Toby Wilsher, Coach-Facilitator-Leadership

Toby Wilsher has been a theatre director for 28 years, with an international reputation. His work as a writer and director has been seen in 31 countries to date, most recently in 2009 with a major project for the State Theatre of Turkey.

He was a pioneer in establishing Arts-based training for business in the early ‘90’s, finding ways of transferring the skills and experiences of theatre both as a performance-based industry and as a model for team-working.

He is now a lead trainer for the WPP group, the world’s largest media group with companies such as Ogilvy, Landor, JWT, Mindshare, PRISM, Hill and Knowlton and Millward Brown. He works with WPP companies in Europe, America, the Far East, as well as running regular sessions in London. Other current clients include major Pharmaceutical companies Sanofi-Pasteur and Astellas, Denplan, Red Door Comms, and the NHS (Chertsey and Ashford NHS trust), as well as a new branding agency Blue Marlin.

All of Toby’s training stems from a belief that everybody is a brilliant communicator in some area of their life, be it at home with family, out with friends, or at work. Through his extensive experience of working with actors and with audiences, he knows how to transfer the natural, social skills we all possess to the formalised arena of the presentation, the briefing in a meeting or to the conference podium. He has trained chief executives and receptionists, engineers and brain surgeons, teachers and store staff. All have benefited from an exuberant and infectious style of training that is fun, inclusive, challenging and highly actionable.

He has been training for nearly 20 years, a pioneer of the arts-based training movement. He has been teaching communication skills to companies as varied as the WPP group, Denplan, Sanofi Pasteur, BT, the NHS, UK Film Council and ASDA.