The Professional Development Centre

The Professional Development Centre has the expertise that your organisation can rely on to develop your staff and tackle your most pressing challenges.

The Professional Development Centre promotes the use of Action Learning as the quickest and most effective way of developing practical problem solving skills. Action learning brings the process of learning and development to real life working situations. An Action Learning programme involves a ‘set’ of 5 to 8 people who meet together regularly. They form a group to help each other move forward with tasks or problems often with, initially, facilitated support.



The process is developmental, solution-driven and practical.

In today’s cost conscious and fast-paced world, where constant rapid change is an organisational reality, there has never been more reliance on ‘learning on the job’: How do people deal with complex problems with no immediately discernable solutions?

The team at Professional Development Centre have taught managers and leaders from both public and private sectors – large and small – in the skills and techniques of using Action Learning within their organisation. The team have also worked across the Britain in delivering a 1 day Action Learning facilitation programmes for the Institute of Leadership and Management.

Arthur Turner and Pamela Heneberry have facilitated Action Learning Sets in a number of organizations including TUC Wales. They have also led the development of the Action Learning Facilitation qualification (Level 5 VRQ) which will be launched by The Institute of Leadership and Management in September 2010.

Arthur was a facilitator with the Connect4Cymru Public Service Action Learning programme 2006-09 and more recently was a key researcher in the Appetite for Life: Blas Am Oes Schools Research Project with the University of Bath 2008-10.



Dave Crisp facilitated Action Learning sets for six years in his NLP training company PPD Personal Development as part of the coaching development and practitioner assessment process.