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 Pro-Development team epitomise the winning combination of being professional, knowledgeable, passionate, and huge fun to work with. As a participant on their recent Leadership Development Programme, I learned so much about myself which was immediately applicable to the workplace (and at home!), which meant the return on money and time invested was a no-brainer. The course cleverly combined experiential outdoor learning in groups (with very different and stretching activities to anything I’d experienced before) with one-to-coaching sessions in between, and it’s this combination which is really powerful. If you’re serious about your own development as a leader, I couldn’t recommend them more highly.
With help from the lovely people at Pro-Development, our team building day at Harmony House Cookery School helped us to improve communication, feedback and delegation skills along with becoming dab hands at pastry! Throughout the day, Pro-Development ran a variety of sessions on how to communicate successfully, with focus on delegation, honest conversations and feedback, which were then combined with cooking challenges which provided an opportunity for the learning to come to life. It was a hugely valuable day that really showed us how to bring out the best in each other by sharing and understanding each other’s strengths and values. It brought us together even more as a team and demonstrated to us that you really can have your cake and eat it!
I have just completed the Pro-Development Management Development Programme and after a lifetime of training in various guises I have to say that nothing has or I think will ever come close to this course. The learning methods employed ensured continuous light bulb moments as we spent 7 months exploring different elements of leadership and working in teams. It was a privilege to be selected onto the directors cohort because Pro Development only run a couple of courses per year. There were 6 of us on the program which meant that we got very personal feedback and support. Each month we took part in different activities, in teams in a kind of ‘Apprentice’ style environment, which exposed all of our strengths and opportunities to learn. The feedback from my program colleagues and from Pro-Development has provided me with huge learnings about my own management skills and opportunities to focus on. I cannot thank you enough for selecting me for the course, you even ensured it was 50% funded through LEP. I would highly recommend this style of training to any business owner or manager of a team, it is great fun and most importantly you cannot fail to learn and develop as a leader as a result. Thank you!!
Suzanne is really good at engaging people in the activities, very interesting and enjoyable. She is a fantastically enthusiastic presenter and I really enjoyed this session, probably one of the best I have attended. Thank you very much – brilliant session!
Many thanks for your recent help with my business development. It has been great working with you. The process has been fun and very useful in guiding me towards leading a larger company. You quickly worked out where the focus was required and what was needed to take my business forward. I am a much more confident leader now, having learnt that communication with staff is such a vital element of running and developing a business.
It was an interesting and well delivered session; enjoyable, relevant and interactive. Michelle is really enthusiastic and engaging and fun. Very passionate and great subject knowledge. Lots of good ideas and models to use. The workshop provided the right balance of being interactive with lots of different activities enabling us to get involved along with providing lots of good information. Michelle really engaged with the audience and provided a nice mix of anecdotes and where to find more support.
We recently engaged with Pro Development to deliver an in house Management Development Programme for a group of first Line Managers to give them the skills to step up into a true management role, thus allowing the Directors to concentrate on strategic priorities. Michelle and Sue came to meet with us at the start of the project and took the time to really understand what we wanted to achieve from the programme. Following the initial design, they listened to our feedback and reshaped the programme until we were all satisfied that we had a programme which would meet our needs, and which allowed STG to work collaboratively with Sue and Michelle to deliver the programme in partnership. The resulting programme launched in September 2015 and will run until June 2016. The feedback from the cohort of Managers has been extremely positive, and all are very much looking forward to the rest of the programme. Sue’s delivery style is very relaxed, informative and engaging, and she ensures everyone participates, without putting pressure on anyone. We will definitely be working with Pro Development on future projects.
“Having engaged Michelle and Pro Development to run Ascensor’s summer teambuilding beach party this year, I was impressed by the thought process that went into planning the event and the delivery on the day and it was a huge success. When Michelle spoke to me about the Management Development Programme, I initially thought it would be ‘just another training course’, but having looked into it and taken references I quickly realised what most courses miss – total engagement in the learning. Through experiential learning I have taken more from the first two sessions than most other courses, I’ve made some great contacts and had a lot of fun – roll on the next 5. In between the sessions we have a two hour coaching session that is really helping me with time management and work life balance! Michelle also pointed us in the direction of funding so 50% is supported thorugh the government. If you want to learn more about yourself as a leader in a business then I would highly recommend this course. Michelle is very knowledgeable and full of fun and she makes it very easy to open up, gives great constructive feedback and helps with the reflection process. Highly recommended!”
Having recently undertaken a process of assessing our company values, working with Michelle and Sue from Pro-Development has helped me to communicate the essence of Ascensor through experiential learning. Being part of a team that includes creatives and technicians from our UK and Polish offices, I understand how challenging communicating this type of information with real awareness, can be. Working with Pro-Development, we have been able to really investigate why we all do what we do and carry the core values message to the heart of the whole Ascensor team, through a professionally organised and hugely fun beach party! Massive thanks to Michelle, Sue and the weather for making it the best Ascensor event so far.
Very useful team building event with Pro-Development which has given me some ideas to take forward as I lead the team. A great day overall and I hope that it can become a regular occurrence.
