Mentoring tomorrow’s design leaders
Challenge
The UK’s Design Council asked Plan to design and deliver a programme for in-house and consultancy designers with leadership potential. A key challenge was engaging designers and mentors in a profession that did not have a track record of leadership development.
Approach
We developed a programme that combined mentoring, networking, and coaching seminars. A key innovation was a mentoring network that paired future leaders with leaders from other design disciplines – to avoid conflicts of interest. We also helped recruit participants from companies including Virgin Atlantic, Xerox, IDEO and Seymour Powell.
We worked with a management coach from the London Business School to develop a
mentoring guide for both the mentors and ‘mentees’. The coaching seminars led by industry leaders, addressed topics such as ‘Seeing the Big Picture’, ‘Presenting like Steve Jobs’ and ‘Making an Impact’.
Impact
- The programme was fully subscribed
- The success of the programme led to a further request to develop the mentoring guide into a Design Council publication – ’Mentoring Tomorrow’s Design Leaders’
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