Rob Smith
Rob was born in Kenya and was raised in Africa and the Far East, before being ‘sent’ to boarding school in the UK in 1980. He is married to Sarah and now lives in Shropshire in a household dominated by women with two teenage daughters, two female felines –and even a female goldfish!
Rob joined Go MAD in 2004 after 19 years experience of designing and delivering training & development programmes. Starting with a management career in the Hospitality Industry, where he first appreciated the business case for investing in training, Rob then progressed through various Sales, Marketing, Customer and Public Relations positions, developing and implementing many successful sales and marketing campaigns. Throughout his career Rob has been focused on helping people to improve their skills, which led him to professional qualifications with the CIPD and a national HR role with a special needs charity. The additional rigour required to design effective interventions in this sector gave Rob a thorough understanding of the importance of measurable results.
Prior to joining the Go MAD team, Rob operated and ran his own training and development business specialising in behavioural change. During 5 years as a freelance consultant, Rob was contracted to deliver bespoke sales and marketing training, NVQ assessment and verification, food safety & quality auditing, distance and online learning, as well as management development and leadership solutions. Since joining Go MAD he has used his skills to offer tailored solutions to diverse organisations such as Huntsman Advanced Materials, Premier Foods, Royal Mail and Aviva. Rob loves travelling and his global clients include GE Healthcare, Cisco, QBE & Aon Global Risk Consulting. He is the co-author of 3 Go MAD books and an established public speaker in Solution Focused Thinking.
Rob is passionate about using solution focused thinking in simple and fun ways outside of work too. As well as developing more helpful thinking habits, he uses his two teenage daughters as daily research subjects, testing the effectiveness of helpful thoughts, language and attitude to impact positively on behaviour! To relax (and keep fit) Rob cycles, plays tennis and golf, he loves photography and travel frequently combining the two – and enjoys spending time at the coast.
