Andy Pearce

I kicked off my career with a role in banking, something to do until I found the job I really wanted. I was eventually given the chance to become a financial adviser, and it was during this time I found out about training, as I knew it then.

The trainer delivering the sales skills course for new financial advisers told me to stick with financial advice for five years and if I still wanted to be a trainer after that I would have sufficient experience to apply. Less than five years later I joined my first training department as a co-ordinator, unable to put off what I really wanted.

It was in this role that I picked up the basic principles of training delivery and the training department's role in the company. I had a brilliant mentor and quickly became a competent trainer, able to deliver content in an interesting and enthusiastic way. My mentor opened me up to new thinking around people's attitudes and beliefs and introduced me to Neuro Linguistic Programming and a number of other principles around communication and thinking.

This made me wonder why so much training in financial services was tell tell tell, supported by a projector and a hundred slides.

I decided to join a much larger organisation to work in their training function and experience a much wider role. It was here I was introduced to learning and development and was pleased to find people who shared my belief that a presentation with a hundred slides was not the only answer to helping people learn.

We used and developed many different methods and techniques that produced much better and long lasting results.

Over the next six years I revelled in my career in learning and development, recognising financial services had a lot in common with every other industry when it comes to how people learn. I became aware that people are actually very good at learning and given the right circumstances can figure it out for themselves. It was here I stopped delivering training and began facilitating learning.

This was on a number of topics ranging from customer service skills to corporate management mindset and belief programmes. I also managed a number of different teams which were all involved in the development of people.

Having delivered a number of large scale development projects, in the UK and abroad, I met Neill, a like minded learning and development professional.

Two years later we formed Illuminate Development, the place where Neill and I could embrace all the good stuff we had picked up from our experience and work in a whole host of sectors whilst constantly learning and sharing.

Learning is what we do everyday, and when I can help people speed up the process I find it a fantastic place to be.