contact@susanclosespeaks.com
(847) 95-SPEAK (957-7325)
Give your leaders a
clear process for
solving employee performance problems.
Susan Close equips leaders with Inside the Space™—a structured thinking process for identifying what’s really interfering with employee performance, choosing more effective interventions, and spending less time managing the wrong problem.
Who Susan
Works With
Susan works with organizations that want their leaders to address employee-performance problems with greater clarity, consistency, and accuracy.
• Managers and organizational leaders
• Leadership teams
• HR and people-development professionals
• Organizations experiencing recurring employee-performance or communication problems
The first problem you identify is not always the problem you need to solve.
THE PROBLEM
When an employee misses expectations, withdraws, becomes defensive, or repeatedly struggles, leaders are expected to respond. But visible behavior does not explain what is causing it.
Without a clear way to distinguish what happened from what we assume it means, even well-intended feedback, accountability, and support can address the wrong problem.
Before leaders decide what to do, they need a more accurate way to understand what is getting in the way.
THE APPROACH
Inside the Space™ changes
what happens before
leaders respond.
Inside the Space™ separates what leaders observe from what they assume. By identifying what is actually interfering with performance, leaders can choose a response that fits the problem.
Better understanding leads to better outcomes at every level:
LEADERS
Pause before reacting and make sharper, better-informed decisions.
MANAGERS
Can identify what is actually getting in the way and respond to the right problem.
TEAMS
Talk about performance with more honesty, less blame, and more trust.
ORGANIZATIONS
Stop managing symptoms and start solving the actual problem.
When Behavior Doesn’t Make Sense
Help leaders slow down their assumptions, ask better questions, and see what’s really getting in the way of performance.
Signature Talks & Sessions
Each engagement is tailored to the audience, but these signature sessions offer several ways to help leaders understand performance problems more accurately and respond more effectively.
Inside the Space™ for Leaders
Introduce Susan’s structured-thinking framework so leaders can respond with clarity, compassion, and accountability.
Talk About Performance Without Losing People
Give managers language and tools to address behavior directly while preserving trust and psychological safety.
WHY SUSAN SEES
THINGS DIFFERENTLY
For more than two decades, Susan has heard what people cannot say at work.
Susan has sat across from executives, managers, and employees and heard how leadership decisions are experienced by the people expected to carry them out. She has heard what managers are trying to balance, what employees are afraid to say, and what each side assumes about the other.
That perspective allows her to look beneath surface behavior for the pressures, assumptions, and systemic blind spots shaping performance.
