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2nd July 2012

Waterside Consulting: July’s MediWales Featured Member

Waterside: helping leaders in lifescience and healthcare make the right difference

How do you create the space you need to really think about where your business or research programme is going? What tools do you use to navigate the complex and unpredictable environment in which you are trying to make your mark? Who do you work with to achieve breakthrough?

Sue Heatherington helps leaders and leadership teams find the space to gain absolute clarity. She describes herself as a professional coach, thinking partner and creative facilitator. Her approach inspires leaders to think strategically, identify genuine priorities and understand key connections.  And then to support them in leading the change required. Her company, Waterside Consulting, is a creative practice in leadership development for leaders and senior teams in lifescience and healthcare.

Waterside works with leaders and leadership teams who are pushing at the boundaries, including new ventures and collaborations, posing explosive questions and enabling breakthrough conversations. Success at this level depends on two key attributes: experience and sound approach.

Anyone facilitating thinking in this type of environment needs first hand experience of what it’s like to be in the centre of the storm and understands the terrain. As a former NHS CEO in both England and Wales and company board director, Sue is well acquainted with the sense of isolation leaders frequently experience when tough decisions need to be made. She is familiar with the environment in both healthcare and research and her experience provides a natural authority and sensitivity to provide constructive challenge.

Sue invested her top tier management experience by training professionally in Switzerland to gain a wider perspective. She does not impose a methodology on people, rather using an eclectic approach with strong psychological and business foundations. A hallmark of her work is her creativity in blending left and right brain thinking, stepping inside other people’s shoes and enabling them to expand their perspective, strengthen their resilience and work with a powerfully different mind set.

Examples of current work includes:

  • Leadership and business coaching in lifescience and healthcare (through LEAD Wales)
  • ‘Navigating the NHS’ for leaders in pharmaceutical and medical technology companies, academics and clinicians
  • Coaching the leadership team of a major multi-site medical devices research programme
  • Thinking partner for senior academics and programme leads in healthcare computing, health economics and research collaboration
  • Facilitation of innovative national collaborative conferences on the future of healthcare information technology (the Tully Meetings)
  • Governance and board development for NHS organisations, including the new Clinical Commissioning Groups in England (with Foresight Partnership)
  • MC at BioWales 2012

Sue is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. Waterside is based in a beautiful 40-acre valley north of Swansea.

To start a conversation call Sue Heatherington on 0777 571 0240 / 01792 793866 or sueh@waterside-consulting.co.uk.