Member Article

Bdaily visits the North East Leadership Group

Bdaily was at the inaugural North East Leadership Group meeting, to find out a little more about how this peer support group format works, and what businesses are set to get out of it.

Nestled in the unparalleled historical surroundings of Newcastle’s Lit & Phil, business leaders from across the region took their seats around the centuries old debating table in order to thrash out some very 21st century business challenges.

Regional business luminary Bill Midgley was on hand to fire-up the business people in attendance, with an impassioned speech on leadership and the experiences from his career through chief executive of Newcastle Building Society, to President of the British Chambers of Commerce.

Bill noted that learning for business leaders is a cumulative process that never stops. To exemplify this, he quoted Winston Churchill’s famous diary entry on coming to power in 1940: “all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”

He went on to say that leadership was a learning curve, and that regional success stories like that of Sage founders David Goldman, Paul Muller and Graham Wylie could be used as inspiration, but leaders must undergo their own experiences to form style and technique.

The session was lead by Leadership Group founder Denis Kaye, an experienced non-executive director and business mentor.

Denis introduced some models of leadership that he had encountered, and how the dynamic of these models could be applied to an SME setting.

Particularly he noted the need for personnel in the core business functions to provide a strong grounding on which the directorship can focus on vision, and the strategy to achieve this.

Denis then lead the group into a discussion around key concerns they had within their businesses, or distinct challenges posed. Operating under strict Chatham House Rules, this portion of the meeting delivered the crux of what the Leadership Group is about.

The leaders around the table exchanged anecdotal evidence, as well as opinion and direct advice on the intricacies around these challenges.

David Ross, managing director of Leeds firm Keycare, was at the meeting having previously benefited from the Yorkshire Leadership Group sessions.

David said: “It’s a kind of tough-love that you get out of the Leadership Group, and that can be really useful. As a director, leader, boss - your staff look to you to pull the company out of difficult times, and when it’s going well, they’re looking to you to keep it going.

“I found with the Group that I would bring up an issue or challenge, and a few of the others there would have been through a similar situation. What I was able to take away was a handful of options, and that’s really the main thing to be taken from it; options that may not have been apparent to you before.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .