Denis Cummings


Principal Consultant, Married with two children, has been with Coverdale since 1988

Career in brief

After college, his first career was in banking with Barclays Bank in the 60’s in Northumberland, and then moving to Pall Mall District of London where he worked at Bond Street Branch. As part of his career development, he was seconded to Barclays Staff Training Centre at Teddington where he worked with a highly dedicated team involved in Bank Training for managers and branch supervisors. His second career was in publishing, where he worked for Reed Business Publishing, now part of Reed Elsevier, as Head of Manpower Development.

During his time with Reed he was responsible for the development of some 3,500 staff, and he also chaired the joint management/ union job evaluation committee with HAY MSL; then involved with career development.

His work has taken him to India, Malaysia, Bahrain, America, Switzerland, China, South Africa, Borneo and Zanzibar. His main focus is on board coaching and facilitation, international leadership development and helping to support companies through the process of change.

He is currently a non-executive director of Kent Messenger Group, having previously served on the Board of Coverdale.

In his work as a consultant and trainer he focuses on:
  • International Leadership
  • Strategic development
  • Board coaching and facilitation
  • Consulting, facilitating and supporting organisational development projects
  • Facilitating large group interventions
  • Helping with project start-ups, and where projects are reaching critical points in their life cycle
  • The establishment of site-wide project methodologies, owned, used and consistently applied
  • Training sessions in team development, leadership and project management
Previous career experience:
  • Chair of management/union job evaluation
  • Head of Manpower Development with Reed Elsevier
  • Non Executive Director with Kent Messenger Group
  • Setting up a site-wide project methodology (Houston compliant) for a leading motor engineering group in Germany
  • New publishing company start-up
  • Strategy workshops in learned and professional organisations, and in commercial sectors
  • Project Systems implementation in high tech and commercial sectors
  • Organisational turn round in the Health Sector overseas
  • Watershed Management for DIFD and the Government of India
  • Building a network of Coverdale facilitators to work in all states of India in support of the above
  • Coaching of senior managers in organisations facing large scale change
  • Supporting process specialists in building and rolling out a set of Brand Building Tools for a Global Drinks Company
  • Lead coach for the Corporate Academy of a leading motor manufacturing group in Germany
  • Ongoing Coach for Senior Managers attending the above seminars
  • Consultant to the Executive Team of Mercedes Benz High Performance Engines
Education and Training
  • College Diploma at Newcastle, for The Institute of Bankers
  • College for Distributive Trades, Training & Development
  • Brunel University, assessment centre design
  • Polytechnic of Central London, IPM Part One studies
  • Myers Briggs Type Indicator licensed practitioner
  • McQuaig Profiling
  • Institute of Directors, for newly appointed directors
Working languages:
  • English
Denis says:

"I like working with people who want to make a difference, and who are looking to learn and improve, for themselves and their organisations Outside of work, my passions are my family, keeping our small garden at bay, and an obsession with music – running a small jazz club in my home town." 		Denis Cummings
Denis Cummings
Coverdale UK