Issue 12 2020

Taking Charge Chameleon Skills is a professional performance consultancy specialising in change management. Its objectives are to enhance the personal and leadership skills of each individual and team within an organisation to be adaptable, resilient, and future fit. We recently profiled the firm and caught up with Director, Veronica Wantenaar to find our more. Since their inception, Chameleon Skills have believed that enhancing personal and leadership skills within a company leads to strong healthy organisations, which are capable of building sustainable and enabling environments where people can thrive to benefit the organisation and all its stakeholders. Going into further detail, the firm’s Director Veronica Wantenaar tells us more about the firm and its unique offering. “Here at Chameleon Skills, we utilise our EAGER methodology with all client engagements to ensure that we connect with the key stakeholders, confirm objectives, collaborate on the design, and roll out of programmes to ensure successful delivery of results and return on the investment of time and money.” Change management includes all the people-focused aspects of the organisation. “We work with people who work with people,” Veronica embellishes. The firm facilitates change and transition programmes. This can be managing the people side of any change – new technology, systems or culture transitions are successful when the people are taken through effective change processes. It also builds effective cohesive teams from top leadership down through the organisation, engaging the individuals and building the team so that it goes beyond high performing to high value. This means the team is adding value outside its own area for the benefit of the organisation through cross-functional team collaboration. Chameleon Skills also provides coaching and mentoring for individuals at all levels of the organisation. This is often for developmental purposes such as promotions, transitions into other areas of the business or it can be the role of a thinking partner. “We believe a lot of our success is our ability to connect to people and to build relationships,” Veronica continues, speaking of what it is that makes the firm different from others in a similar market. “We spend time with our clients to really get to know their business, their goals and their challenges so that we can partner with them to create programmes that will deliver the desired results.” Chameleon Skills’ clientele is predominantly medium to large organisations where long term relationships based on trust and delivery can be cultivated. Veronica and her colleagues take time to get to know their clients, connecting with the various stakeholder groups in order to develop systemic, relevant and practical solutions. In order to undertake this task successfully, the staff at Chameleon Skills are recruited based on their alignment with the firm’s core values, their skill sets and their commitment to build effective relationships and to deliver value. “Our team are an essential key to our success as we are in the people business and they are the client interface and also role models for our organisation.” Recently, the firm has seen challenges arise as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, much like other businesses have. Veronica touches a little on how Chameleon Skills fared, and is still faring, during this troubling time. Sep20741 “We were already working online but had to swiftly move over to this as our main way of working,” she says. “The biggest challenge in our industry is the number of people who call themselves coaches and have not had any proper training so are not able to provide the depth of safety and support to individuals and organisations going through change.” Chameleon Skills is now providing all of its services online or face-to- face and is expanding its systemic team capability. Veronica hopes that, by the end of 2020, the firm will be based in both South Africa and the United Kingdom through expansion. “We are passionate about the work that we do and we believe that individuals are the secret to building successful teams and organisations. We will continue to work with those organisations to provide enabling environments, where individuals can thrive and give their very best.” Contact: Veronica Wantenaar Company: Chameleon Skills cc Web Address: https://chameleonskills.com/ “We are passionate about the work that we do and we believe that individuals are the secret to building successful teams and organisations. We will continue to work with those organisations to provide enabling environments, where individuals can thrive and give their very best.”