DriveSpeed Group provide tailored vehicle solutions to clients across a range of industries from a base in North Yorkshire. The business has grown significantly since its incorporation in 2011, and has doubled in size in the last three years, with over 20 staff at their office on Fishergate in York.
In 2020 the dental industry was shut down for a couple of months, but Swallow Dental Supplies adapted its PPE product range and are now growing rapidly through their sales of bone regeneration material and other surgical dental supplies.
The workshop has really helped me gain confidence in dealing with potential difficult situations. It has highlighted areas I need to work on to build strong relationships with stakeholders.
My overall experience of Pro-Development has been excellent. The trainers are professional and engaging. The workshop content has been thought provoking, innovative, interactive, collaborative and fun…whilst delivering practical strategies for improvement and visible business solutions.
The course helped me identify my own management style and that of other business leaders. This has enhanced my communication skills and helped in managing difficult conversations. It has also helped me recognise opportunities for developing people in my team.
I have really valued the quality of the course objectives and how they connect to our longer term business goals.
We were lucky enough to experience a day of training around ‘Honest Conversations’ from the amazing Joanne from Pro-Development – an organisation dedicated to bringing out the best in you, your staff and your business.
The day started with pastries, coffee and tables full of goodies such as sweets, highlighters and workbooks with inspiring quotes, mine for example “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands in times of challenge”.. we knew it was going to be a good day.
At Better Connect we manage programmes. This requires us to sometimes have honest conversations with partners, stakeholders and funders to ensure the best outcome for all involved. Our values at Better Connect and the amount we care about the work we do mean that we want to hold these conversations properly and maintain the most positive relationships with everyone that we work with.
We also encourage honest conversations within the staff team. We want to create a culture where staff can express how they feel in a safe and open way.
The session was super interactive and fun, making sure that we engaged with each other, worked as a team and practised having honest conversations in a safe environment!
We were asked to think about what are the positives and negatives around having honest conversations, the do’s and don’ts and the key skills you need.
A huge thank you to Joanne from Pro-Development for an awesome day. We love coming together, working as a team and developing skills on how to be the best at what we do and ultimately develop as people too!
“One of the challenges was managing at the right level and preparation and planning. I feel a more rounded manager after our sessions. The whole experiences was very good and has improved my confidence. The sessions have helped me develop my team and myself to better facilitate the business needs. I most value the open discussions with Helen in a way with what I wanted to achieve”
“We are creating a Leadership Development Programme with Pro-Development, and wanted to include participation from our Senior Managers, who had knowledge and experience to share, that we believed would help our future leaders. Feeling mentoring would be the best way to achieve this we worked with Pro-Development to deliver mentoring training.
Whilst an off the shelf offering may have sufficed, the great thing with Pro-Development was that they weaved in our Leadership Programme, values and beliefs, and the way we worked so that the resultant course was absolutely tailored to what we wanted to achieve, and how we wanted to do things. Not just the actual learning content, but the delivery style, flexibility on the day and the whole context and feel fitted with us, making it personal and relevant. Our mentors are so better prepared from this and ready to get going, and the support from Pro-Development has been so strong, that the course that was written specifically for us has been spot on for us.”
“I just wanted to say thank you to Sue for a great couple of days with us this week delivering the “Bringing out the Best in Others” workshops you designed for us. I really enjoyed the day myself, and for me it was a nice combination of some new stuff and a good reminder of other ideas and things to implement. I know a lot of people who hadn’t had this sort of thing before are very fired up about it now, which is great! Your tips and ideas are already making a huge difference to the appraisals we have already run since. Lots of other things too, but it went down really well, so thank you, and Sue, you were great!”
During the last 18 months, we have worked with Pro-Development on a significant project to change our mission, vision and values for our business. We worked specifically with Sue on this project and she has been incredibly collaborative throughout. The workshops that Sue organised and facilitated were engaging and creative and everyone involved felt really bought in to this project. We now have a new set of values that have been launched which are beginning to take shape and become a driving force behind moving our business forward. We are now looking to work with Michelle on a Leadership programme, which also promises to be a great event that will continue to help embed our new values throughout the business. We would highly recommend Pro-Development – a real investment to any business.
Have you ever felt like giving up at work? Comments like “I don’t need this” “there must be something easier to do than this job” and many others. A few months ago I said the same things and didn’t realise I was that bad to the point I was affecting people negatively in my home life and work life, I had to do something about it! A now business friend of mine, Michelle Mook, helped me start on a journey to get my head straight and no, it’s not an overnight fix and yes, I have slipped a few times but I am now on the path to getting back to the old Dean and not just pretending to be the old Dean. Michelle and the team at Pro-Development have helped me with this so far as they do for other individuals and teams, helping bring businesses closer, getting to know your team and who you work with.
Fantastic! What a great way to learn and improve on my leadership abilities. The Management Development Programme was incredibly rewarding, fun and focused on enhancing skills as well as introducing new skills and ideas. It’s been a whirlwind of learning with great opportunities to challenge myself and to figure out who I am as a leader. I have put much of what I learnt into practice and I am already starting to reap the rewards.
We wanted to consolidate our values and bring them to the forefront of our everyday work. We had grown and employed a new team member and I wanted the chance to develop our core values as a team to ensure everyone felt included and empowered. I wanted help to understand each individuals motivators and reasons for coming to work each day so we can ensure we maintain and grow employee engagement. Working with Pro-Development has been great. They understood our needs and suggested a team day with activities to underpin and work on our values. We went on the team day which allowed us to be out in the fresh air away from our desks and then followed up with a session to discuss how we embed the values into the business. I now understand individual values and I’m confident they are in-line with our overarching company values and feel confident in my ability to motivate and engage the team. We have a vision board which we created together pinned up in the office and have core values with positive and negative examples to aid with future recruitment. The day also helped us bond further as a team, thank you.
