Who are we?

We are an evidence-based psychological consultancy with an over-arching commitment to applying well-researched positive psychology to our interactions, designs and interventions. As a team we are united in our belief in the power of positive approaches to change, at the individual, organisational and team level. We are open and transparent in our dealings with you.

Our approach is based on understanding people: we can work with any organisation to develop leadership and vision, work performance and engagement, and a positive work culture. We specialise in working with change.

We help people work better together.

Whether it’s an individual, a team or the whole organisation that needs fine tuning, rebuilding, re-motivating or re-orienting, its about working with people

Whether you’re high-tech or lo-tech, established or new, engineering or teaching, corporate or not for profit, you need your people working at their best.

Whether your concern is performance, culture shift, team working or work relationships, it’s about working with people.

In all these situations, we work with you to find and design ways to help people work better together.

  • We are psychologists. We work with people and organisations to discover the experiences, strengths, skills, resources and positive attitudes to build on.

    We understand that sometimes things go wrong. That sometimes people need to hear hard truths. But we don’t stop there. We work with them to make things better.

    We have a range of approaches we bring to the challenge. To mention a few

  • We tailor our service to your requirements. In broad terms we offer

    • Skill training for groups, such as leaders and managers. Uniquely designed for your context

    • Consultancy, for problem-solving or aspiration-reaching

    • Coaching for performance improvement

    • Team Development for improvements in performance, relationships, communication

    • Bespoke services for challenges such as strategy development , culture shift, stuck organisational change, evaluation processes, values work, and much, much more

      See more under Services

  • Sarah Lewis, Chief Psychologist

    Sarah says

    Appreciating Change is the organisation I established to bring the benefits of a psychological understanding of people in change to hard-pressed organisations.

    I’m a chartered organisational psychologist. I facilitate change and have done all my adult life, first as a social worker, then as a manager and for the past 30 years as a consultant. I facilitate change in people, teams and organizations.

    I do this through direct interventions, such as coaching, team or organisational development activity, and through education or knowledge sharing, such as through books, lectures and workshops.

    I aim to help people change their work lives or organisations for the better.

    I approach change as a psychological process. I draw specifically on appreciative, positive and strengths-based approaches as I consistently find them to produce excellent results and to be inspiring, engaging and productive for people involved.

    To achieve change I work with the relationships in groups, the meanings people make about what is going on around them, people’s aspirations, their resources and their emotions.

    Working with psychological phenomena like this I can positively affect group dynamics, and encourage individual growth.

    I work through the processes of story and dialogue, decision and action, understanding and behaviour and hopes and plans.

    I draw particularly, but not exclusively, on co-creative methodologies such as Appreciative Inquiry, World Café, and Open Space. I blend these approaches with more traditional psychological knowledge, and with positive psychology.

    I also bring a wealth of experience of working with people as a social worker, manager and leader, educator, psychologist and consultant to any particular organisational challenge. 

    I mostly work independently, expanding my team as necessary to fulfil assignments.

    I believe that my combination of a broad social science background and social work practice combined with my specialism in social constructionist change approaches to people, systems and change, along with my thirty years experience as a consultant/OD/facilitator psychologist gives me a very solid base for engaging with almost any organisation and its challenges.

    I am proud to be able to say that my professional credentials, my experience, my authorship and my sense of humour combine to create a particular approach to, and skill with, working with groups and people that has on more than one occasion been described as ‘magic’ in its effectiveness in achieving or creating change.