Welcome to the exciting world of High Performance!

First Ascent develop and support ambitious Leaders, Teams and Organisations to achieve great success.

Our expertise includes leadership development, team performance development, management development, sales and account management teachniques, team building, 121 and team coaching, talent and graduate development, culture change, assessment/development centres, organisation development and strategic alignment.

Our clients describe us as the most dynamic and engaged organisation in our field. Our programme directors all have senior leadership experience and provide energy, understanding and challenge to our clients across the world.

We offer mentoring to all our alumni .... for life .... for free. Our service is personal, flexible and responsive. We live your challenges alongside you!

Our website aims to tell you as much about us as possible – but please call to discuss your requirements! Offer us coffee, and we'll be with you tomorrow for a no-committment, no sales-pitch, conversation about how your organisation could accelerate performance! You can hear David Sales, one of our directors, describing our approach here:

First, some facts...

First Ascent provide training, development and consultancy services in Leadership, Team Performance and Organisation Development. Our clients include international blue chips, public sector organisations, SMEs and new start-ups.

Established for nearly 15 years, we focus on development at three levels: You as an Individual, your Team and/or your overall Organisation.

We are qualified in a full range of psychometric profiling and organisation evaluation tools. Our team includes accredited professional coaches and specialists in areas as diverse as stress management, voice coaching and professional skills training.

We openly measure and share our delivery impact and effectiveness – utilising the Kirkpatrick 4-level impact methodology for our programmes.

So, how do we do help you improve performance?

We are extremely practical, totally honest and highly energetic. We deal with your operational reality as well as your tough strategic challenges. We ensure that you receive an immediate financial return.

We work with your leaders and team members to enable them to better understand individual motivations and stylistic preferences - for themselves and their colleagues. We help teams to perform more effectively together – helping you to deliver stronger results than could have previously been considered possible.

We deliver services in the following areas (see Services for more detail):

• Leadership programmes for leaders and leadership teams
• Team performance improvement programmes
• Talent Development programmes
• Management and Executive 121 coaching
• Business Strategy realisation through empowered and aligned people
• Customer relationship assessment analysis and improvement planning
• Brand and Cultural alignment programmes
• Cross cultural team integration support programmes
• Organisation performance consultancy
• Organisation alignment programmes (with customers and suppliers)
• Team challenge events and team-building events
• Cross-functional programmes to drive customer delight & people engagement
• Skills training in specific areas such as sales and consultancy
• Negotiation, conflict management and communication skills training
• Conference programme design (for real learning outcomes)
• An exciting range of motivational speakers

Our Programme Directors are energetic, professional and wired to your success.

Working closely with you

We agree our objectives following a mutual analysis of your operational situation. We provide support to all of our delegates to embed learning, as part of our programmes. This includes lifetime mentoring for all of our alumni.

Recognising the diversity of people and how they prefer to learn, we utilise blended delivery techniques, including face to face group interventions, 121 and on-line support, stimulating briefing papers and other support mechanisms to embed learning.

Our clients comment on the fundamental chemistry of First Ascent – which includes building a unique personal trust between our team and every participant in our programmes, the encouragement of peer level support/coaching and a unique blend of stimulating and varied learning techniques. They also comment on our engaging Programme Directors who are energetic, professional and passionate about helping our clients succeed.

We seek to develop long and successful relationships with our clients: our participants frequently describing their experience with First Ascent as the most beneficial and impactful development experience of their careers.

Creativity is the seed of success

We deliver performance improvement to our clients, through maximising the creativity, motivation and energy of people. Seeking new opportunities, new techniques, new relationships – all these approaches are encouraged and supported as we work with participants.

Your programme is tailored to your needs – not prescribed or standardised.

Creativity is guaranteed from the moment we start talking to you about your requirements. We are not a “big brand” who know the right answer for you, before we even meet you! We provide our services at venues of your choice, but will encourage you to avoid creatively suffocating (and expensive!) venues. We have access to wonderful centres in the across the world. We own our own unique Development Centre at Blackton Grange in the Pennines. We have our offices in the wonderful Milton Country Park near Cambridge. First Ascent India is based in Pune.