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“Helping you understand how people work”

About Us

Colin Barber started The Management Mechanic as a business training consultancy in 1994, and he has since evolved to specialise in the application of psychology and NLP in the business environment, helping you understand how people (and organisations) think and communicate. How do people process their thoughts and how do they communicate those thoughts?
Colin Barber manages most client relationships himself, but also utilises the services of several colleagues with specialist skills in certain aspects of Psychology and Communication.

Colin has many years’ experience as a Business Consultant, Trainer and Coach. He is a Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming and a certified Business Coach. He regularly works on a One-to-One basis with senior decision makers, and clients frequently feed back that he has an ability to know exactly what question to ask in order to shift their thinking pattern and move them forward. He has a philosophy that unless you can alter a person’s thinking patterns, then any change will at best be temporary.

Prior to his consultancy work, Colin spent several years in marketing with a blue chip multi-national company in the travel business, which involved postings in several countries in Europe and the Americas.
Colin started his career in retail management, he then set up and ran an advertising agency in the motor trade and later established a small publishing company.

Colin’s Story

“When I left college a friend and I spent six months travelling overland from London to Cape Town.
We faced several challenging and sometimes dangerous situations, as we travelled through some interesting and unusual places – a divided Cyprus, Israel during the invasion of Lebanon, Uganda in the aftermath of Idi Amin, Rhodesia just as it became Zimbabwe, South Africa at the height of apartheid.
During this trip I gradually began to realise that (apart from the Hippopotamus in Zambia), most challenging situations we faced were really just an interaction between us and another human being. Whether it was a border patrol in Cyprus, a Mossad agent in the Golan Heights, or a 15-year-old rebel soldier in Uganda waving an AK47 in our face, the only thing that mattered was how we interacted with that person.
As the journey progressed I developed an interest in psychology and read several books during long bus and train journeys. Thus began a lifelong association with the subject, with particular emphasis on how people communicate with each other.
I have since worked in several different countries and visited approximately seventy, always with a curiosity for people and cultures. I also enjoy languages, and speak German, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian and am currently learning Portuguese.
In 1992, I was introduced to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and the works of John Grinder and Richard Bandler, which took my learning to a new level, as not only did I learn more about how people communicate with each other, but also how we communicate with ourselves, and how we process our internal thoughts!
I am on a continual journey in search of new learning and ideas, and I am fortunate in that my work enables me to continually discover more about psychology and communication, whilst sharing the benefit of my wide-ranging experience with my clients.”
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