Biographies

In 1986, Karen Leland and Keith Bailey founded Ster­ling Con­sult­ing Group, Inc. and shortly there­after made his­tory by being chosen over more than a dozen Euro­pean com­peti­tors to become the first Amer­i­can con­sult­ing com­pany to win a major con­tract for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ser­vice train­ing within the British government.

Inc. Mag­a­zine chose Keith and Karen as their pri­mary judges for the Inc. Mag­a­zine Pos­i­tive Per­former Award, which honors com­pa­nies that have achieved an out­stand­ing level of busi­ness excel­lence. For a period of five years, Karen and Keith were respon­si­ble for select­ing the win­ning final­ists from among 500 applicants.

Today, after having worked with some of the most pres­ti­gious com­pa­nies in the world, they are inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed experts on increas­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity through the people side of busi­ness, whose speak­ing and con­sult­ing tal­ents have brought them such clients as Amer­i­can Express, Oracle, AT&T, Mar­riott Hotels and IBM.

Their unique abil­ity to make their research acces­si­ble, humor­ous and prac­ti­cal has led to a thriv­ing busi­ness that takes them through­out North Amer­ica, South­east Asia and Europe, giving them the chance to both learn and teach world-​class best busi­ness practices.

Karen and Keith are highly sought after keynote speak­ers and have pre­sented to a wide range of audi­ences includ­ing: Young Pres­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion, Amer­i­can Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion, Amer­i­can Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­a­tion, The Bak­ers­field Busi­ness Con­fer­ence and count­less cor­po­rate meetings.

They are the best sell­ing authors of seven books which have sold over 350,000 copies includ­ing Cus­tomer Ser­vice For Dum­mies (John Wiley & Sons), Water­cooler Wisdom: How Smart People Pros­per in the Face of Con­flict, Pres­sure and Change. (New Har­bin­ger Pub­li­ca­tions), Cus­tomer Ser­vice In An Instant, Public Speak­ing In An Instant, Email In An Instant and Time Man­age­ment In An Instant (Career Press). In addi­tion to dis­tri­b­u­tion within the US, their books have been trans­lated into ten other languages.

Karen and Keith are reg­u­larly fea­tured in the news media and have been inter­viewed by The New York Times, Newsweek, For­tune, Inc. Mag­a­zine and Time among others. They also have exten­sive on-​air expe­ri­ence and have been inter­viewed on The Today Show, CNN, Good Morn­ing Amer­ica, Fox News and Oprah.

Their latest project was the com­ple­tion of a ten-​year study, which involved over twenty multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions. Based on inter­views with thou­sands of exec­u­tives, man­agers and staff, Keith and Karen have iden­ti­fied key cri­te­ria that pos­i­tively impact how people manage con­flict, pres­sure and change in the workplace.

Kaylyn Lehmann is a senior asso­ciate with Ster­ling Con­sult­ing Group and has con­sulted with com­pa­nies on a wide vari­ety of topics includ­ing: Man­ag­ing Change, Con­flict Res­o­lu­tion, Sales, and Train the Trainer. She is also the Tech­ni­cal Editor of Cus­tomer Ser­vice For Dum­mies (John Wiley & Sons)

After attend­ing the Uni­ver­sity of North Texas and major­ing in Applied Arts & Sci­ences, her career began at Out­back Steak­house as a train­ing coor­di­na­tor. Over the next eight years, she over­saw the open­ing of 29 restau­rants and the train­ing of over 5,000 employees.

Kaylyn spe­cial­izes in employee reten­tion and cus­tomer loy­alty. She held the title of Vice-​President of Guests for Not Your Aver­age Joe's, a Boston based Restau­rant Com­pany, when they won the pres­ti­gious "Hot Con­cept" award from the National Restau­rant Association.

As a con­sul­tant and trainer, she has worked with exec­u­tives, man­agers, and front-​line staff from AT&T, United Air­lines, IBM, John­son & Johnson's Ortho­Biotech, Dupont and the Fed­eral Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion among others.