As a consultant, Sharon Douglas advises organisations on how to move forward and improve their performance. Here she tells NIGEL TILSON how it's really satisfying helping companies to come up with real and practical solutions to problems.

THE POST : Business psychologist and consultant, Whitewater Consulting.

THE POSTHOLDER : Sharon Douglas.

What does your job entail?

I'm an occupational psychologist and I have been working as a consultant for about 10 years. Previously I worked as a training manager.

Whitewater is a provider of organisational development solutions within Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. It offers change management consultancy services to the public and private sectors.

In other words, we provide practical assistance to companies and organisations to help them improve performance.

This usually involves visiting companies to look at the goals they want to achieve and working out how they can develop the capability to get there.

We work with them to improve their people and processes and to challenge their thinking on how the organisation is designed, built and run.

In reality, this covers a wide range of work, such as strategic planning sessions and leadership programmes or designing assessment methods for selecting people for key posts in the private, public and local government sectors.

We tend to bring practical solutions based on leading edge products.

What types of people are there in the Whitewater team?

We have a team of 10 people plus eight associates. We are all highly qualified professionals.

Typically we are occupational psychologists or have a post grad or professional qualification, such as membership of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

More importantly, we also have strong business backgrounds. It's a very collegiate atmosphere - we work together on solutions. Sometimes it's difficult to get a word in edgeways, at least that's what some of the others say when I'm involved.

We recently achieved the Investors in People award and the assessor commented that we were "an example of a team working at its best".

We all work very hard but also have fun. That's one of our core values. Actually, the qualities are more important than the qualifications; we have core values that people try to work by.

You also need to be good at multi-tasking, juggling lots of different projects and working with a broad range of people.

Practically, what's a typical day like for you?

It sounds like a cliché, but no two days are the same. A lot of the time I'm out with clients doing consulting work.

This can vary enormously. It could involve running a workshop, for example, or a coaching session with a manager. Often it means fighting with planes and trains to get to client sites.

At other times we will be working as a team on projects such as assessment or development centres.

These usually involve four or five of us working together over a period of a day or two, which is great as there are times when we don't get to see each other.

We also have project teams for our various products and meet regularly to plan and review how we are doing against our organisational strategy.

In addition, each team member is responsible for service innovation in particular areas, which means keeping up to date with reading and research projects.

What is particularly enjoyable about your work?

It's really satisfying helping organisations to come up with real and practical solutions.

I personally get a real buzz in seeing clients moving forward and really improving their results.

Part of the work also means that we are helping to improve the quality of people's working lives, which really appeals to me.

I really enjoy the variety.

One day I can be in a hotel facilitating a strategic planning session, while the next day I can be in an old track suit out in a forest facilitating a team-build.

There is no other job I can think of where each day is so varied. It certainly isn't boring.

What, in your view, is the biggest impediment to organisational success?

Poor leadership. It impacts on the whole character of the organisation.

As soon as you meet the head of an organisation you get an idea as to how successful it is likely to be.

People in organisations perform best under the direction of a good leader - someone with a vision for the future who involves their people and who does what they say they'll do.

But that's a significant challenge in most organisations.

We have found that using 360-degree feedback and coaching can be really powerful tools for helping people to develop in this area.

You mentioned management development. What, from your experience, makes the difference between a mediocre manager and an excellent one?

A lot of managers focus on efficiencies rather than making their teams effective.

Really good managers, on the other hand, have a very clear focus on the results they want to achieve. They also have an ability to inspire people to give more than the bare minimum.

We are currently delivering programmes that help to address these issues across a range of industry sectors, including IT, pharmaceuticals, financial services and the hospitality sector. Generally these include training modules and coaching sessions.

A more innovative approach to management development that we are using with several clients involves managers participating in a range of business simulations during a two-day programme and then getting feedback and coaching to enhance their competencies.

As a Chartered Institute of Management-accredited centre, we can also accredit programmes; management qualifications are important to some clients.

Consultancy can demand long hours; do you have a work-life balance? If so, what's your secret?

Work-life balance is a very important value to our team but also an extremely challenging one to achieve.

We tend to work on a peaks and troughs basis. We are expected to work very hard but when it's not quite so busy it's fine to take a Friday afternoon off; this is the accepted norm in our team.

Personally, with three young kids, it's very important to spend time with them, especially since our house has turned into a menagerie of pets over the years.

Along with watching rugby and mini football, work-life balance becomes essential.

What are your plans in Whitewater for the future?

I want to be part of the growth plans that we have for the business and to develop the opportunity to provide our services in GB and Europe.

As a business we have developed a reputation for providing new products and services that deliver results and we plan to continue to do this and I want to be part of this exciting future.

Our work in providing assessment and development centres has grown significantly in the past few years and we also expect that to continue.

In addition, we are already doing some international work on some of our products and expect to have some more travel in the future.

Personally, I'd like to keep on working with a great group of people, doing a job that I thoroughly enjoy.