Deon Senturk, CEO, CLIMB by Talent Plus
Business leaders, business managers, and entrepreneurs must remember that people are the foundation for an efficient and successful organization. Apart from technical skills, the best candidates want to contribute to a larger, meaningful purpose, not worrying about making profits. As the right people give life to an enterprise, identifying and selecting them becomes critical—it may make or break the business.
Thriving and successful businesses are always conscious of its people. When the right people are in place, new possibilities open up like team building, an uplifting work culture, positive results, and growth for the entire organization. It also gives each person a golden opportunity to develop skills as well as to better understand innate potential, strengths, and shortcomings. So, the most important question becomes: How can organizations nurture its human element to realize or to drive success?
Mrs. Deon Sunturk, as a certified, passionate, and seasoned leadership coach, guides modern organizations to train, build, revitalize its human capital. She passionately believes in helping individuals discover their true potential, grow, and contribute to a larger cause. Today, she serves as the director of Asia-Pacific branch of Talent Plus, a premier global human resources consulting firm that builds high-performing, talent-based organizations. In addition, she’s the founder and CEO of Talent Plus’s ‘CLIMB’ a training programme designed to help small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) realize and sustain growth in today’s highly demanding business landscape.
Strengthening the Human Ingredient in Business
Mrs. Deon is a top advisor to business leaders within the hospitality, retail, finance, healthcare, and technology industries, helping them unlock their potential and enabling their workforce to thrive. She specializes in bolstering an organization’s human resources guided by Talent Plus’s research into human talent and high performance that goes back over 50 years.
Talent Plus is regarded as the premier leader in discovering and developing human potential, helping individuals, organizations, and communities grow and flourish. It uses proprietary methods—a product of over five decades of research pioneered by one of Talent Plus’s co-founders named Dr. William E. Hall.
One of the biggest challenges within human resources is to effectively bring the best, talented people to the job. While multinational or large-sized businesses offer lots of money to attract talented individuals looking for work, SME’s or newer start-ups may not have the luxury of money. So, SME’s need additional guidance to effectively offer and provide for an all-round excellent working opportunity for newer candidates.
Creating a Landscape Conducive to the Growth of SME’s
As Mrs. Deon noticed the challenge facing SME’s, she set up CLIMB as a training programme specially tailored to support SME’s grow their business through self-discovery and team development in 2017. “CLIMB by Talent Plus’s core offering is a leadership development program starting with leadership self-awareness using Talent Plus’s proprietary psychometric assessments. We help SME’s discover people as their greatest assets. They also learn to build strengths, practical ways to lead the team, innovate new business models and digital growth strategies,” Mrs. Deon explains.
CLIMB by Talent Plus’s program is designed to help individuals discover their potential, build their natural talents, as well as grow a business with innovation and purpose. It also aims to create an SME business environment where people can do what they are good at, enjoy and have an opportunity to grow.
Although over 400 clients have successfully graduated from CLIMB’s leadership program since its inception, Mrs. Deon had struggled to set up the training institution from a concept to a valuable go-to market solution for SME’s. But in hindsight, she considers this challenge as a learning experience having picked up valuable lessons. These include having a clear vision or purpose for the concept, bringing the right people who share the same passion together, a commitment to excellence, staying open-minded to new ideas and giving back to the community.
Mrs. Deon is genuinely proud of bringing this concept to life today. To her, one of the most rewarding experiences is working each day with an incredible team of professionals sharing one purpose of serving customers.
Motivated by Helping People Grow and Thrive
Mrs. Deon finds joy and fulfilment in her profession as a leadership coach because she sees it as a positive opportunity to help people grow, rely on their strengths, enhance team camaraderie, and recognize each other’s talents. “Coaching is my great passion, helping people to understand their potentiality, seeing them grow and thrive gives me a lot of satisfaction,” Mrs. Deon states.
“I see potential in every person. To me success is helping the people around including my family, colleagues, friends and clients realise their own potentials and grow. Their signs of growth are my motivation. People gaining confidence and clarity by understanding their potential and becoming the best version of themselves will be my greatest success,” Mrs. Deon adds.
A Message of Hope to Everyone Facing Adversity
Although Mrs. Deon is a prominent leadership coach today, she has taken up diverse roles and responsibilities thus far in her life. These include a salesperson, a marketing professional in luxury hospitality industry, entrepreneur in the gig economy, a full-time mother, a lecturer, a speaker at programmes and a human resources advisor. Each career transition presented its own challenges, bringing many disappointments and discouragements along the way. But through her family’s support, wisdom from her mentors and firm belief in her ability to succeed, she persevered to discover her passion in coaching.
“I hope that my journey gives people hope when they are facing adversity. Don’t let negativity and the non-believer’s judgement affect you. Look inward, find your own voice and strengths for resiliency, because the secret sauce to a purposeful life lies within yourself,” Mrs. Deon offers valuable advice.
Representing Hope and Possibility to Workers as well as Leaders
Mrs. Deon is launching another program called ‘PRIME’ to empower workers of all age groups, especially mature workers. It’s primarily focused on helping older workers re-discover their prime by re-examining their potentials, values, and health capability so they continue to feel fulfilled, valued and have a sense of vitality. “My goal as a leader is to leave a legacy of helping the next generation of leaders through self-awareness and serving the community as a coach always giving positive energy, hope, and encouragement,” Mrs. Deon concludes by sharing her professional aspirations.