Nissan’s UK dealer principals will be among the first crop of graduates from a new management programme teaching leadership skills and steeping them in “Nissanness”.

Delivered in partnership with the Imperial College Business School and global management consulting company Accenture, the inaugural Nissan Dealer Principal Academy — known as DP2 — has been running since the beginning of the year.

Now around 40 UK-based dealer principals are set to graduate among a further 160 dealer principals from the equivalent Academy across Europe.

One of the students, Andy Woodhall, director at Trenton Nissan in Hull and Grimsby, said: “Without wishing to sound corny, it really opens your mind to a whole new way of thinking and I cannot recommend it enough.

“There’s certain things I’ve learned that I simply would not have considered without being on this course, and we’re already implementing some of it into our business, with good results as well. It’s brilliant.”

Nissan said that the aim of the Academy is to enhance the capability of its dealer principals to increase value and productivity in their business through superior customer experience, business management and leadership.

Each dealer principal receives a personalised assessment by a specialist coach at the start of the course, highlighting strengths and areas where they may be in need of improvement.

There are four main modules — Business Management, Speed and Digital, Leadership and Value and Quality.

A “Nissanness” workshop, run by Nissan staff, concludes each module to ensure dealer principals appreciate Nissan’s ethos of intelligent mobility and customer experience

As well as the formal Academy sessions at Imperial College Business School, the dealer principals have been coached at their dealerships, doing online learning and getting support via Skype, Linkedin and Nissan Academy Digital.

Leon Brannan, network development and quality director, Nissan Motor (GB), said: “Nissan believes in innovation across the board, and DP2 fits that ethos. We look forward to when our dealer principals graduate from this inaugural course, and then see the results of their learning in practice.”