firmly centred on a core belief in the importance of people and the creation of an environment in which employees were highly motivated to go the extra mile for customers, the company and themselves.

Earlier in his career, following 6 years as a teacher, Tony completed an MBA degree at London Business School. His initial business experience in Logistics and Marketing at Rowntree Nestle was followed by a period as Head of Training and Management Development for the WH Smith Group, where he developed a radical new strategy which dramatically improved the return on investment from people development activities. Tony was then appointed as Buying and Marketing Director of Our Price Music (a WH Smith subsidiary) where he focused on developing the functional and people management skills of a highly talented young team of music lovers who had minimal business experience.

Tony then moved into the travel industry where he was UK Marketing Director at Thomas Cook and later their Worldwide Director of Strategy. During this time he was heavily involved in designing and running a Global Leaders Programme for the Group’s top 100 managers.

Throughout his career, Tony has specialised in change management, transferring his experience and expertise into new sectors. Rapid analysis of the development needs of a business has been followed by strategic proposals and – importantly – a comprehensive implementation programme.

Tony carried out the qualitative research which contributed to the launch of the Good Boss Company and is passionate about the potential for dramatic improvement in organisational performance through the creation of high standards of people management and thus an environment in which employees “go the extra mile” not because they are forced to do so but because they want to do so.