I am the CEO of Hardwicke, a barristers’ chambers in London. I have 80 barristers and 25 staff. It is a fast-paced and challenging environment in professional legal services.
I have been working with Don for about a year in delivering training and development for my staff. In January 2013 we undertook a ‘staff away day’ together. My aim was to bring the team together and to embed the business plan and objectives into normal working life. Don built the sessions around intellectual principles of ‘communication’ and ‘working as a team’, but also made it lots of fun. The feedback from staff was overwhelmingly positive.
Don and I then worked on a bespoke programme of development for my senior managers, and then cascaded that down to the other two groups of staff on my team.
After each session, I have sought feedback from the team. My team’s praise of Don is consistently high. As an example, one of my team said:
“We all really liked Don, and the way he draws on personal experiences to supplement his training (so much so that he received random applause from all of us on a few occasions!). He led us in a way which forced us to think for ourselves and how we all value each other in the team. Don also seems genuinely interested in how a chambers works, so we also felt like we were training him at the same time! Yes, I would like to have more training with Don”
We are now working with Don to develop a bespoke excellence programme for 2014. He seems to care about our business, and he readily adapts his approach to accommodate our needs and the nuances of our business and environment. He also understands that businesses (and CEOs) often have many other pressures and priorities thrown at them, and he is brilliant at quietly understanding and supporting me in the role that I perform, and suggesting solutions and ideas, rather than being rigid and inflexible. As a person responsible for a multi million pound professional services organisation, I can’t praise him enough for the support he has given me in developing my team.
