Frequently Asked Questions

“There’s no development budget”

You work in an industry where experience goes out of date within months. Your CIO/CTO should be actively seeking to grow your capabilities so they have a strong team they can rely on. Would your CIO/CTO really mind putting aside development budget so you are relevant, up to date and making good decisions?

“I am too busy”

If you want to become a CIO/CTO, you have to make time for your own development. The time commitment is half a day per month for the group session, plus a couple of hours for a one-to-one coaching session. Leadership is about effective delegation and you will have a team to whom you can delegate so you can find the time to continue your development.

“I already have a mentor”

That’s great and we hope that it’s working for you, but what we offer is different. With our groups, your mentoring comes from your peer group; people who are still in the muck and bullets that you experience every day. Your coaching comes from the chair who’s always a qualified coach and will hold regular one-to-ones with you. If you still value your mentor, we’re not suggesting you give them up; what we do is different and complementary to your current mentoring.

How long are they?

They last up to 3 hours and usually you would need to dedicate a whole morning or afternoon to the meeting. There may be occasions when the Chair would arrange for a meeting to be face to face and in these circumstances, the meeting might be longer to provide greater value given the journey time.

What happens during the meeting?

This is, to some extent, up to the Chair and the Members of the Group to decide, but usually, the meeting starts with a sign-in/check-in with everyone before moving on to a speaker or a pre-agreed topic for a deep-dive session. Then there’s an opportunity to share an issue or challenge with the group that someone might have in their role or their development and the group provides their thoughts, advice, guidance, and discussion.

As the group grows together, the Chair and the group will develop the agenda to ensure that it continues to be useful to people on an on-going basis.

Why Virtual?

We know people are busy, particularly IT Leaders in roles that report directly to a CIO or CTO. We also wanted to provide people with an opportunity to engage with people throughout the whole of the UK and with the continued adoption of online meetings, we felt that running our IT Leader Groups virtually would be beneficial to all. We are also happy to run face-to-face Groups and these will appear in time and when appropriate. By running virtually, we remove your travel time from the meeting which can also be helpful.