Who is Sandra Thompson?
The professional angle
Sandra Thompson is the first Goleman Emotional Intelligence Coach in the UK. She started out as a Customer Experience consultant in 2010 when she founded Exceed all Expectations, a management consultancy focusing on improving customer and employee experience. Sandra rebranded as The Ei Evolution in Jan 2021 because she believes that the skill of emotional intelligence can transform the way businesses behave, improve the relationships between customer and employee and between colleagues too. She is still working in the field of customer experience but the new brand enables Sandra to work more with schools – she believes that teaching young people how to become more emotionally intelligent could help them thrive.
Sandra has been fortunate to work with clients such as: Vodafone, Arsenal Football Club, Waitrose, Open University, Battersea Dog & Cats home, and Network Rail. She gives keynotes and frequently presents on webinars and podcasts to an international audience on all matters CX, EX and EI. Sandra has been fortunate to lecture part-time at a Business School in London on the topics of People Management and Leadership and Professional Behaviours and Customer Management and she runs a series of postgraduate courses in Customer Experience and Emotional Intelligence. She presented her first academic paper in 2019, TEDx in 2020, and intends to start a PhD in 2025. It’s true to say that she’s a lifelong learner.
Click to view talk video.
In 2020, Sandra worked with Henry Stewart Talks to produce her second publication, a talk about emotional intelligence in the world of remote work. Watch it here.
The Ei Evolution is built on the premise that customer experiences and life-long learning are better designed, delivered and improved with the support of the sciences (neuroscience, behavioural science and psychology). The Applied Customer Experience and Emotional Intelligence playbook explains the interconnectivity between the sciences and CX. Here is a free extract of this playbook. The full playbook is available on request.
An agile team of consultants and scientists
Throughout her career as a consultant, Sandra has worked with fellow consultants, coaches and scientists. She gathers additional expertise and talent to complete work she feels would benefit from the skills presented by neuroscientists, psychologists, behavioural scientists and actors. This approach enables Sandra to tailor the team for each and every commission. It’s an agile approach and it’s been a successful formula so far.
The inside story - the bold experience
My coach invited me to take a bold step at the end of 2020. She asked me to consider writing my own eulogy (the words said about you at your funeral in front of the people gathered to bid you farewell). As soon as she made the suggestion I sat up. My mind was racing. My palms of my hands felt intense heat. It was an invitation and I didn’t have to take it. But I knew something good would come from this bold experience. For two weeks’ words, expressions and stories popped up in my mind and then early one morning, I wrote it in one go. It took me a couple of hours to write. I’m sure that composing your own eulogy when you’re feeling fit and well seems like a bizarre thing to do, but I’m sharing it here so that you might know a bit more about me, if you’d like to. It’s an invitation.