Dr Sunny Stout-Rostron, MA DProf

Professional practice

Sunny has been instrumental in creating and facilitating significant corporate cultural change and transformation projects. Coaching and consulting in the complex arena of leadership development, relationship building and conflict management, Sunny helps organisations to develop collaborative strategies to manage conflict, and differences of viewpoints and experience. She is highly regarded as a thought leader in the field of executive coaching and organisational and team effectiveness. She has developed a succession of leadership and management development programmes within the corporate and educational sectors in South Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the UK, USA and Australia, as well as a range of international programmes in the corporate, legal and education fields.

Sunny coaches at senior executive and board level and has a wide range of experience in leadership development and business strategy. With over 25 years’ international experience as an executive coach, Sunny believes there is a strong link between emotional intelligence and business results – she works with executive leaders and their teams to help them achieve individual, team and organisational goals. A certified Coach Supervisor with Coach Development UK, Sunny supervises executive coach panels in the corporate environment. Sunny has a wealth of practical experience at management and executive levels, and understands the challenges leaders face in today’s complex and volatile marketplace.

Practical Executive Experience

Sunny worked for 20 years in television, the newspaper industry, feminine hygiene products (FMCG), IT, and hotels and catering, developing customer research, sales, marketing and leadership development programmes for Southern Television UK, the Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspaper Group UK, Tambrands Ltd UK, Hewlett Packard (Palo Alto, CA), University of Portsmouth UK and Holiday Inns UK. She coaches across public, private, academic and governmental sectors.

BUILDING HIGH PERFORMING TEAMS AND ORGANISATIONS:  Using an integrated model developed with her business partner in People-Quotient, Michael Taylor, they focus on six core pillars of high performance that unlock the drivers of high performing teams and organizations, highlighting key shifts teams need to make in their quest for greatness.

NEXT LEVEL LEADERSHIP: In conjunction with Michael Taylor and after more than ten years of research into why executives derail, they have created a Next Level Leadership Model to identify and develop high potential leaders, alongside exceptional people management strategies, This dynamic contemporary framework is used to facilitate culture change through transformational leadership practices within client organisations.

Business/Executive Clients

Sunny’s clients include Absa Capital, Cape Town CiTi, Cummins Filtration International, Deloitte Touche, Edcon (Edgars), Eskom, EY, First Rand, Frost & Sullivan, Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), Google, Ikineo, Momentum Metropolitan, MTN, Mercantile Bank, Metropolitan Health Group, Multichoice Africa, Ninety9Cents, Oracle, Pick n Pay, Sanlam, Santam, Sasol, Standard Bank, TFG (The Foschini Group), The Unlimited, Vodacom, VWSA, Waste Plan and Woolworths SA. Prior to working as an executive coach,

Contribution to the Coaching Profession

Sunny has played a leading role in building the emerging profession of coaching. Her passion is to develop the knowledge base for coaching through research and critical reflective practice of dedicated practitioners. She has been instrumental in developing master’s programmes for leadership coach education in South Africa. She is a Founding Director of People Quotient Pty Ltd., Founding Member of Sunny Stout-Rostron Associates CC, and an Advisory Board Director with the Professional Development Foundation UK (PDF), a Founding Fellow and Research Advisor at the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital (a Harvard Medical School Affiliate), and Founding President of Coaches and Mentors of South Africa (COMENSA). Sunny is part-time faculty at the School of Business at the University of Stellenbosch and the South African College of Applied Psychology (SACAP), and Doctoral Supervisor at the Gordon Institute of Business Science, and Christ Church Canterbury University UK. She is on the Global Faculty of Time to Think Inc. Sunny’s website is: http://www.ssra.biz.

Coaching philosophy

Sunny’s helps clients to ‘learn from and create wisdom from their own experience’. Looking at ‘mastery of practice’ rather than simply ‘being the expert’ to progress our own and our clients’ personal and professional growth, Sunny encourages coaches and clients to create space for conversations that get to the heart of issues and concerns that create change at an individual, team and systemic level. She looks at deepening the level of conversation to move from performance (what needs to be done differently), to learning (what learning is needed cognitively and emotionally for change to happen), and being and becoming (who are you, how do you do you, and who do you want to become).

Publications

Team Coaching to Lead Culturally Diverse Teams (London Routledge, 2019), Leadership Coaching for Results: Cutting-edge practices for coach and client (Knowres, 2014), Business Coaching International: Transforming individuals and organizations (Karnac 2009/2013), Business Coaching Wisdom and Practice: Unlocking the secrets of business coaching (Knowres, 2009/2012), and Accelerating Performance: Powerful new techniques to develop people (Kogan Page, 2002). She is contributing author to: The Sage Handbook of Coaching (Sage, 2017); Handbook of Key Concepts in Coaching (Springer Verlag, 2017); Women Leadership Models in Emerging Markets (Routledge, 2017); The Sage Handbook of Coaching (2017), Family Enterprises: How to Build Growth, Family Control and Family Harmony (Globe Law and Business, 2015), the Wiley-Blackwell Handbook on the Psychology of Coaching and Mentoring (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013); Mentoring & Coaching: Articles from the Human Capital Review (Knowres, 2012); Positive Psychology as Social Change (Springer, 2010); Trends in Developing Human Capital (Knowres, 2010); The Complete Handbook of Coaching (Sage, 2009/2013); Developing Human Capital (Knowres 2010); and Sharing the Passion: Conversations with coaches (Advanced Human Technologies, 2006). New publications due out are: Exploring “sleeper effects” in managerial coaching: A pilot study, in Coaching: an International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice (Taylor & Francis, January 2019).