About Us
We firmly believe in the importance of critical skills.
These critical skills have been crushed by 20 years of cost-based thinking, the social and economic changes, and a belief that technology is the best answer.
We know you need to step away to learn. You need time to reflect and collaborate to really learn and embed skills.
We know that when done well (like when we do it), the impact of training, coaching and mentoring is truly transformative for individuals and organisations.
Our values
Passionate
Making a positive difference to people and wider society is what we get up for our first coffee for.
Engaging
We want people to be challenged but have fun. The secret sauce of learning.
Empowering
Helping to open that door for anyone to take ownership and develop themselves.
Practical
Making tools & methods relevant to the situation and the individual learners.
Chiefs of Inspiration
Simon Pridgeon
Simon brings a wealth of experience across public and private sectors in both coaching and training at all levels. He’s worked with companies including Volkswagen Group, State Bank of India and Hutchinson Ports Group, and within the public sector with clients including the Cabinet Office and Southampton City Council.
He brings a wealth of practical experience designing, recruiting teams, and running multi-million £ services & operations in the learning and development space. Creating value for customers and developing high-performance teams.
Most recently he was Deputy HR Director at the University of East London where he provided in-house coaching for Head of Department level, designed and delivered their Phoenix Leadership Programme for 100 senior managers and leaders, designed and led the University’s first Staff Development Week, and was Well-being Champion.
He regularly tutors for the University of Birmingham on their Distance Learning MBA on subjects including Accounting & Finance, Operations Management and Strategy.
His approach is both people-centric and goal-orientated, meaning individuals get something that is genuinely for them, and is also career and commercially-driven. Organisations have always benefited from his commercial, operations and strategic experience & insights.
Chris Sharp
Chris’ passion lies in growing skills, teams and businesses. Having personally led the scaling of two of the UK’s largest learning, training and education businesses he has worked across all sectors and with all business sizes.
He particularly loves problem-solving and finding innovative solutions to new or persistent challenges. This often precipitates market-leading new approaches and methods in terms of learning approach, modality use and contracting/partnering methods. This has stretched across his whole career starting 25 years ago when he personally led the design and implementation of the UK’s first postgraduate qualification in recruiting skills, and designed his company’s first e-learning programme.
During his time at Reed and Capita he designed and led multiple public and private sector projects with clients as diverse as the British Army and HMRC to HSBC and Royal Mail. He draws his unique insight into best practices in the learning industry from having purchased over £500m worth of programmes from over 2,000 suppliers across the world.
Since entering the consulting world and founding Exemplia, he has split his time advising, coaching and consulting with fast-growth SMEs, Universities, Governmental organisations and FTSE 100 organisations. His mantra is to find solutions and approaches which most closely fit with the culture and circumstances that organisations are uniquely facing.
Expert partners
A team of experts we’ve worked with in our 25 years in the world of business and developing people.
Enabling us to bring you the best of the best for whatever your needs are.
Our Principles at the heart of all we do
We’ve spent a lot of time working across a variety of sectors with all sorts of people.
We help fix the skills gap that’s sneaking under the radar. While everyone’s busy cutting ‘non-essential’ training (👀), crucial management and commercial skills are quietly vanishing. Spoiler: soft skills aren’t soft — they’re essential. We bring them back with energy, impact, and a bit of fun.
We don’t want to just tick boxes. We will challenge the norms if we need to. We will drive equity for everyone. We will not promise you something that can’t be done, or try and sell you something you don’t need.
Long term relationships are at the core of our success, and these are driven by our own talent, experience and ethical principles.
Testimonials
"I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude for all the tremendous support and guidance you provided me. Our time together was transformative, enabling me to confidently share my ideas and take proactive steps towards improving courses, enhancing student satisfaction, and aligning with ARU's brand vision.
Your knowledge and ideas were a constant source of inspiration and allowed me to develop essential skills to support my team, department, and higher management effectively. I am truly grateful for the invaluable lessons and experiences I have gained under your guidance. I look forward to continuing this journey of growth and making a lasting impact with your inspiration and mentorship.”
"I just wanted to say thank you for coaching me to identify and use my strengths and preferences to better manage my work and support my colleagues. The experience provided valuable insights into different ways of approaching work and engaging with others. It helped me better understand my preferences and tendencies and how to use them to my advantage, as well as understanding others. The conversations have been fun and interesting and always feel comfortable in the space you have given for these sessions."
"Simon is one of the most experienced learning professionals I have worked with. He understands the impact of learning on performance improvement - through the power of coaching."
"Simon has a first-class mind and possesses great leadership skills. He is genuinely curious and suspends his own judgement until he has listened to people.
He builds relationships and trust quickly and facilitates great coaching conversations that both explore options and build commitment to agreed courses of action.
Simon delivers his practice from a highly ethical standpoint and brings great insight to every situation.
I would heartily recommend him to any team or customer."
"I have personally experienced and observed Simon's outstanding leadership skills, unwavering integrity, and out-of-the-box thinking. He consistently brings value to the table by providing fresh and innovative perspectives to tackle complex challenges. What sets him apart is his ability to connect with others and offer unwavering support. He's a leader, but he's also someone you can truly rely on as a trusted advisor and source of encouragement.
I wholeheartedly endorse Simon for his expertise in coaching, mentoring, training and development, as well as his strategic business acumen. He's a real team player who consistently promotes collaboration and works towards achieving meaningful results. Any organisation or individual seeking to invest in the development and success of their people would greatly benefit from Simon's guidance and expertise."
