Had it not been for EURIANS, a European network of management consultants, perhaps WorldWork would never have come into being…

Back in 2002, the member businesses of the network, from France, Germany, Sweden, Italy and the UK, proactively decided that it would be a good idea to invest in some cross-cultural training workshops to enable them all to work well together as a pan-European team. 

It was at the very first of these workshops that Richard Lowe, a qualified psychometrician and management consultant, met Nigel Ewington. Nigel’s background was in language training and his business at the time, TCO (The Cambridge Office) was already in the field of cross-cultural training. During the workshops Richard and Nigel identified that there was nothing available in the market, in terms of psychometrics, to help people learn how to work in a cross-cultural context. They put their heads together and began to work on what would later become, our flagship product, The International Profiler (TIP®). 

A little while after this the South Asian tsunami occurred. As relief agencies arrived to help, an unforeseen crisis presented itself. There was conflict between the demoralised local communities in the region and the specialist experts who had been sent in, by the charities, to help tackle such a major disaster. 

Richard and Nigel’s services were called upon; their challenge? To set up constructive working practices across all the charity agencies and the local communities. They had to create ways and processes that could help the two sides build trust to be able to deal with the crisis. Their humanitarian efforts here planted the seeds for what would become the Team Trust Indicator (TTI). 

So, since these events and following the official founding of the company in May 2002, a few more of us have joined the team and we have been busy producing training and development resources that help leaders, teams and individuals work effectively across boundaries.