About Bristol Business Psychology
I am Sarah Shortland, Director and Founder of Bristol Business Psychology
I started this business because I believe passionately in the impact that well-equipped leaders can have on the people they work with and organisations they work in. While the context we are operating in feels like it is shifting by the day, the way we process information and respond to the world around us has not changed in thousands of years. By understanding our psychology and the impact of this on our behaviour we can all increase our impact and improve our effectiveness, whether we are providing leadership to two people of 20,000 people.
As a chartered psychologist and associate fellow of the British Psychological Society, all my work is grounded in my training and my belief that you need to start from a basis of research and data when developing and delivering solutions.
Bristol Business Psychology can support you and your organisation with in-depth leadership assessment, coaching, skills development
Biography
After completing my undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of Hull in 2001, I attended the university of Wales, Cardiff for a masters in Occupational Psychology. I then stayed on in Wales and joined a recruitment consultancy as this seemed like a great way to be exposed to a range of public and private sector businesses, seeing how they operate and how they are run. Following a move to Bristol in 2004 I joined Kaisen Consulting Ltd in 2006, finally realising the dream which began in during my master when two of the consultant team came to speak to us.
My time at Kaisen provided me with an excellent foundation in in-depth psychological leadership assessment, leadership skills development, psychometrics, and coaching. All while developing my ability to understand client needs and support the development of effective solutions to meet these needs. Exposure to clients across a range of industries from engineering and construction to professional services, financial services, retail and pharmaceuticals helped me to see the similarities and differences in effective leadership across these organisations, backed up by our focus on data and research to help provide further insights to these clients. I also gained the experience required for obtaining chartered psychologist status with the British Psychological Society and experienced the highs and lows of business travel around the globe while forming friendships and professional connections which I value to this day.
Following the acquisition of Kaisen by Deloitte in 2015, I joined Kier Group, one of my clients, as Head of Talent. My role was to help the group, consisting of a number of independent businesses and approximately 19,000 employees, to gain consistency in how talent and potential were understood, measured and reported to drive more effective succession planning and development activities. We also designed and ran a fast-potential talent programme. This role included supporting ExCo and CEO succession planning and Nomination Committee meetings. I subsequently because an internal Executive Leadership Development Specialist, stepping away from actively running the talent review process across the group to focus more specifically on supporting our leaders in their development and building their skills to grow and stretch others. At this point I also had the opportunity to become more deeply involved in our inclusion and diversity efforts, which included designing and running a research project to understand more about how to attract, retain and develop a diverse workforce.
I left Kier in 2019 during major organisational restructuring and decided that starting my own business was the best way to combine my professional training, consultancy experience, and time working in-house to deliver high-quality solutions to clients who recognise the impact that business psychology can have on their organisation.
Want to develop your leadership skills?
Get in touch today and let's start a conversation about how I can support your leadership development.