A bit more about me

Welcome to my world…

If I am going to tell you something about me, I guess the first thing I should tell you was that I was born with a cleft palate and hare lip – not to get your sympathy but to help you understand that it had a profound effect on me. My early years were dominated by operations and not feeling good about the way I looked. Growing up in South East London and going to an all girls comprehensive, I had very little contact with others. I remember my early days at University and feeling like a ‘cardboard cut-out’ surrounded by people who seemed to know what they were doing. Looking back this was the start of my interest in understanding how people tick and how they interact.

Accidentally falling into training and development after a spell in marketing, research, publicity and hospital management, I discovered that being paid to develop yourself whilst you develop others was a magical recipe. For the next 30 years that is exactly what I have done.

When working for an international drug company, I was asked to run an assertiveness course and wanted to go on a course before running one myself. As someone with a degree and a good job it never occurred to me that I was not assertive but at the end of the 12 week, 2 hour programme I realised that there was lots of room for improvement. I can honestly say that this course changed my life.

I now believe that assertiveness underpins all the more sophisticated interpersonal skills we can learn and that without it we can end up controlled and taken advantage of it by others, operating in chaos, becoming an ‘exploding doormat’ or losing our temper at the ‘drop of a hat’. This is true whether you are talking about family dynamics or on the international stage. Teaching myself and then teaching others to be more effective at work, home, love and life has become my passion and it is the ideas that have worked for me and thousands of others that I present here.

My experience

After working in publishing, I moved to the NHS and then on to the Wellcome Foundation where I got more stationery in a week than I got in 10 years in the Health Service. I also had an office overlooking the duck pond and lots of business lunches. As a training professional I thought that I had arrived. Then the company got taken over by Glaxo Smith Kline. The ‘Glaxons’ as we fondly liked to call them had other ideas about our future. I decided to become self employed on the advice of a very wise colleague who said ‘you haven’t got a job and if you try and fail, you haven’t got a job, so what have you got to lose?’

That was in 1993. My first assignments involved setting up long term Career Centres for Nestle, Clark Shoes, London Electricity and Pharmacia and Upjohn. As well as helping people to present themselves positively on paper and face to face, I learnt a lot about the robustness of the human spirit as I saw people thrive and move on to better futures.

But I missed the Health Service. I love the organisation and what it stands for and I love the people who do a very difficult job under very difficult circumstances often with very little thanks.

Due to regular work and repeat business this became my ‘playground’. I trained people at the ‘coal face’ mainly in interpersonal skills. When coaching Directors of Finance I observed that the root cause of most problems is nearly always a people ‘issue’. I also learnt that before you tackle a skills deficit you have to tackle a belief deficit because there are a lot of us walking around on this planet who think very negatively about ourselves.

Once I tackled negative beliefs and lack assertion I found that other people skills could be learnt much more easily and often with exceptional results. People were achieving goals that they only previously dreamed about. Then the magic happened. I realised that people skills were cumulative and each skill built on the previous underpinning skill until a continuum of interpersonal skills emerged. Now leading people rather than tracking them I developed a clear route to personal development in a ‘get out your toolkit and get to work kind of way’. Having used this approach successfully for over 20 years I then turned my attention to the evolution of love.

My qualifications include a B.Sc.(Economics) from Queen Mary College, University of London and a Diploma in Training Management from what is now South Thames College. In 1995 I completed a Master’s Degree (Change Agent Skills and Strategies) from the University of Surrey. It was the first year that they had run the Master’s Course which was advertised as a ‘crucible of learning’. What this meant in practice was that there was no real structure so we ended up processing the carnage that often evolved when course members projected their feelings onto others and in return received some back again. Although it was interesting most of us went into therapy. The following year they introduced more structure and that first group became legendary.

What I learnt from the experience is that people do not learn well when they are under stress so I started to introduce very clear structures. These structures eventually evolved into step by step approaches for all the interpersonal skills that I learnt and then shared with others.

The Books

My first book, The People Skills Revolution, came about when I was coaching a Director of Finance who was doing some interesting negotiations with the Department of Health. I suggested he wrote a book about his experience to educate others in his approach. Straight away he said ‘No I think YOU should write a book about the continuum of interpersonal skills’. Not only had he experienced the benefits but had also witnessed some remarkable changes in the people he had referred to me.

I talked about writing the book for years until a friend said ‘Pam, either write the book or shut up’. It took just 5 months to write The People Skills Revolution because I just recounted the approaches I had been using successfully throughout my career. The following year I wrote the People Skills Revolution Handbook which helps people to put the ideas into practice.

In this second book I include an amazing interview with a Chief Executive Officer who recounts his experience of developing the skills outlined on the Continuum of Interpersonal skills from assertiveness, through to influencing, negotiation, conciliation, taking a stand and finally making peace. At the end of the interview I asked him why he thought the first book hadn’t gained traction and he said ‘I think it’s about timing and people aren’t ready to learn people skills yet’.

Since that time the books have largely gone under the radar. Then two things happened that made me think the timing was right to relaunch them. Firstly the pandemic. We are now more isolated than ever before, with increased working from home and reduced contact with the people we care about. Secondly in one week, four highly skilled professionals who I admire and who were noted for their people skills fed back to me directly or through others that the book had changed their lives – or as one said ‘It’s all in the book’.

My next book is called the Evolution of Love to be published shortly which I hope shines a light on why relationships today for many appear to be difficult and what we can do to find lasting love.