HEADS-UP PERFORMANCE, INC.
TAMPA, FLORIDA

“A good executive coach can help a leader identify and mitigate her leadership weaknesses. A great executive coach can help a leader identify and enhance her leadership strengths. A transformative executive coach helps a leader align her work with her deeply-held values and build trusting and energizing relationships that engage her people to optimize performance. “Birgit Zacher Hanson is an amazingly energetic and personable business coach, team builder and author! I first witnessed Birgit’s contagious enthusiasm when she was the keynote speaker at a session of the CEO Council of Tampa Bay, the largest CEO development organization in the Tampa Bay area. Her topic was “Who will do what by when?” the title of a business book that she authored. Soon after that, I hired Birgit to lead Alpha-Omega Title’s annual planning meeting. In addition to assisting our team in goal setting and accountabilities, she brilliantly orchestrated an innovative team building exercise. Birgit challenged our entire staff to brainstorm and reason together to improve an assigned workflow process using tennis balls. Within 30 minutes, the process that at first took 42 seconds was done in less than 1 second! By the end of that fun and lively exercise, our team realized that by working together we could progressively do anything more efficiently which would improve service and profits dramatically. I further asked Birgit to coach our key team members one-on-one and she delivered measurable results, including building a more cohesive culture in which our staff worked through several personality clashes. Our leaders benefited from these coaching sessions. The best teams continue to improve. Birgit’s specialty is building a culture of accountability that leads to continuous improvement. Our team and our company are measurably better off for having collaborated with Birgit Zacher Hanson and I give her my highest recommendation!” Gibbs Wilson, CEO, ALPHA-OMEGA TITLE “When I began working with Birgit, I was in a situation where I needed to lead a highly-driven team, achieve large market goals and maintain work/life balance with two small children. Through months of coaching Birgit helped me create processes to maneuver through obstacles, opened my eyes on how to be a compelling leader, showed me how to have dialogue through difficult conversations and gave me tools and support through work life/family life hurdles. In the timeframe I worked with Birgit, our market exceeded our goals and the team grew stronger through shared objectives. I now have processes in place for situations where I used to be unsure of my next step. She also gave me the gift of guidance and understanding when I had to miss my daughter’s birthday for a work function. I have shared her coaching with other working moms and know they’ve benefited from it as well. Birgit’s coaching is something that I will hold onto for the rest of my career. I couldn’t think more highly of her and her talents.” Kate C. Sawa, APR, Executive Director, Market VP, Tampa Bay, American Heart Association / American Stroke Association “Over the last four to five months we have been collaborating with Birgit Zacher Hanson to help our organization’s leadership improve their coaching skills to get the most out of our people. From our first session, I could tell we were in incredibly talented and capable hands. Birgit is an insightful listener who took the time to understand our unique business and our challenges. She looked at our personal and commercial goals, and helped to align our priorities and offered numerous tips and suggestions to coach our teams for success. She provided sales training and coaching, and last week one of her suggestions led to an $80,000 sale I know would not have come in without her insight and advice. Our weekly sessions have helped me discover where I needed to focus my time and energies as a sales manager and kept us focused on our goals.” B. Thompson, Director of Sales and Account Management, Anvil, Americas “I am the Owner/President of Tricycle Studios. Birgit Zacher Hanson and I had coaching sessions for most of 2013. I engaged her services to help me during an accelerated growth time for the studio. In the role of suddenly managing 27 people and the development of Tricycle’s success, I felt very overwhelmed and insecure. I knew I needed tools and coaching to help me transition to the next stage of my career. I merely intended to try and feel better about handling the stress and becoming a true leader. Not only did Birgit help guide me, give me tools to become a more confident leader, she also did a workshop that has helped our studio become more efficient. We still use what we learned and a lot of it is used in our new hire training. The skills I have learned I used every day as I coach and mentor my team. Perception and communication is so important, nuances are often taken for granted and she helped me recognize how my words and behavior affect the team. I have more confidence and my team has recognized this. Her impact continues to last. I am proud to say that many employees still reference what they learned in the initial workshops. They recognize communication breakdowns and we help keep each other accountable every day. We are going to bring Birgit back this year for additional coaching and workshops. Birgit is definitely an asset to any organization and we are lucky to have found her.” Tona K. Bell, President, Tricycle Studio “When I signed up for Birgit’s Rigorous Accountability Training, I was in complete overwhelm and didn’t think I could even make the time to participate. But I am glad I did. Birgit’s focus on “the entire person” helped me reach for much higher (and more fulfilling) goals than I would have on my own. Within just a couple of weeks I had the necessary conversations with key people in my organizations, and I now have a completely new role, the flexibility to work from home, the support of a virtual team and the responsibility for a customer solution that has real impact. I couldn’t be happier with where I am at now. I recommend this program for anyone who is sick and tired of stress and overwhelm. There actually is another way, but you have to be willing to invest the time to find it!” Karl Guenther, Jr. Sr. Global Product Manager, Advanced Energy, Linvatec