Sarah Lewis

I’m a chartered organisational psychologist. I facilitate change and have done all my adult life, first as a social worker, then as a manager and for the past 30 years as a consultant. I facilitate change in people, teams and organizations.

I do this through direct interventions, such as professional practice supervision, team or organisational development activity, and through education or knowledge sharing, such as through books, lectures and workshops.

I aim to help people change their work lives or organisations for the better.

I approach change as a psychological process. I draw specifically on appreciative, positive and strengths-based approaches as I consistently find them to produce excellent results and to be inspiring, engaging and productive for people involved.

To achieve change I work with the relationships in groups, the meanings people make about what is going on around them, people’s aspirations, their resources and their emotions.

Working with psychological phenomena like this I can positively affect group dynamics, and encourage individual growth.

I work through the processes of story and dialogue, decision and action, understanding and behaviour and hopes and plans.

I draw particularly, but not exclusively, on co-creative methodologies such as Appreciative Inquiry, World Café, and Open Space. I blend these approaches with more traditional psychological knowledge, and with positive psychology.

I also bring a wealth of experience of working with people as a social worker, manager and leader, educator, psychologist and consultant to any particular organisational challenge. 

I mostly work independently, expanding my team as necessary to fulfil assignments.

I believe that my combination of a broad social science background and social work practice combined with my specialism in social constructionist change approaches to people, systems and change, along with my thirty years’ experience as a consultant/OD/facilitator psychologist gives me a very solid base for engaging with almost any organisation and its challenges.

I am proud to be able to say that my professional credentials, my experience, my authorship and my sense of humour combine to create a particular approach to, and skill with, working with groups and people that has on more than one occasion been described as ‘magic’ in its effectiveness in achieving or creating change.

  • I am a psychologists. I work with people and organisations to discover or uncover the experiences, strengths, skills, resources and positive attitudes from which form the springboard to a positive future.

    I understand that sometimes things go wrong. That sometimes people need to hear hard truths. But I don’t stop there. I work with you to make things better.

    I have a range of approaches and I bring to the challenge. To mention a few

  • I have helped organisations with many challenges over the years, including relationships, performance, culture, organisational change, implementing new systems, introducing new practices, restructuring, redundancies and much more.

    See some examples of how we have helped people here.

  • I help people work better together

     

    Whether it’s an individual, a team or the whole organisation that needs fine tuning, rebuilding, re-motivating or re-orienting, it’s about working with people

    Whether you’re high-tech or lo-tech, established or new, engineering or teaching, corporate or not for profit, you need your people working at their best.

    Whether your concern is performance, culture shift, team working or work relationships, it’s about working with people.

    In all these situations, I work with you to find and design ways to help people work better together.

    I work by helping you to identify, develop and increase your unique and collective strengths, using these to overcome weaknesses.

    At the individual, team and organisational level a focus on strengths delivers results. I have been helping organisations achieve this for over thirty years.

  •  I work with you…

    To identify what needs to change

    To help shape dreams of the future

    To understand what good means to you

    To build on what works

    I offer psychology informed consultancy

     

    Appreciating Change is an evidence-based psychological consultancy with an over-arching commitment to applying well-researched positive psychology to interactions, designs and interventions. 

    I believe strongly in the power of positive approaches to change, at the individual, organisational and team level. I am open and transparent in my dealings with you.

    My approach is based on understanding people, meaning I can work with any organisation to develop leadership and vision, work performance and engagement, and a positive work culture, regardless of your particular sector.

    I specialise in working with change.

    I bring a strengths-based approach to all my interventions at an individual, team or organisational level, helping you release the untapped potential of individuals, teams and the whole organisation

    To identify who needs to be involved

    To find a way forward

    To find and celebrate success

  • Because…

    I have over thirty years experience helping organisations with change

    I offer a bespoke design rather than a one-size-fits-all process

    I am oriented to finding the best of what you’ve got and to work with it

    If I don’t think we’re a good fit for the work, I will direct you elsewhere