Skip to content
Suzanne Ross

Suzanne Ross

Senior Lecturer

Nottingham Business School

Staff Group(s)
Department of Management

Role

Suzanne is part of the Executive Education team in the Business School. Her role comprises academic leadership, teaching, research, and consultancy. Suzanne is the Programme Leader for the ECCO in company Post Graduate Certificate and Postgraduate Diploma in Global Business and Module Leader for the Managing and Leading People in Organizations Module. She is also Module Leader for the Leading People and Organizations Module on the Executive MBA.

Previous Module Leaderships include:

  • Women in Leadership 20 credit postgraduate module
  • The Effective Change Management Module on the MSc in Management and Leadership (part-time)
  • The Personal and Professional Leadership Development Module across the Executive MBA, Full-time MBA, On-Line MBA and MSc in Management  and Leadership (part-time) programme.

Suzanne is a lead consultant on in-company Organizational Consultancy and Leadership Development Projects working across Public, Private and Third Sectors. She is also a facilitator and Business Coach for the NBS SME provision, facilitating on the government funded Help to Grow Management programme and previously the NBS Upscaler programme for SME’s growing their business.

A qualified Executive Coach, Suzanne is a member of both the International Coaching Federation and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. She is accredited in a range of psychometrics for use in talent management and leadership development including, Hogan (Personality, Motivation and Values and Development Survey), MBTI, EQ-I, ESCI and the BPS Test User Ability and Test User Personality. She is a member of the Working with Resilience Global Consortium.

Suzanne’s PhD research (2018) was in leadership talent, success, and derailment. The focus of the research was on understanding the attributes of talented and successful leaders, how leaders enact their talent into success and why some leaders derail. She is a supervisor for MSc and MBA dissertations in the areas of leadership, women in leadership, talent management and organisational behaviour.

Suzanne’s research interests are: Leadership resilience, resilience in entrepreneurship, leadership behaviours, emotional intelligence, the ‘dark side’ of leadership, leadership derailment.

Suzanne is responsible for the HR Forum, a platform to engage HR professional with latest thinking in the HR field. She is a previous member of the Executive Education Advisory Board. She also provides expert commentary for the Press.

Career overview

Suzanne has a BSc (Hons) in Management Sciences (Marketing) from Lancaster University Management School and a MSc in Performance Management from the University of Leicester. Suzanne started her career in sales and marketing roles, progressing into business management and leadership roles before making a career change into leadership development and talent management roles including Talent Manager EMEA for Experian. Leaving her corporate role, Suzanne founded 2thrive Consultancy specialising in organisational behaviour consultancy, leadership development and Executive Coaching. Suzanne combines her consultancy work with her part-time role at NBS.

Suzanne has experience of the public, private and third sector across diverse organisations including Financial Services, Cosmetics, Retail, Pharmaceuticals, Software, Construction, Local Authorities, The Emergency Services, NHS, HMRC, Social Enterprises, The Armed Forces, Higher Education and Technology. She is a qualified Executive Coach, Member of the International Coaching Federation, Member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council and a Fellow of the HEA.

Research areas

Suzanne's doctorate is in leadership talent, success and derailment focussing on:

  • The characteristics of talented and successful leaders
  • How talented and successful leaders sustain their success
  • Why some talented leaders stall, plateau or derail from their career.

Suzanne's research interests are in leadership resilience, resilience in entrepreneurship, leadership behaviours, emotional intelligence, the ‘dark side’ of leadership, leadership derailment and women in leadership.

Suzanne provides opinion to the press and has been featured in The Conversation, The Guardian, Management Today, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times and HR Magazine providing opinion on leadership behaviour.

External activity

Suzanne is the owner of 2thrive Consultancy. 2thrive specialises in organisational behaviour, talent management and leadership capability with an emphasis on:

  • top team development
  • authentic Leadership
  • executive resilience
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • developing female leaders
  • leadership transitions

She is a qualified Executive Coach and Member of the International Coaching Federation.

Press expertise

  • Leadership success: the psychology of successful leaders, their characteristics and behaviours and the organisational context
  • Leadership derailment: the causes of leadership derailment including the ‘dark side’ of leaders
  • Toxic, narcissistic and psychopathic leaders
  • Female leaders and gender differences in leadership
  • Resilience and the role resilience plays in leadership success or derailment
  • Talent management in particular leadership talent, female talent, building a talent pipeline and understanding your high potentials
  • Leadership careers: how successful leaders manage their careers; bouncing back after career setbacks
  • High achievers: their behaviours, success and self-sabotage
  • Performance Management
  • High performance cultures, including building high performance teams
  • Leadership and teamwork in a crisis