

Facilitator & Team Coach
“Irene brings together a profound understanding of people, their motivations, complexities and behaviours with a deep understanding of change and organisational design. She is fearless and inspiring, and able to adapt to and engage with all levels of an organisation and their challenges.” – Andrew Joly, Director of Strategic Design at Learning Technologies Group plc
Biography
Irene specialises in Leadership Development, Change Management (i.e. attitudes & behaviours) and Building High Performing Teams. She designs and facilitates workshops with both intact teams and cross-functional teams at all levels in organisations.
She is particularly interested in helping people develop their capacity to innovate and lead change, and to explore better ways of working so they can perform at a high level within the complexity of their organisation and industry. Drawing on a wide range of theories, methodologies and tools including Open Space, World Café, Future Search, video making, storytelling and photography, she has successfully brought innovative approaches to organisations seeking to clarify their change strategy and approach, and to help them plan programmes of change and innovation.
She spent 15 years working as a multimedia producer and 4 years as a Brand Consultant and brings a highly visual and creative way of working to bear on her consulting and facilitation practices. She is skilled in helping teams and their leaders surface deeply held assumptions as well as tacit knowledge, challenging conventional and mainstream thinking, in order to stimulate new and better ways of working.
Key Experience
Her client list is vast, covering the public, private and voluntary sectors and many types of businesses including Barclays Bank, Microsoft, EY, L’Oréal, The Body Shop, Novartis, BP, Ford of Europe, Reed Elsevier, The Post Office (UK), Jaguar LandRover, Volvo, IKEA, the UK Home Office, the UK Department for Work & Pensions, the British Immigration Authority, Cable & Wireless, Thomson Reuters, British Airways, and the charities Leonard Cheshire, Macmillan, and London Youth Rowing.
Qualifications:
BA (hons) in Political Science and German (UCD, Ireland)
Higher Diploma in Education (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
MSc in Organisational Consulting from Ashridge Business School, U.K.
Diploma in Organisational Gestalt from the Metanoia Institute, London, U.K.
MBTI Step I & II qualified
LDF (Leadership Development Framework) qualified
ICF (International Coaching Federation) certified
Topics
You may want to go deeper into a topic for your audience. The keynote topics can be tailored and developed to suit your audience needs, be it a 90-minute Masterclass, a half-day or full-day workshop or a full online or face-to-face programme. Please contact one of our expert team to discuss.
Designing and facilitating workshops in the following areas:
Leadership Development
Building High Performing Teams
Change Management / Behavioural Change
Defining Vision & Values for teams or departments and aligning these to an organisation’s overall Vision, Values and Strategy.
Systemic Coaching – for individuals and teams
Action Learning Groups – for teams
Resources
Books
Co-Author of The Consultant as Organisational Osteopath – freeing stuck patterns of thinking and acting in the Ashridge publication: Organisational Consulting @ the Edges of Possibility

Excerpt: “Why employ people and then only encourage them to use half the potential of their very expensive brains? Most of the organisations we work with are large corporate or public sector bodies imbued with a western European/US culture, where the propositional and practical ways of knowing are highly prized. The other two, the experiential and the presentational, are often marginalised. We consciously weave all four of these ways of knowing into our work with clients, aiming to extend people’s patterns of thinking, relating and communicating. We think there is a sound business case for extending thinking beyond the dominant two.” – Irene Murphy & Margaret Bishop
Testimonials
“Irene brings together a profound understanding of people, their motivations, complexities and behaviours with a deep understanding of change and organisational design. Her approach is one of constant review and questioning, energetic creativity, and applied innovation – to meet a goal. Irene is fearless and inspiring, and able to adapt to and engage with all levels of an organisation and their challenges.” – Andrew Joly, Director of Strategic Design at Learning Technologies Group plc
“Irene is one of the most creative consultants I have worked with. Her facilitation style is both dynamic, supportive and enjoyable. Her workshops and coaching sessions are always much appreciated by clients. Irene is particularly skilled at innovative workshop design, based on a sound understanding of how groups work, how people learn and Gestalt psychology. She is also experienced in creating blended learning solutions. Her warm personality, energy and professionalism all make her a great person to work with.” – Margaret Bishop, Principal Consultant, Bath Consultancy Group
“Irene has deep passion and wisdom and understands how to get the best outcome in any development situation. She always has an ear for the emerging ideas that will become the new lenses and uses them to create effective learning journey’s and experiences for her clients. She is strongly client focused and always stays connected.” – David Robertson, Global Head of Design / Executive Consultant and Vice President with The Forum Corporation
“In Irene’s work with us she brought innovative thinking and excellent relational consulting practices into our business. Irene has also facilitated some high level management meetings including with external clients. She is able to work with managers at all levels and inquire into the business with a challenging mindset and decode politics and culture in order to unlock further potential. She understands what motivates people and tunes into the areas that need attention whilst building confidence within teams. She is a highly energetic practitioner and brings enthusiasm and fun to her work.” – Fabiola Williams, HR Director L’Oréal
“Irene is a powerhouse of ideas. She sees possibilities where others see problems. Her deep expertise and understanding of organisations, people, their behaviours and patterns of communication, enable her to contribute an enormous amount of value to colleagues and clients alike. I’ve worked with her on a number of different projects over the past 10 years and her ability to get under the surface of organisational culture, identify the blockers and highlight the opportunities for novelty and change, combined with her gift for leading and facilitating workshops make her a delight to work with. She is my Number One ideas person for workshop design.” – David Robertson, Director, Attiva
“Irene brings a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm to all the projects she works on. She looks at problems from multiple perspectives and really gets under the surface of things. One of the special things about Irene is that she uses a wide range of techniques to engage groups which enables her to design thought provoking workshops that stimulate thinking about tough issues. She’s good at working with people at different levels of the organisation and developing people and their capacity to innovate and lead change.” – Daniel Letts, Design Council
“I worked with Irene on a project to enhance consultancy skills for HR at L’Oréal. She engaged fully in her work and she used highly creative and effective means to deliver a great design for the programme. She managed to adapt to a highly volatile organisation! I would recommend her anytime.” – Pierre Ouellette, M.Ps.MBA, Director of Organisational Development, Global Centre of Expertise at CGI
“I had the pleasure of working with Irene on the creation of a new Induction programme for Virgin Media Business. Irene has a vast amount of experience regarding the elements of designing engaging and thought provoking programmes, and her ability to facilitate learners to draw out key learns for people is excellent. Irene also has the ability to deliver insightful and inspiring feedback to people to aid their development.” – Astrid Ennis, Learning and Development Manager -Virgin Media Business at Virgin Media
“Working with Irene was an excellent experience. We completed a Brand Strategy workshop over the course of two days. I found the workshop extremely valuable for our corporate identity, company goals and strategic development. I would highly recommend working with Irene who is a creative thinker with a great understanding of brands and business.” – Amanda Barrett, de Le Cuona – Showrooms Manager