Adele McLean, Managing Director of retail services group TGI Golf, explains why education is so important in career development and how her company assists PGA Professionals
Where can PGA Professionals find an edge in their business and how can education help them stand out from the pack?
For Adele McLean, Continued Professional Development is a crucial part of progressing a career.
McLean has just marked a year in charge TGI Golf, having taken the reins from long-term steward Eddie Reid, and reported a successful year – though not one without its challenges.
“It was just so wet. It just didn’t stop raining until about June last year so it was a very difficult start to the year for the partners – the first half of the year, really,” she said. “Probably, from August onwards, we clawed some of it back and, as a group, we actually ended up in quite a strong position.”
TGI Golf’s network of PGA Professionals, known as partners, have access to a wide range of support services from the leading golf retail services group, and McLean explained why CPD is vital and how her company can help...
Is this a collaborative effort within TGI Golf?
One of the biggest ways partners learn is from each other. That’s why it’s important for us to get them together as often as we can. They’re all at different stages in their career and they’ve got a wealth of experiences, depending on the club they've been at or the environment they've worked in.
We will help wherever we can and if we don’t have the answer we will try and find it for you, or point you in the right direction of where you can find those answers.
Where should pros be upskilling?
From the retail perspective, it’s just communication. They need to be communicating regularly with their customers and we and try and help as much as possible on educating the best way of doing that.
Our teams spend a lot of time working with the partners on this, as do the retail consultants.
We’re lucky, as a group, that a lot of our partners have already invested in technology and that personalisation of business – the specialist niche retailer, making yourself different, setting yourself aside from the high street and online, and really trying to get the pro to focus on their business and what they can offer their consumer.
The brands make some fantastic technology and the pros need to make sure their knowledge of product and custom fitting, and where that's all going to go next for them, is important.
What do you make of The PGA's various training programmes, particularly PGA Excel?
That continual learning, trying to elevate your career, is really important. Working with The PGA alongside that, we help promote anything we can.
My dad (John Mulgrew) is a Master Professional and so it’s close to my heart – watching and seeing the work that is put in.
