culture smart

About

What my coaching clients say. 31 March 2021 Leadership Coaching "I have been working with Karen for nearly two years now. I feel very grateful and privileged to have had this opportunity to explore, challenge and articulate my strengths, values and passions in my work. Through doing this with Karen’s facilitation, I have been able to make the most out of the opportunities within my role and also work through the challenges of multiple restructures and what was 2020.

Karen supported me through a job crafting exercise. This has been one of the most powerful activities I have undertaken for my personal growth as a senior leader in health care. I have been able to use these reflections in working to my strengths within my role ensuring the organisation and ultimately the patients are benefiting from the work that I do.

Karen has provided me with the tools to not only reflect on my own personal development and growth but also in supporting me as a member of my work teams, my relationships with my managers and colleagues and in how I lead my teams.

Karen has provided me with the platforms to truly self-reflect, to believe in what I have to offer, to acknowledge my achievements and to identify areas of development and to continue to bring my best self to the work place.

Karen has a passion and focus on wellbeing and mental health in the work place. I am especially grateful for this knowledge and expertise last year. Karen’s currency of knowledge, literature and how the impact on the Health setting has provided reassurance, strength and in really tough times, hope that we can continue to make a difference.

Karen’s willingness to provide readings and tools for me to share with other colleagues in supporting their work and challenges has also been widely appreciated.

I am a better leader for the work I have done with Karen and I am very grateful of this."
Project Director, Large Public Healthcare organisation. (details available on request)

4 March 2021 Executive Leadership and Change Coaching "Karen Walker has walked alongside me for the past 18 months through what has been an unprecedented period of change predominantly through the COVID pandemic.

Leaders during this time needed to be exceptionally responsive and adaptive in such a reactive environment, and Karen’s coaching style was equally adaptive to my needs.

If I reflect on my journey over this time I would say that it has been the most defining period of my career, and I feel that I have made significant steps forward in my leadership style and impact. This was definitely amplified through the relationship I formed with Karen.

Karen helped me to adopt (and embrace) a love of Appreciative Inquiry as a way of leading, to be able to amplify my ability to listen and hear my team’s needs and understand the emotions that drive these. Karen embodies these values herself and role models this style, truly seeking to understand my own needs and finding ways to share her knowledge and connect me with academic literature to further my own learning.

I know that my coaching time with Karen has helped me to become a more responsive, compassionate and connected leader and that I have the frameworks to continue in my own development into the future."
Director of Operations, Large Public Healthcare organisation. (details available on request)

Team Culture and Wellbeing. December 2020 - March 2021. "We’re all keen to continue on and do the next bit, and we’re hopeful. We feel like, when you worked with us it gave us hope, light at the end of the tunnel. We’re keen to keep going, keen to contribute more and finish off the work we started. We are very grateful you were there with us last year."

"Thank you for listening to us and giving us a voice. We all very much appreciated the sessions."
(details available on request)

Consulting Testimonial 2018 "Karen successfully completed a whole of organisation capacity – culture, resources, business systems and processes - review against strategy for Family Life, to help us set our business transformation priorities and map out the journey we needed to take. We found that Karen brings her whole self to a project, seeking to engage the people, understand the issues and draw in from her extensive knowledge and resources to enable solution finding and strategy for implementation for results.

Internal feedback was very affirming that even for those most challenged by the project, Karen was able to bring them on board and set us up for success.”
Jo Cavanagh OAM, CEO; Adjunct Associate Professor, Faculty of Business and Law, Centre for Social Impact Swinburne, Swinburne University of Technology.

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My major point of difference and value for my coaching and consulting clients, is I am a practitioner with lived experience, of what I now coach and consult in.

I bring an appreciation of my client's leadership and management roles, as a successful senior leader and manager, in my Acting Director, General Manager and Operations Manager roles, working in a complex, highly regulated and challenging environment. As a leader, I simultaneously received Harrah’s New Zealand Chairman’s Award for “Excellence in Managing People”; a Board award, and Harrah’s “Quest for the Best Manager” award, an Employee nominated award. I also have experience as a non-Executive Director role on a board.

With 21 years of domain expertise in strategy, transformation and change in organisations, I bring practical and technical expertise to leaders and managers, as part of skills and knowledge development. How to elicit and turn data and information, into business cases, strategy, solutions, programs or projects of work, and implementation plans. I have coached and supported numerous leaders of successful organisational change and transformation initiatives, one impacting ~70,000 employees globally. My professional services experience include Senior Managing Consultant - Organisational Change, at IBM Australia, and Senior Consultant - Organisational Change, at BearingPoint New Zealand. I was part of the pre-opening leadership team of New Zealand’s largest greenfield business.

My domain expertise includes cultural and behavioural change in organisations, at individual and team levels.

My coaching of boards, leaders, managers and teams, helps them make sense of their environment, and the problems and opportunities that exist, to optimise their, and their organisation's, experiences, performance and culture.

My public speaking includes most recently at, the 21st Knowledge, Culture and Change in Organisations conference, in January 2021, presenting my Innovation Showcase on Psychosocial Complexities of Digital Workplaces. Lessons from Australian Remote Worker Digital Workplace Experiences during Covid-19. I presented an Innovation Showcase: Cultural and Political Barriers to Change, at the 17th Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations conference in 2017. I chaired the 5th Women in Project Management Leadership Summit, Australia, in 2016.

Since November 2019, I have been the organiser of the MeetUp Community Network - Optimising Human Performance and Culture.

I was acknowledged as one of 25 LinkedIn Top Voices in Australia, 2018, for my original contributions on:

The importance of social, emotional and psychological wellbeing at work.
The latest research on leadership, human performance and culture.
Organisational strategy, change and transformation.

As a practitioner of what I coach and consult in, I am both authentic and believable.

As a manager, my lived experience has included supporting staff experiencing suicidal ideation, depression, and psychotic episodes, also safety situations involving issues of aggressive customers and stalking. As a coach and consultant, I have frequently been the first person at a workplace, an individual has trusted to talk with about their personal wellbeing and safety issues, or their concerns for others. This year I am currently studying, a Graduate Certificate in Mental Health Practice, at Griffith University, as part of the increased need for the mental health and wellbeing coaching and consulting work I do with leaders, managers and teams.

As a blogger, writer and contributor published on LinkedIn, The Business Transformation Network, Thrive Global, and Medium, I invest significant time in keeping up with the latest, relevant research and publications, attending events, and gaining certifications and qualifications.

My credentials for the work I do, includes experience, skills and knowledge in effective tools and techniques for virtual coaching and consulting.

My current membership:

The Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association.
Organization Studies Research Network.
Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Culture Association- Charter member
Professional Contractors and Consultants Australia.
Project Management Institute.
Harvard Business Review Advisory Council.
Melbourne Football Club.
Melbourne Cricket Club.

My volunteer work includes ongoing pro-bono coaching and consulting services for not-for-profit community and healthcare organisations.

My passion for healthy, thriving individuals, teams, and therefore organisations, is at the heart of who I am, and what I do.

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