Sandy’s Story
Sandy was born on the southern tip of the African continent in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she lived for the largest part of her life, until she immigrated to the USA in 1998 and opened an office in Dallas. She founded the Gluckman Group Inc. in 1975 with the purpose of assisting leaders to envision and execute strategic changes that would drive profitable growth.
Sandy’s Leadership Research
When apartheid was abandoned, many of the major organizations in South Africa were able to reinvent themselves and become more relevant to the new realities by using Sandy’s innovative methods and tools. Sandy discovered that the companies that were able to successfully transition from the old South Africa to the new, were led by leaders that had the skills to re-engage thousands of alienated and hurting employees and build a culture of courage, determination, focus, accountability and collaboration. She studied these successful leaders and found clear patterns of behavior and communication which she describes in her book, Who’s in the Driver’s Seat? She also studied the unsuccessful leaders and found that these leaders could not connect with their employees; they did not know how to energize them to achieve the business goals. These leaders showed a pattern of behaviors and a communication style that switched the workforce off, causing them to tune out and deliver poor performance. This is also described in her book.
In her eternal quest to bridge the communications gap between people, Sandy added a division to her company in 1990 called, The Corporate Theatre Company. The objective was to use the dramatic arts to assist leaders and their teams in ‘experiencing’ new ways of interacting with each other. They would watch scripted scenarios played by talented performers and then dialogue and redirect what they had seen. The results were dramatic (excuse the pun!). These enactments cut through resistance, and people adopted new behaviors and communication skills almost overnight. Sandy continues to use theater in her programs and keynotes today with outstanding results.
