Leadership is a core skill for people at any level in your organisation.
Working with you we can create a programme that will ensure your leaders break through to the next level of business and personal achievement, to ensure they have the skills necessary to help lead the business forward and improve performance.
Our core development process gives you time to think about your leadership, your goals and how you want to get there. Helping and challenging you to develop your skills, giving time to explore and experiment gives you a lasting experience that will sustain your leadership far into the future.
Using methods such as facilitated discussion, the outdoors, case studies and exercises, you can be sure your people will have an intense experience, and develop a lasting commitment to a new level of leadership. We have a variety of tools we use such as psychometric profiling (MBTI, Hogan DS, Emotional Intelligence amongst others), our own 360 degree profiling system and the foundation of trusted and proven theories and process. The key is to create the right programme for you, to meet your goals and success measures.
We believe in leadership at all levels in the organisation, helping leaders to inspire others to achieve great results.
Being a manager should be a great job – bringing out the best in people, helping people to develop their potential, and adding value to the organisation.
And yet often “stuff” gets in the way. You lose that sense of pleasure, work becomes a chore, you know you want more, and yet “stuff” gets in the way.
Our management training is designed to help manager focus on what is important, to look at their role, and how they can get back in their driving seat.
People like being managed by good managers, and our development programmes show you how. Being an engaging manager means many things: being present, taking time to listen, letting go to let others flourish, developing people, giving accurate feedback and being organized to name a few.
We believe that skill development is a blend of practice, feedback, re-calibration and implementation. We give you the time and the practise to go back into your world with confidence that you can manage, and implement your action plan to get some great results.
We always agree with you the success measures of your programme, agree key areas to focus on and the best timeframe to create the results you desire.
Coaching is a solution-focused, specific and proactive approach to support people in defining and achieving their goals and aspirations. Coaching is based on a partnership in which one person (the coach) facilitates a move towards the goal, while the other (the client) explores the options available for creative solutions. Strong coaching partnerships help individuals to break free of self-imposed limits, become clearer about their goals and more determined and likely to make things happen. Coaching is designed to enhance performance. It does this with questions, which generate insight and new options, and an interactive style, which motivates the client to act.
All of our coaches have a portfolio of ‘tools’, ‘exercises’, ‘methods’ and ‘experiences’ the key to our success is that we see each situation as completely unique and every individual for who they are. This means that we will draw on our past work but focus purely on the present and the future aspirations of the client at that time.
We approach our work as a coach so the following principles are key to our thinking:
All of our coaches are qualified with a professional body (ICF, AoC or EMCC) which means you get professionalism, someone who know what they are doing, and who can be you supporter and challenger.
We recommend a five coaching session programme, and we meet every 4 – 6 weeks for a face to face, or video calls such as Zoom, Skype or FaceTime coaching session. This will give time for exploration, momentum and results. It would be good to involve your line manager in one of these meetings, to gain their insights and to get their endorsement to your client’s coaching goals.
Here are some questions to help you maximise your coaching programme:
Coaching is a core skill – to bring out the best in people, to create ownership and engagement, and to help you create space to think. We offer two development programmes, one for line managers who want to be performance coaches to their own teams, and one for people who want to be internal coaches within their organisation.
We offer a one day introduction to coaching, to deeper experiential programmes.
This programme is designed for line managers who want to add coaching to their management toolkit. The focus is very much on coaching your own direct reports, either for recovery coaching (brining people up to a desired standard) or performance coaching (keeping people at a high level of performance).
During the four days we cover:
People’s development will progress from the GROW model of coaching to more complex tools covering understanding people’s motivations, the challenges of managing performance, and how to follow up coaching so that behaviour change happens.
The fours days are very experiential, giving managers frameworks they can use straightaway with their teams, and throughout the programme managers are encouraged to create coaching plans for each team member, so they can put their learning into practise.
The four days can be run in any combination, e.g. day 1 and 2 together, then 3 and 4 separately.
We also offer coaching supervision to help coaches reflect and develop their excellence.
Once people have begun coaching, we find that on-going support with coaching supervision is very beneficial. There are several options open to you for professional supervision, and we find a blended offering supports coaches in an effective manner.
We offer:
Supervision is a necessity for coaches, just as a car service is important to keeping your car effective and meeting your expectations, so supervision helps coaches play at their best and enhance the coaching experience of their clients.
Supervision raises the competence of a coach by looking at the what, the how and the why of their coaching practise by helping the coach to value and evaluate their coaching. This is done by reflecting and reviewing, creating awareness and understanding, and exploring how this learning will affect the coaches future coaching practise.
Supervision is the opportunity to learn from what you do, by holding a mirror up to your coaching practise, exploring, learning and valuing your skills and qualities, so that you and the people you coach have a good coaching experience.
The CIPD report “coaching supervision maximising the potential of coaching” defines supervision as “a structured formal process for coaches, with the help of a coaching supervisor, to attend to improving the quality of their coaching, grow their coaching capacity and support themselves and their practice. Supervision should also be a source of organisational learning.”
We use the CLEAR model of supervision (Hawkins and Shohet 2006) to help navigate through a supervision meeting.
The supervision group provide a safe space to reflect on your coaching practise, and ask questions and to gain new insights. Being a coach is like learning any new skill, you need some reinforcement and reflection on your skills to continue to excel.
Supervision groups consist of 6 people meeting every 4 months to really help to sustain coaching within the business, and to create the coaching culture you aspire to. Ideally these groups would be a closed group, so that people learn to work together and create openness that supports development.
Each person has a slot where they share a coaching challenge, topic or reflection they want to get a constructive outcome and the supervisor asks questions, challenges, stimulates thought and shares insights to assist. Other team members share their reflections and learning about coaching at the end of each slot, before moving on to another group member.
Group Supervision
Lunch and learn professional development
Coaches are eager to add to their skills! We often find that short two hour slots can keep coaches skilled and motivated. Sessions that are popular with coaches include:
We are have developed a 360 tool for coaches to gain feedback from clients and their line managers on the coaching experience. This would be a useful session to offer coaches after they have more experience of coaching.
One to one telephone supervision
Coaches also benefit from individual supervision sessions, especially when they need to ask questions or share immediate challenges. We recommend giving people a specific number of one to one sessions and they book a 55 minute session when they need supervision. Coaches contact us to book their session, and we invoice you for the number of sessions used that month, or you can pay in advance for a number of sessions. We will update you every month on who has had a supervision session.
Teams are the heart of any organization. Working with a group of people is meant to be a fun, stimulating, productive and rewarding experience. A group of people working together to achieve the same goals, supporting each other, understanding each other and tracking progress, knowing how they are performing and supporting each other to achieve their objectives. If this sounds like your team – well done!
The client wanted to take time from their HR team’s busy delivery schedule to reflect and review their last year, and look ahead to planning for the next 18 months.
The aims of the event were:
By using an appreciative inquiry approach people spent a creative day valuing each other, planning to build on their successes, and left with a clear plan for the future.
The client wanted to take time on a regular basis to build the newly formed team. We spent one afternoon each month for six months helping them to form foundations for excellence by understanding each other some more (we used the MBTI to provide a framework), review, reflect and learn from their first 9 months, give each other quality feedback and develop their listening and appreciation skills.
No matter what role you do being personally effective is at the core of performance. We can offer a wide range of development interventions that are designed to increase performance, increase enjoyment and create sustainable results.
Recent personal effectiveness programmes include:
These programmes are designed to meet your specific needs, and meet your clear success measures.
Developing these skills in your people will not only increase your available skill set, they will also improve performance through increased motivation, by developing a culture of achievement & appreciation.
Is it just a buzz phrase for an old concept? Well does it matter! We work with the definition that EI is an individual’s capacity to understand and control their own emotions, and recognise and manage those of others, so that they and others around them, can be as effective and productive as possible at work.
According to Mayer and Salovey, emotional intelligence is “the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth” (Mayer & Salovey, 1997).
They break emotional intelligence into four, related parts:
We weave EI into our leadership, management and coaching programmes, as well as offer a stand alone development programme. We start with a belief that EI can be developed, there is real business benefit to having the right levels of EI, and you can create awareness and the desire to have more empathy, more inspiring presence and to be more engaging. We use the Thomas International EI measurement tool as a great way to help people understand their own EI, and then create time for reflection and development.
The only constant is change – change can be good, fun, exhausting, challenging, rewarding and successful.
Most organisations are getting ready for change, in the middle of change, or recovering before the next change comes along.
There has been plenty of research as to why change fails – they key being that people aren’t engaged in the process. Most people don’t mind change, what they mind is being “done to”, not being engaged and not feeling fully involved in the process.
Good change management means your people leading change, communicating well, reviewing and often doing the day job as well.
Our development programmes can help you manage change in new and successful ways, by looking at you, the people involved in change, and how you can lead people to the “other side” of change – achieving the goals and successes the change was intended to make.
Employee engagement is currently in vogue and a buzzword in organisations.
However, you will find many differing views and much “pink and fluffy” stuff written about the subject, when the reality is far more straight forward.
The definition of employee engagement we use is:
“The passion and energy employees have to give their best to the organisation to serve the customer. The willingness and ability of employees to give sustained discretionary effort to help their organisation succeed.”
Is this new?
No, not really. What is new is the focus and importance placed on employee engagement as a business value tool. For us it just makes sense –people satisfied and motivated will enjoy what they do, and will achieve more. Sounds easy….
We use engagement concepts and tools in our leadership and management development programmes, as well as offering workshops to engage you in engagement!
Having someone to help a group achieve their aims, to provide some structure, frameworks and tools to get people talking, really listening and exploring topics can mean that a meeting achieves it goals.
We believe in creating a clear brief with you – your aims, areas to explore, agreeing participants and materials. We work to provoke thinking and reflection, often by asking challenging questions, using creative as well as rational tools to help people dig into a topic. Being clear on actions and next steps is a key skill of a facilitator, we believe we do this well, as do our clients as we get involved in helping groups explore a variety of topics from how can this merger work, to the future of out of home food, and plenty in between!
We use a range of psychometric tests to support our development programmes. We use ability and aptitude tests, and arrange of personality profiling – all with the same aim: to increase personal awareness and personal effectiveness.
We subscribe to the British Psychological Society’s code of conduct, and we will always give you feedback on your results.
We are accredited to use:
The value in 360 isn’t in the report itself, it is in the thinking and reflection as to what to decide to do next. We believe that any report owner should have a facilitated session so they really understand what participants are saying, and that time to think and reflect is crucial. A clear prioritized action plan is key – focusing on developing strengths to use them more as well as any weaknesses that maybe a risk area.
Repeating 360 helps you to gauge your development journey, as does having clear feedback conversations with people that know you and experience you in the organisation.
We use our own 360 tool, so we can customize to suit your competency areas, your values and your language. We can put in a front page welcoming people from the sponsor, and collate reports to you see the population’s strengths and weaknesses.
Team Coaching enables intact teams to develop, to find the space to explore what matters most, to deepen their relationships and trust and to align themselves to work together to achieve their goals.
We will work with teams in the areas of purpose, relationships and design to help them be empowered and empower each other so that they can lead and empower their organisation.
Purpose: why the team exists:
Design: what the team does:
Relationships: how we relate to each other:
Teams need space, challenge, good listening and encouraging. We offer all of these when we work. And more practically, any material will be prepared in advance, and any notes, flip charts and commitments will be typed and emailed to all participants within 3 days. Your events will be energising, engaging and have a lasting impact on the motivation and results of the team.
Our approach is to meet with each team member to gain their insights of the team, their goals for team development and how we can work together.
The first team coaching session will feed back these results and then scope the aims and approach to working together.
We will agree the agenda for future team coaching sessions as we go – the intention is that the sessions will become more group lead, with people developing the capabilities to be a self-sustaining high performing leadership team.
