Biography

Managing Partner and Co-founder of 6 Team Conditions Global 

Melissa’s role as Managing Partner of 6 Team Conditions is to provide leadership for the global scaling of the organisation and to partner with client organisations to shape organisational development solutions. She specializes in working with Senior Leadership Teams across a broad range of industries across the globe. She combines her early commercial background with expert scholar-practitioner knowledge and experience when working with executive teams. She works in collaboration with clients across a diverse range of industry sectors and adds value at a strategic level by focusing on the team effectiveness of C-Suite, Senior Leadership and Mission Critical teams as the means to deliver organisational change and constructive behavioural change. 

Melissa began her career as a chartered surveyor in a top firm in London, gaining experience in client relationship management of key accounts and leading multi-disciplinary teams. She accelerated quickly and joined the senior management team responsible for a client portfolio valued at 2bn, with a staff of 135.  Sample clients included Santander Bank, Smiths Group, Legal and General, Royal Bank of Scotland, British Land Plc, and O2. 

Over 16 years ago, she pivoted to organisational development and set up a niche consultancy working with senior leadership teams to support transformational change initiatives. She has worked with leadership teams and teams of teams to embed team effectiveness, team learning and organizational learning to support strategy development, change agendas and the improvement of employee engagement. Sector clients include; property, finance, pharma, technology, consumer goods, energy, professional services, healthcare, textiles and education. Melissa joined 6 Team Conditions in 2019 –a distinctive approach is to partnering with clients to embed the 6 Conditions of Team Effectiveness frameworkTM to improve team performance and to ensure that team leadership is aligned with the organizational strategy.  

She has extensive experience of working with executive level leaders, having taught over 1500 Trinity Executive MBAs and Executive Leaders from all over the world in all sectors and industries. Melissa introduced Executive Coaching and Team Coaching to Trinity Business School, and set up a panel of qualified coaches to deliver coaching on the flagship MBA programme. 

Melissa is Adjunct Ass. Professor of Leadership at Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin. She has won several awards for her MBA and Executive Education teaching, and is the recipient of MED Best Paper in Management Education and Development Award for the publication In the eye of the storm: Turbulent times and the MBA. 

Publications and Further Research Outputs

Shantz, A., Sayer, M., Byrne, J., & Dempsey-Brench, K. (2023). Grand Challenges and the MBA. Journal of Management Education, 47(3), 292-323. https://doi.org/10.1177/10525629231154891 

Shantz, A., Sayer, M. J., Byrne, J., Dempsey-Brench, K., & Kavanagh, S. (2021). In the eye of the storm: Turbulent times and the MBA. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2021, No. 1, p. 12905). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management. Recipient of Research Award 

Sayer, M. J., & Murphy, C. (2021). Foundations to sustainability: A leadership team coaching case study. The Team Coaching Casebook, 23. 

Murphy, C., & Sayer, M. (2019). Standing on the shoulders of the science of team effectiveness: building rigour into your team coaching design. In The Practitioner’s Handbook of Team Coaching (pp. 75-88). Routledge.