Are you a senior leader within your business who is in need of support to either grow your business, develop your teams, diversify and find new markets or simply gain personal confidence as a leader?
In the current uncertain economic climate, it’s more important than ever that you, as leaders of your organisation, have the skills and tools needed to overcome crises and build a sustainable future for your business.
Leadership Development through Peer Networking
Peer Networks are aimed at supporting managers to identify and overcome challenges within their own businesses or areas of work by sharing and learning from other senior leaders who are in similar positions, facilitated by a highly qualified and experienced coach and individual mentors.
The Devon Chamber has previously successfully delivered similar programmes with business leaders from organisations across the county, including many where there have been tangible upturns in productivity and bottom lines.
This is an opportunity for your business managers to get involved in learning and sharing with their peers to increase productivity, develop leadership skills and raise morale across the organisation.
Contact helen.hart@devonchamber.co.uk to enquire or to find out more.
“Having the chance to discuss the challenges we face as business leaders has not only built strong relationships within our peer group, but also provided several routes to growing our business in many aspects.”
– James Thomas, MD, JET Engineering
Why Peer Networking? The UK and Productivity
The UK has a longstanding productivity challenge; even before the Covid pandemic labour productivity was on average 13% higher in the rest of the G7 countries compared to the UK. This ‘Productivity Gap’ has since been exacerbated by the UK’s unusually weak productivity growth since the financial crisis in 2007-2008.
The UK’s overall future productivity growth will, in large part, be determined by the performance of individual businesses and essentially their management teams, who are not only responsible for meeting KPIs but also for setting the right culture and ethos of their teams/departments in order to grow the business. Whilst the Southwest has some of the most productive businesses in the world, we also have many low productivity businesses.
Evidence indicates that Peer Networks can result in 2.5% higher labour productivity.
Return on Investment
The Return on Investment of such programmes can be manyfold, and the benefits are far reaching:
- You are helped to determine solutions and actions that can quickly impact performance and productivity within the organisation;
- You gain rapid business benefits that can build year on year to sustain your success;
- You gain insights into a learning process that helps you lead with more confidence and competence;
- You learn a process that you can lead on to help others back at work generate their best actions and solutions, thus helping them become better idea generators, problem solvers and decision makers;
- This supports your wider ‘intent based leadership’ that helps you become more effective.
“I can’t recommend Devon Chamber’s Peer-to-Peer networking group highly enough. It was brilliantly organised, with a clear structure that made every session both productive and engaging. Having a fantastic mentor to guide the discussions ensured that everyone felt heard and supported and conversations stayed on track while still allowing room for fresh ideas to flow once questioning and probing about the challenge had become exhausted. If you’re looking for a structured yet open environment to connect, learn and grow, this group is the perfect place to do it!”
– Karen Meadows, Pushed
Learn, Share and Grow
The peer networks programme provides the opportunity for managers to learn from their peers, to share and discuss new ideas and work through challenges with a highly experienced organisational and leadership development coach.
Managers will benefit from varied delivery and real results. Activities take place in structured, small-group sessions, led by a skilled professional facilitator to make sure you see real results in return for the investment of your time.
They will also benefit from access of up to 3.5 hours of 1:1 specialist mentoring, coaching or other support depending on the areas the individual identifies as being most in need.
Contact helen.hart@devonchamber.co.uk to enquire or to find out more.
Action Learning Methodology
Places for this programme are limited to a maximum of 12 per cohort in order to create a supportive and constructive group dynamic.
Each Peer Network will be underpinned by an Action Learning methodology, which is designed to enable participants to unlock benefits from the collective thinking power and experience of a peer group.
This is not formal management or skills training, but personal, focused development with the help of a facilitator. We are delighted to once again engage with Peter Coxon from one point three leadership development. Peter is a highly experienced business coach and psychologist who has a reputation for combining the ‘soft’ elements of sustainable personal and organisational development with the ’hard’ edge of urgent business improvement.
“Thanks to the Devon Chamber of Commerce’s Peer-to-Peer Networking Programme, YMCA’s development has had a real boost, which almost certainly would not have happened if it wasn’t for me attending this programme.”
– Tom Lavis, CEO YMCA/Discovery College
The Action Learning process is a cyclical one, running over several weeks. Each member has the chance to present an opportunity or issue that is challenging them and receive help from peers and a coach to explore this and possible solutions, whilst also commenting on and learning from, and learning from, the challenges for others.
The sessions will take the shape of 6 half-day workshops. These will initially be in person, but the group may decide to hold future sessions online.
In addition to the group sessions each participant will have the opportunity to have a 3.5 hour 1:1 session with a selected mentor who understands and can support each manager with their specific leadership needs and challenges. The sessions will broadly follow this pattern:
- Each manager will have an opportunity to present their challenge or problem.
- The facilitator helps the group members question each participant constructively to challenge views and understanding, perceptions and assumptions. Others share their knowledge of the issue.
- The participant gains new insights, understanding, ideas and can identify actions to take.
- They can test out their action plan with the group.
- Participants bring results back to the group to feedback on what worked, what failed, and why.
- Participants can then reflect, draw conclusions, and learn from this rich experience and integrate the new knowledge they have gained into workplace actions and business plans.
- One-to-one support can be arranged and scheduled separately as it will reflect the individual development needs.
COST: Devon Chamber has been able to keep the cost of this unique but compelling programme for senior leaders down to an affordable £2,000 +VAT per person.
Contact helen.hart@devonchamber.co.uk to enquire or to find out more.
