Jean-Anne Stewart

Evaluation of an action learning programme for leadership development of SME leaders in the UK

This paper presents the findings from an evaluation research project undertaken by Henley Management College in 2006. This project followed an earlier research study that focused on identifying the leadership development needs for leaders of small and medium sized-enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, developed a leadership development model and made recommendations for a leadership development programme. The principle challenges facing the SME organisations overwhelmingly concerned leading change in their organisation. Their personal challenges concerned implementing change initiatives, communicating these and motivating the people in their organisation. In consideration of the challenges identified, one of the key recommendations was to pilot an action learning programme and evaluate the effectiveness of action learning to develop leadership skills in SME leaders. Henley Management College then conducted a research project to evaluate the pilot programme. This pilot consisted of three learning sets, run in three geographical areas in the UK and facilitated using three very different styles. Following the pilot programme, there were several wider reviews by academics, advisors and representatives of relevant government boards. This has since resulted in a significant programme of action learning for SME leadership development being implemented. This paper provides an overview of the relevant literature and research methodology and then presents the evaluation results from the pilot programme. The dominant theme was that action learning does indeed deliver significant business benefits and provides a real opportunity for SME leaders to develop their leadership skills.

Virtual Action Learning: Experiences from a Study of an SME e-Learning Programme

This paper presents the findings from a project investigating management development for SME managers using an action learning programme, combining both face-to-face workshops and a virtual action learning environment. This programme was undertaken as part of the ENSeL (Engaging Networks for Sustainable eLearning) project, which was supported by the European Commission. The project aimed to address three main objectives: reworking results from previous European projects to disseminate to a wider audience, creating a learning network amongst the project partners and to undertake three learning trials with SMEs in UK, France and Italy. This paper principally addresses the findings from the UK trials, which ran between February and April 2005, and provides valuable learning to all those interested in developing future learning programmes aimed at SMEs.

High-performing (and threshold) competencies for group facilitators

Abstract This paper proposes a model of group facilitator competencies, produced as a result of a doctoral research study. This research was undertaken in the context of group facilitation in a workshop environment, where several people meet in a face-to-face situation, under the guidance of one or more people taking the role of workshop or group facilitator. An overview of the research strategy and design is presented, followed by the research findings. The research study was qualitative and the design closely followed the framework of building theory from case studies described by Eisenhardt (1989) and the approach of developing competency models recommended by Spencer and Spencer (1993, Competencies at Work: Models for Superior performance New York: John Wiley and Sons). This investigation was a qualitative study, resulting in 47 interviews with facilitators and clients, along with the corresponding workshop observations. The research was conducted at British Airways, British Telecom and other companies supplying and using facilitation services. This resulted in a proposed facilitator competency model. In order to increase the validity of this research, an instrument was developed and a further study was undertaken to investigate the validity of the proposed model in a wider, more diverse group of facilitators and clients of facilitation. There were 101 respondents to this validation survey. This paper describes the principle findings of this study.