An Introduction to Greenacre Consult – Developing Future Leaders Within Our Housing Network

An Introduction to Greenacre Consult

Developing Future Leaders Within Our Housing Network

Hopefully, many of you will be familiar with Greenacre Recruitment as we’ve been a part of the WISH landscape for quite some time now! As well as helping to launch WISH South East, and then WISH East, both of which have grown and evolved into amazing networks of exceptional talented women, we are also national WISH sponsors, have several dedicated team members on the boards, and have enjoyed being part of a number of face-to-face networking events over the past three years (remember when we were allowed to rub shoulders, spill prosecco and drop cake crumbs together?!)

Since this time, our organisation has also been evolving, and Greenacre Group now houses, alongside the existing Recruitment division, Greenacre Executive and Greenacre Consult, our leadership development consulting service.

Recognising the need for a new approach to leadership development

We’ve always been a people business and we’ve always been passionate about making a difference. As our organisation has grown and our services have evolved, we wanted to find a way to offer a more holistic suite of services to our customers and to start to fill the gaps that other leadership programmes were not addressing. Even before the pandemic took hold, we’d been observing that there were a number of challenges emerging leaders were facing when it came to opportunities for self-development, and also for creating those opportunities to make the transition between Management level and Leadership and Executive level, as well as the challenge of having to compete with out of sector talent.

We were getting strong feedback from our networks that most of the existing leadership programmes seemed to be lacking, and we were hearing phrases such as they were ‘a bit stale’, ‘uninspiring’, ‘not really bedded in the here and now’, and the conversations on the ground were that it was hard to apply learning back in the workplace, which became even more apparent post-Covid, with all the various changes and challenges teams are now facing. It was a natural progression for us to use our knowledge and expertise to reach further than simply recruiting the best talent for organisations and to start to begin developing individuals within them, in order to reach their full potential, and ensure these organisations were equipped to deal with all the current changing environments.

Recognising the value of networks

We’ve always recognised the benefits and the importance of networks and building collaborative relationships across regions, which is partly why we’ve always been such strong advocates of WISH. Without these networks we simply would not be able to connect in such meaningful ways or get the most benefit out of those connections, and we were delighted to be asked to support the fantastic recent WISH National Virtual Event, as we all ultimately have the same aim, which is to connect the talented people in our industry, to share, collaborate and to help add value to each other’s professional roles.

A tailored approach

Our approach is to create bespoke development programmes for each group of emerging leaders that we bring together from our networks, from a diverse range of sector roles, and to tailor the programmes around each person and organisation’s individual needs and challenges, which are identified through a comprehensive discovery process. Alongside specifically tailored content, we embed strategic, visionary and practical coaching and training in areas including Diversity & inclusion, Team Development and Culture Change, as well as individual one to one Coaching Sessions.

We’ve recently successfully completed our first programme in the Eastern Region, which has had fantastic feedback from the participants and the organisations who have sponsored and benefitted from the programmes, and has really shown us that we are addressing those need and gaps that we had originally identified when putting together the programme content. As with the WISH Network and the rest of Greenacre Group, it’s an evolving process and we are continuously learning and adapting as we head into the next phase. No two programmes are the same and each participant brings their own unique set of values and personality to each group, which is partly what makes each programme so special, and the organisations behind the participants gain so much benefit from an individualised, strength-based approach.

If you’d like to find out more about what we do, or you’d like to get involved in one of our programmes, please feel free to get in touch and reach out. We look forward to networking with you soon, whether virtually or (fingers crossed) face to face!