History of Leader-Connect
Leader-Connect deliver leadership and team development training to organisations and have an online leadership development platform that is suitable both for organisations and individual subscribers. The company was formed by Neil Jurd, and initially known as Neil Jurd Consulting and Training Limited, but since 2020 the company has traded as Leader-Connect. Neil Jurd continues to run the company, supported by an excellent support and admin team and a core of exceptional leadership consultants and coaches. Leader-Connect are closely aligned with the Institute of Leadership, of which Neil Jurd is a Fellow, and most of the courses Leader-Connect run for commercial clients are accredited by the Institute of leadership, which means that delegates earn post-nominal letters for their signature block on successful completion of their training.
The Leader-Connect Ethos
Leader-Connect are a small, bespoke leadership training organisation, who deliver very high-quality training and work with a range of clients including some household names. Our ethos is that ‘leadership is leadership’ and so the same principles that apply to leadership in business, apply to leadership in schools or leadership in science. That isn’t to say that the environment is the same, but the underlying concepts are. We see leadership as something that is simple, easy to teach, and that makes a huge positive difference when it is done well. Ultimately leadership can be boiled down to two things, connection and direction. This concept is explained in this short video by Neil Jurd which you might wish to watch and share with others:
Who Leader-Connect run leadership development coaching and courses for:
In recent years Neil and the Leader-Connect team have worked with a wide range of clients, delivering various types of leadership training and intervention. Neil has spoken at quite a few events; he was the speaker for the board strategy day for Santander Bank in the UK, he also spoke at the Brigade of Gurkhas Study Day in Sandhurst, the Institute of Leadership Annual Leadership Conference in Manchester, several Educational Trust staff and board study days and several board and whole team leadership and team development events for educational Trusts. Neil has also been the speaker at several leadership development events for the UK Export Finance Department, and has been a conference speaker at a number of events.
Leader-Connect have delivered for several major clients. We are now in year 5 of an ongoing leadership development programme for the University of Sheffield, with around 70 senior leaders attending what was initially residential but is now currently offsite leadership development sessions. This particular course is similar in structure to one we ran for many years for Kymab (more recently Sanofi), Kymab being a biotech company who wanted to instill a leadership culture, before they were purchased bv the much larger Sanofi. We survived the acquisition for several years before Sanofi closed their UK science campus. Leader-Connect have also had a very interesting engagement in Libya, until very recently and for 18 months we had a permanently embedded leadership development consultant working with the Libyan NOC, supporting a change to sustainable and ethical leadership.
Over 18 months two of our leadership consultants deployed to undertake this role, both consultants being former army officers with a significant appetite for adventure. Back in the UK, we have also carried out quite a lot of leadership and team development training with teams from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and we provide leadership coaching for several managers in that university. We have run online leadership development sessions for Virgin Media, and live and online leadership development for BDP Singapore Ports – sadly not actually working in Singapore but in the equally beautiful Dartford in London. For the past 18 months we have been running residential leadership development courses for a major global investment company, providing leadership and team development training to managers, ‘quants’, HR and support staff – this is one of the courses that the Institute of Leadership accredit. Another ongoing line of work is our leadership development courses for Tiso the outdoor company, a project where we support Craig Mathieson and his fantastic Polar Academy; we don’t invoice for our work with Tiso, allowing what would have been our fee to go directly to the Polar Academy charity.
At time of writing, Macarena who is our lead coach is in the final stages of designing a ‘Women in Leadership’ course for a Global Top 100 university.
What our Leadership Training looks like:
Our work includes the full range of effective leadership development activity (implying that there is some not very effective leadership development activity knocking about). Our residential courses are based on an experiential leadership development concept – which sounds fancy, but actually just means that delegates get taught simple theory and then undertake cleverly designed learning experiences and then reflect and learn from the experience. Over a 3-day course they might undertake five or six such experiential leadership projects.
This is a very engaging way of learning, infinitely better than throwing information at delegates with relentless PowerPoint and then giving them a final exam. As well as the residential aspect (or aspects – some or our leadership courses span a year) of the course, delegates also have several leadership coaching sessions with our team and might also undertake psychometric profiling. They will also be given a copy of The Leadership Book to give them easy access to the core leadership theory, and they will be given access to all the courses and content on the Leader-Connect learning platform. As such our courses, even our short leadership courses always have a substantial impact.
Use of the Leader-Connect learning platform for management leadership training:
Some organisations (and some individuals) just sign up their managers to the Leader-Connect online learning platform.
In recent months TSG, Alertacall, SOAS and Abingdon Learning Trust have all signed up managers to the learning platform, and in fact Abingdon Learning Trust are signing 38 senior leaders in school up to the platform in Sept 25. The online leadership learning platform is excellent value and aimed at leaders in small and medium sized organisations (large organisations tend to have their own internal platform).
Users can watch a very wide range of excellent videos that explain key leadership theory, and they can also undertake courses and earn certificates. Leadership is a broad subject, so leader-Connect has a range of topics and content that will be of interest of use to leaders. This includes obvious aspects of leadership, such as the basics of leadership for supervisors, managers and directors and topics like communications skills including public speaking and building positive relationships. There are specific online courses on Team-Development, Planning, and understanding Mental Health for leaders, and there are videos covering pretty much everything a manager might need to know to be an effective leader.
Leader-Connect brings together a wide range of engaging and expert speakers. There are more than 30 videos on leadership and team development by Neil Jurd OBE, as well as videos by Alertacall CEO James Batchelor MBE (the importance of selling in leadership), Fell Foodie Harrison Ward on resilience and change, Maude Hirst on meditation skills for leaders, and Macarena Vergara whose topics include coaching skills for leaders.
Every completed leadership course generates a certificate, which gives a visible token of achievement and encourages users to collect more knowledge.
