Month: April 2025

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News

An opportunity to join Mindbeat’s global scale up

30 April 2025

Mindbeat is hiring! We’re looking to fill a client partner/account manager role in either London (hybrid) or Malta (remote).

You will own and manage global client accounts, ensuring strategic alignment, stakeholder engagement, and revenue growth. You will develop deep relationships with senior stakeholders and drive commercial success by partnering with clients to align our products and solutions with their strategic goals and deliver real impact.

The right candidate will bring a deep understanding of business and, in particular, the learning and talent agenda; A healthy curiosity and a willingness to build partnering relationships at senior levels with our clients; And a proven track record of exceeding sales targets in the UK market. You will also have the opportunity to be rewarded for any new business you bring in.

What you’ll be getting up to:

You will consult with clients to understand their challenges and priorities, shaping and driving Account Plans to ensure focus and execution on key opportunities. This entrepreneurial role is ideally suited to someone with a Talent or L&D consulting background, a commercial flair, and an enjoyment of building solutions and businesses.

Key Responsibilities:

Engagement

  • Develop trusted advisor relationships with clients, guiding their learning and development strategy and ensuring our solutions align with their evolving needs.
  • Identify opportunities to expand and deepen client relationships, helping them maximise the value of our coaching and talent solutions.
  • Work closely with Client Success to ensure a seamless client experience, fostering strong team collaboration.

Experience

  • Develop tailored solutions and programmes by leveraging Mindbeat’s suite of coaching and talent products to support client objectives.
  • Create proposals and commercial agreements that align with client needs and business priorities, ensuring buy-in from key stakeholders.
  • Provide strategic input on programme insights and outcomes, working alongside Client Success to reinforce impact and identify new opportunities.

Impact

  • Drive account growth and long-term partnerships, ensuring high levels of engagement and retention.
  • Own commercial success within assigned accounts, meeting revenue targets through proactive relationship management and consultative selling.
  • Track stakeholder engagement and account health, using data-driven insights to inform strategy and ensure continued alignment with client goals.

What We’re Looking For:

  • Proven experience in leadership and/or talent consulting, combined with experience in BD and Account Management.
  • Proven track record in carrying a sales target.
  • Strong relationship-building skills with the ability to engage senior stakeholders and influence decision-making.
  • A consultative approach with the ability to understand client needs and translate them into tailored solutions.
  • Excellent organisational skills with a proactive, problem-solving mindset.
  • Experience managing multiple projects simultaneously, ensuring seamless delivery and follow-through.
  • Commercial acumen with an understanding of contract management, renewals, and revenue growth opportunities.
  • A passion for leadership development, coaching, and driving impactful client outcomes.
  • International experience, ideally in the U.K. and other countries.
  • Impeccable English – English as a first language.
  • Fire in the belly, drive to learn, succeed and get things done.

What We Offer:

  • The opportunity to work with high-profile clients and make a tangible impact on leadership development.
  • A collaborative and growth-oriented team culture.
  • Competitive salary and performance-based incentives.
  • Flexible working options, including hybrid working.
  • 25 days’ holidays plus Bank holidays.
  • Your own Mindbeat coach and access to a personal development budget.
  • The support of a leadership team that has strong expertise in the industry.
  • Top-end Apple hardware and the latest software to ensure you have the tools to do your job.

Interested?

If you are a strategic, client-focused, professional looking to shape the future of leadership development, we’d love to hear from you.

Contact [email protected] for more details.

Categories
Blog

Scaling culture: How Sticks’n’Sushi blends coaching with growth

29 April 2025

Known for blending bold growth with deep cultural roots, Sticks’n’Sushi is no stranger to ambition.

With 30 restaurants spanning Europe — including 15 around London, 12 in Copenhagen, and three in Berlin — and a dedicated team of 1,500 staff, the premium dining brand has successfully scaled while staying true to its unique half-Japanese, half-Danish heritage.

However, at the start of 2024, following new private equity ownership, the company stepped into a new era of rapid expansion and organisational transformation.

To navigate this acceleration without losing its strong cultural DNA, Sticks’n’Sushi is investing in coaching-led leadership development.

We sat down with Sticks’n’Sushi’s People Director, Nick Eaton, to unpack how coaching and culture are helping to shape this next chapter of the company’s journey.

From family-owned to private equity-backed

Sticks’n’Sushi was founded in Copenhagen in 1994 by brothers Jens and Kim Rahbek Hansen and their brother-in-law, Thor Andersen. The original restaurant still operates today, and the brand has grown steadily, expanding into London in 2012 and Berlin in 2017.

Before 2013, Sticks’n’Sushi was privately owned and operated by its founders. Drawing inspiration from their half-Japanese, half-Danish heritage, they created a unique dining experience fusing sushi and yakitori — deeply rooted in tradition yet open to experimentation.

From steady steps to strategic leaps

In 2013, Sticks’n’Sushi sold a stake to Maj Invest Equity to support international expansion, particularly in the UK. Maj later increased its stake and guided the business through a decade of measured growth.

Then came a turning point. In January 2024, McWin Capital Partners bought a 95% stake from Maj Invest Equity for €76 million. It marked the end of a ten-year journey and the beginning of a bold new growth agenda.

“Maj helped us open one new restaurant at a time, build each business, and reinvest the profits into the next opening. McWin wants us to significantly expand over six years,” explains Nick. “It’s a transition from slow and sensible to rapid, exciting ambition — but it requires a shift in mindset. That can be quite scary for some people.”

Taking people on the journey

Sticks’n’Sushi prides itself on having people who have worked there for all 31 years, which is great for company culture and embedding brand DNA. However, ambitious growth requires a change in mindset. Nick’s leadership team needed to find a way to instil independent thinking and a risk-taking mentality throughout management.

He explains: “Our General Managers are vital to our success, but as we open in more cities, we won’t be able to support them in the same hands-on way we do now. We need to elevate them into leaders who can make decisions confidently, communicate clearly with their teams, set high standards, and work more remotely.”

“To achieve this, we’ve developed six leadership descriptors and outlined what great leadership looks like for Sticks’n’Sushi. Mindbeat has provided group coaching around these leadership credentials as well as one-to-one coaching.”

“For many General Managers, this will have been the first time they’ve experienced individual coaching. They now each have an eight-month programme that will take them from a day-to-day sales mindset to focusing on what they need to improve as future leaders.”

“As a leadership team, we also have to elevate ourselves to allow people to try new things, take risks, and make mistakes — so that they can learn and grow. Our CEO has also been working with Mindbeat to prepare himself for the broader challenges and decision-making we now face as an organisation experiencing rapid change.”

The importance of cultural identity

It’s no secret that McWin wants to make money from its investment. Its experience and expertise lie in ‘quick service restaurants’ like Burger King, Popeyes, and Pizza Hut — metrics-driven, KPI-focused businesses. But Sticks’n’Sushi is different. It has a deep-rooted cultural DNA, reflected in the way employees refer to things, how they speak with each other, and the words they use. McWin has bought into this.

Nick explains: “One example is that we refer to our staff as ‘fish’ and newcomers as ‘new fish joining the shoal.’ We have Japanese table numbers, so our staff have to learn basic Japanese to work here. Each restaurant has a wooden monkey, which is synonymous with almost every Danish household. If a child finds the wooden monkey in one of our restaurants, they are rewarded with a chocolate fish.”

As a result, staff retention at Sticks’n’Sushi is better than many other high-street restaurant chains.

“We find that the people who stay with us are curious,” Nick concludes. “They love the detail they have to learn. We need our ‘fish’ to know every element of every dish on the menu, plus the origins of where the ingredients have come from.”

“There are restaurant jobs that are much simpler for the same wage, but if you’re fascinated by cultural rituals and have a desire to understand the food you’re serving, then Sticks’n’Sushi is such a rewarding place to work.”

Final thought

In a world where rapid growth often leads to cultural dilution, Sticks’n’Sushi demonstrates that with the right leadership, growth and heritage can thrive together. 

By investing in coaching-led leadership development, the brand ensures that its cultural identity remains strong as it expands. It’s a powerful reminder that scaling fast doesn’t mean losing sight of what makes a brand unique — it’s about nurturing leaders who can grow both the business and its culture.

Categories
Blog

Thriving Through Turmoil: Three Leadership Strategies

29 April 2025

In today’s business landscape, we’re finding that 90% of our conversations with clients revolve around transformation and restructuring. 

Whether it’s reshaping business models, reorganising structures, downsizing, consolidating, or expanding into new markets, the pressure to adapt is significant. 

Navigating these changes and unlocking the power of leadership to guide through uncertainty with clarity and empathy plays a critical role in helping businesses not only survive but thrive.

To share some insights on the crucial role leaders can play, we turned to Steve Jefferys, one of our experienced executive coaches. With hands-on leadership experience at global marketing agencies including Proximity London, Kitcatt Nohr, and Havas Helia, Steve offers his perspective on how leaders can steer their teams through complex times.

Here are his top tips for leading through change.

Market conditions – both pre and post President Trump’s global tariffs – are providing an uncertain canvas in which many businesses are having to operate, adapt to and survive within. 

The human impact of this is far-reaching with restructures in response throwing certainty to chaos – with redundancies, role changes and areas of priority and focus having to pivot; almost overnight.

And while the change itself is hard enough to contend with, those left behind to make sense of their new landscape often do so without the safety net of the familiar –  long-established colleagues, team dynamics or leadership structures. 

That’s where leaders need to step in – and step up. 

In times of uncertainty, investing time, space and resources into people in the rocky times will be an investment worth making in the long-run. People remember and stand by those who heard them, supported them and stood by them – ensuring their long-term commitment and loyalty. 

There is no better time to get your leadership reps in than when the winds of change are blowing, and new ground is being broken.

There are three important strategies  to help you along the way in navigating this.

1. Invest time in just ‘being’ with your people

Time with your people with no agenda is not wasted, fruitless time. 

The best conversations happen when there is no fixed agenda or purpose. The knack, though, is in holding the line and allowing the time and space for this to feel a normal, safe and constructive environment. 

What do I mean by this? Go for a walk with your team members and just see where the conversation goes. If you’re remote, both walk and plug your earphones in over a phone call. Get away from a Teams screen. Don’t have a pen and paper anywhere in sight. 

Hear about what’s happening for them, what’s important to them and how things are being said. It’s amazing how many clues and insights you can gather to revisit and probe on in the moment, or at a later date. 

It’s interesting how often  the best insights from people come from that last moment – when you’re in the lift back up to the office and they casually mention something that’s crucially important to them.

Those casual moments can unlock a new way of helping them, or understand what’s really going on. All because they’ve been allowed the space to do so. 

Giving your people the gift of time and space – with no agenda – in times of flux is invaluable. 

Not only will you gain valuable insight, you’ll also strengthen trust and credibility. 

2. Tell people what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you’ve told them.

Communication. 

When things are changing, tell people clearly, promptly and in a variety of ‘channels’. 

Never assume the first touchpoint does all the heavy-lifting. People hear different things in different ways and messages cut through at different times.

Be mindful of this. 

Communicate messages clearly and with authority in group settings, then ensure these messages are pushed home in one-to-one communications (meetings, emails, phone calls. Sometimes all three). 

Allow space for people to absorb new information, be aware of who your reflectors are and who are likely to have questions and ideas in the moment. 

Allow space for all communication styles and invite comments and opinions. 

After which, calmly acknowledge and address these in follow-up communications. It holds an authentic line. 

Adopting this approach will ensure you have a consistent thread of authority.

Even if the message you convey can’t deliver certainty, you can underline your credentials by being clear and authentic with your teams. 

And they’ll value and appreciate that.

3. Hold space for people to help themselves – instead of diving in to solve it for them.

People will build more and better resilience and capability if they are given space and time to develop it on their own terms and in their own way. 

As leaders, it’s our job to provide the environment where this becomes the rule, not the exception. 

This needs a mindset shift from:

‘I need them to get this done well now’ to 

‘I want them to become competent and capable based on what works for them –  their skills, learning pace, and even the mistakes they’ll make along the way’. 

Promoting empowerment not only builds stronger people, it underscores the trust they have in their leaders, and ensures they feel a valued part of the team because of who they are as well as what they deliver. 

And, as leaders, it’s essential to step back and allow others to take charge of their own growth. 

This enables leaders to guide from a distance while fostering trust and development.

While this isn’t a one-stop shop to ensure a seamless journey through the tougher times, the three strategies here do provide the keys to unlock a number of hidden doors in the weeds of business life, irrespective of industry. 

And while the choppier seas may take a while to calm, your ability as a skipper to tend the tiller will grow the more time you spend with your crew.

And they won’t forget you, either.

Your Turn

How are you ensuring that your leadership approach supports your team in navigating times of change? 

Reflect on these three strategies and consider how to integrate them into your leadership style.