OUR PROMISE
We understand what it feels like to communicate effectively in business. It’s a high-pressure environment that demands the right skills at the right time.
Sometimes technical experts can fail to shine in front of their clients. Our practical tools and specialist methods help your people to communicate what makes them brilliant. This helps them gain the trust and confidence of both new and existing clients.
From a bottom-line perspective, you can expect to win more pitches and develop stronger long-term client relationships. In terms of your people and their wellbeing, this new positive approach to a task they were perhaps daunted by in the past, means happier, calmer and more productive team members.
OUR METHOD
MSB Executive brings together a unique combination of skills. We are a team of communication experts who also have decades of business experience.
Our team includes professional actors, improvisors and writers alongside experienced business coaches. This means we can use techniques from the performance world to transform your team’s communication skills. For example, storytelling techniques can make complex data meaningful to your audience. Theatre skills can help give you confidence and charisma when speaking to larger groups.
What really sets us apart is the deep research we do into our clients’ worlds. This means we can create a realistic environment for the team to practice their communication skills. Our coaches can roleplay the difficult situations our client face and provide detailed feedback.
We work to inspire and energise participants, waking them up to the potency of good pitching and presenting skills. Crucially, we want everyone to enjoy the experience and leave bursting with confidence.
OUR CLIENTS
We’ve worked with many great companies and individuals, get in contact
and find out why we are so highly regarded.
OUR TESTIMONIALS
Since working with MSB Executive our success rate at pitches has more than doubled. We consider their people to be an extension of our team. Whenever we launch a new product they are in the room with us working on how we can present the proposition as effectively as possible to clients.
I engaged MSB Executive with the specific aim of personal coaching to help remove and also develop techniques for dealing with anxiety connected with public speaking, presentations and pressurised communications / situations. I could not have been happier with the results and I would not hesitate to recommend MSB Executive to anyone in the same professional situation. It is still a work in progress, but there is no doubt that the techniques learnt from MSB Executive in our sessions have helped me develop greatly in these areas. In addition to that he was personally very easy & pleasant to work with and he easily put me at ease with the coaching process. I very much enjoyed the overall experience.
MEET OUR TEAM
Our team of talented Associates is vital to the unique training we offer. It is their rich and diverse experience and expertise that enables us to deliver the right training to the right business or individual.
Martyn Barmby (Founder)
Director Martyn Barmby is the driving force behind MSB. Passionate about empowering talented professionals, his mission is to tap into a person’s true potential and give them the ability to communicate their brilliance.
A professional actor with 15 years senior executive experience in consultancy and project management, he has an innate understanding of the skills needed for exceptional presentations. Having led consultancy businesses in the UK, US and France, Martyn has also performed around the world as a professional actor. It’s no surprise that he’s skilled in advanced communication techniques and has developed powerful methods and influencing skills from the worlds of acting and business.
Martyn is a respected speaker on all aspects of Communication Skills. He regularly runs events for CFA societies across Europe and for industry bodies such as Women in Banking and Finance.
Nicola Hainey
Nicola is an experienced professional performance coach specialising in leadership development. Having previously spent over a decade working in strategic roles within the financial services sector, she understands well the demands and pressures incumbent in the modern workplace.
Nicola’s experience includes both individual and team coaching for large multinational banks and consultancies. She is enormously passionate about helping leaders do the quality thinking required to understand and develop their own leadership style, and how to inspire and bring their team with them. She creates bespoke workshops to encourage creative thinking and help businesses overcome specific challenges, as well as delivering group coaching sessions on essential life and business skills.
Steven Maddocks
Steven is MSB Executive’s Head of Voice Coaching.
Since training as an actor, Steven has worked in almost every area of theatre, including acting, writing, producing and directing. He also runs a drama school for children and adults, where he teaches drama and public speaking. As a Voice Coach, he works with professionals across a range of industries and at all levels of seniority. Drawing on his theatrical training and experience, Steven teaches vocal and physical techniques to help his clients communicate brilliantly and effectively under pressure, whether they are presenting to large groups or negotiating across the meeting room table.
Steven studied English at Oxford University, where he was also president of the OUDS (the Oxford University Dramatic Society). He has published several successful guides for drama teachers.
Liz Hughes
Liz Hughes began her career as an economist and was an early mover into the world of compliance. She spent 10 years with several high profile Asset Management firms in compliance advisory roles working across the entire business. She founded and runs an innovative compliance consultancy that leverages agile working and is also a board member for Women in Banking and Finance. Liz’s varied and senior experience allows her to move swiftly and easily between high-level strategic issues, and technical detail. Liz creates a supportive environment where MSB clients can practice their newly acquired skills and provides intelligent, considered and constructive feedback. She empowers individuals to engage more effectively with their clients and senior management.
Alex Cameron
Alex Cameron is an experienced leader in B2B media and content businesses. Over 18 years in P&L roles, she has launched portfolios and led teams to deliver ambitious growth targets. She has run global teams with staff in Europe, MENA, Asia and the Americas. She also has experience in representing businesses during M&A.
Alex works with clients as a coach with a particular focus on helping entrepreneurs and other individuals build resilience and clarity of purpose: both key in unleashing new energy and drive in well-established careers. Her commercial experience gives her context and understanding for the challenges faced by business leaders in a range of sectors.
Kristina Mackintosh
Kristina delivers targeted, personalized business English and accent reduction coaching to MSB Executive’s non-native English-speaking clients.
In addition to 15 years’ business English tuition experience, Kristina has spent 20 years in business-to-business professional services, delivering large-scale corporate seminars and symposia to a global client base, with particular focus on the global financial and energy industries.
Jakki Bendell
Jakki Bendell brings 12 years media and marketing industry experience with a specialism in launching publishing businesses in Europe. For the past decade she has provided workshops and coaching to businesses with the aim of helping them to communicate more effectively at work. Pragmatic in her approach, Jakki’s skill lies in business writing that communicates clear compelling messages and engages audiences. Her focus is on helping people to develop better written skills that will inspire and influence others and importantly, enhance their career and business success.
Lucy Nicholls
Lucy Nicholls is hugely experienced in the world of financial services. Over the course of 15 years, she has worked at partner level for several investment management firms and has specific expertise in European private equity.
A long-term associate for MSB Executive, Lucy works with clients to sharpen presentations and pitches using her analytical approach that helps clients to develop a clear and logical argument that stands up to intense questioning.
Justin Brett
Justin trained at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama and has been an actor and comedian for over 20 years, with a career spanning from West End theatre to filming with Steven Spielberg; from running a London comedy club to improvising full-length musicals. Alongside this, he has garnered a great deal of experience in corporate role-play and as a practitioner of forum theatre. Having worked with a wide range of Financial Services clients he believes role-play training should be authentic and truthful, but also fun.
Massimo Catucci
BLOG
Kelly McGonigal on Stress at TEDGlobal: Our Response
An intriguing TED Talk on stress recently caught our attention at MSB Executive. In his latest blog, Steven Maddocks, our Head of Voice, shares our response. Though we cover a range of disciplines at MSB [...]
Nerves and ‘Fight or Flight’
In his latest blog, Head of Voice Steven Maddocks looks at the science of nerves to explain why they affect us in the way they do. Lisa’s heart is racing. Her breathing is rapid and [...]
Feeling Nervous? – Good!
In his latest blog, Steven Maddocks, our Head of Voice Coaching, explores the upside of nerves and shows how public speaking might even be good for your health. Public speaking gets a bad rap. One [...]
How We Found MSB Executive’s Storytelling Techniques in A Surprising Place
When it comes to speaking with impact, we at MSB Executive are passionate believers in the usefulness of storytelling techniques. Whether you are launching a new product, pitching for investment, or developing your personal or [...]
Zoomed Out? Some Top Tips To Survive The Zoom Era
Among all the terms future dictionaries will inherit from COVID-19, ‘Zoom fatigue’ is certain to feature. (It applies to all video conferencing software, but ‘Microsoft Teams fatigue’ doesn’t have the same ring.) Citigroup employees are [...]
How do we develop Emotional Intelligence?
We’ve recently been coaching a group of Directors from one of ‘The Big 4’ accountancy/consultancy firms to help them with this very thing. Emotional Intelligence (or EI/EQ as it’s often referred to) is an essential [...]