Soothing stressed out staff and turning workplace tension to harmony is all in the day's work for Karen Minikin.

A former teacher, airline cabin crew supervisor and management trainer, Karen heads Brighton-based counsel-ling and training service Link Consultancy.

Set up by Karen two years ago, the firm acts for a number of organisations across the UK from multi-sited national institutions to locally based businesses and charities.

As companies increasingly recognise the value of building effective team-working, Karen is focusing on Sussex for Link Consultancy's further expansion. From her offices, Karen provides specialist help covering personal and organisational development for both businesses and individuals.

She said: "I believe everyone should enjoy his or her work. But poor organisational structures can affect working relations and place extra pressure on people. The result being people under-perform.

"Turning that around is what I do - whether through consultancy, training, coaching or counselling.

"For example, with the increased frequency of mergers, acquisitions and outsourcing, people from different backgrounds have to be integrated into a common company culture.

"They have to perform as a team but may have had very different ways of operating.

"My job is to ease the process of integration by looking closely at their systems and processes, then organising them into groups so they can define how they want to work together."

In addition to her corporate work, Karen helps individuals with their career and personal development.

With the benefit of Karen's considerable aviation industry experience, Link Consultancy runs a programme of workshops and coaching sessions to prepare applicants for airline job interviews.

These have proved a runaway success and get a further boost through the Government's Individual Learning Account scheme.

Already armed with a geography degree and an MA in English literature from Sussex University, Karen is currently completing yet another degree in transactional analysis.

Known more commonly as TA, this is a method for analysing and guiding personal growth and organisational change.