Merge Gupta-Sunderji
VICTORIA – Turning Managers Into Leaders.
The name says it all for CEO and Founder Merge Gupta-Sunderji, who founded the company in 2002 in Toronto and recently moved it to Victoria from Calgary.
“Because I go where my clients are, the location of our main office doesn’t really matter,” states Merge, adding the firm focuses on leadership training and one-on-one mentoring services. “With the pandemic, a lot of our work switched to virtual, so location became even less important.”
Gupta-Sunderji is recognized as a leadership and workplace communication expert in Canada, the United States, and 15 countries throughout the world. Over the past two decades, the company has worked with over 295 clients, many of them repeat. She is also a columnist in The Globe and Mail on leadership skills, challenges and situations.
“As the pandemic has gone through highs and lows, our clients have realized that their people need support, not just in leading their teams, but leading their teams in an environment that no one has ever experienced before,” she notes. “As a result, we’ve developed fun and engaging group training programs on topics that have only now become relevant to leaders.”
Merge Gupta-Sunderji makes a presentation to a crowd of business people
Examples of these include topics like How to work and lead from a home office, How to lead virtual teams, Leading a hybrid workforce, Building resiliency in your people, and Re-establishing your workplace culture after two years at home.
Regarding one-on-one mentoring, Gupta-Sunderji realizes that as people rise into more senior roles in organizations, it can become lonely.
“We have found that C-suite executives and other senior leaders value having someone external to the organization with whom they can run ideas past, evaluate options, or simply just vent to,” she observes. “As a one-on-one mentor, I listen open-mindedly as I have broad shoulders and can offer perspectives to leaders that they may not have previously considered.
“Mentoring is different from coaching – coaches are usually firm about not offering specific advice, only guiding a person towards their own conclusions.”
Other services the company offers clients include are custom-designed leadership training, keynotes and workshops on leadership development and workplace communication, content creation in leadership development, and consulting on a variety of leadership and workplace communication issues.
“ I’ve been a front-line, a mid-level, and a senior leader myself, so I’ve walked in my clients’ shoes; I know their challenges and their concerns, and I get it,” she says. “Everything we do is custom-designed to fit the needs and challenges of the specific clients we work for. All our programs are created to be relevant to the organization, and to resonate with the issues their leaders face on a daily basis.”
