Team Leadership, Manager Development and Effective Performance Management   

Welcome to our Folder of Success

Click here To find out how tailor made projects like this will benefit you or your organisation The contents of this page are changed regularly so that over time you will see the wide ranging scope of the work we have done
 

• New performance management system for use by all staff

• Competency based Personal Development Plan

• Coaching for over 100 Executives to design their career development plans

• Coaching support to enable staff to succeed with their individual plans Competency based recruitment process

• Trained recruiters in selection interviewing skills

• Reduced recruitment costs

• Raised productivity and morale

Charitable Housing Association
Change Management and Leadership

We worked closely with the Chief Executive and the Executive Team made up of four Directors. Later in the project the rest of the management team joined in.

This was a charitable housing association that asked JFA to support their plans for culture change. In a nutshell they wanted to increase staff involvement in corporate planning, focus on their unique success factors and create a climate of learning and growth across the whole group. Leadership for the top team was the early focus.

We began with a cultural analysis that involved all of the top team and a carefully chosen sample from the rest of the organisation. We designed a series of training events to enable managers to take more of a role in the strategic leadership of the business.

The information from the cultural analysis was added to data about the organisation's success factors. The results were distilled to reveal a clear set of success competencies. These are now integrated into their appraisal and learning plans to support performance management across the Group.

In addition a series of specially designed events were run to lift overall skills of the Executive and Senior Managers. These Workshops cover topics like Coaching, Leadership and Managing Personal Impact and Work Life Balance.

At the same time the jointly agreed Corporate Goals were included in a Balanced Scorecard to measure progress and success.

To complete the overall plan Staff Annual Conferences were designed with two complimentary themes.


1] Celebrating our Success
2] Showcasing our skills and expertise

• A broad range of manager development training events focusing on Leadership, Impact and Work Life Balance, all directly related to the success competency framework above success based Competency Framework
• New performance management system for use by all staff linked to Personal Development Planning
• Coaching for Executives & Managers to support the change management project
• Competency based recruitment process
• Trained recruiters in selection interviewing skills
• Reduced recruitment costs
• Improved customer focus and staff
  management

Public Sector - Large Borough Council

These projects involved leadership coaching, recruitment of leaders and facilitation of leadership and strategy type meetings. In all of our work here we combined business and personal goals to ensure a strong sense of purpose and feelings of citizenship are transferred from the individual leaders to the rest of the large teams of people that they lead. Our shorthand for this is People Centred Leadership.

We also worked with the Board of the stock transfer company to produce their Vision and Mission statements and strategic goals as they took over control of the housing stock for the Borough Council.

Public Sector - NHS and ALO's
Coaching CE's and other senior people within the Health Service and its arms length bodies. Facilitated PCT meetings to create strategic plans. Executive coaching for personal and business planning.

Supporting CE and other senior staff to create high level business plans, support their career progress and business planning. This includes matching personal and business values and encouraging the kind of conversations within and between teams that produce results and get problems and issues brought to the agenda and solved rapidly.

Home Office
Leader selection process including job interviews.

Creating the behaviour anchors for leadership within a branch of the Home Office and creating the interview checklist. We then conducted the interviews and recommended applicants where they met the criteria set.

Our strategic view of these assignments

In each of the above assignments we did not (and could not) prescribe the best way to lead. We use team meetings, leadership workshops and coaching to enable the leadership style to emerge in response to the particular challenges around at the time and the individuals in each team.

Of course there are six leadership areas known to be responsible for higher productivity, citizenship and personal well being so we made sure that they form part of the conversations that take place with the CE and her/his team. That way any cultural changes to the leadership across the business can take place gradually and in line with the ability of the people themselves.

Simply put we work on how conversations support or hinder achievement of business goals. Then we encourage leaders to have more of the conversations that support and less off those that hinder.

• Carefully designed leadership and strategy focused events
• Increased personal effectiveness of leaders
• Meeting outcomes that all members were committed to
• Coaching conversations that focused on key issues and ways to get optimum results.
• Emerging leadership style consistent across diverse organisations

This Client is clear that their success is based on the combination of famous power brands, clever motivated people and a business philosophy which ensures they pay attention to the needs of all their stakeholders - consumers, employees, retailers, shareholders and the communities and environment in which they operate.

At the time they faced fierce local, UK and Global competition where part of their competitive edge lay in their ability to manage costs and encourage and train their people better than their competitors.

This project focused on encouraging initiative within production line teams. We began with research on their teams and what helps and hinders creativity, initiative and leadership within production line teams. Based on our findings we produced a competencies framework on which to base training and development.

The first time such a forward thinking approach had been taken.

Broadly speaking the company's aims were to empower production line teams to increase their initiative taking and creativity so they could concentrate on the strategy of keeping cost of reduction as low as possible. The idea was that the people who produced the products were in a prime position to offer ideas to improve processes.
 

A sub-aim of the project was to retain expert and experienced staff who were in demand in the local area. To assist with this a team of experienced coaches were employed to support work based problem solving in all production areas. We helped the coaches gain acceptance of their new role and begin agreeing an efficient and effective internal coaching system

• Team based Competency Framework for production line teams - the first time something of this kind had been done in UK
• Increased initiative and creativity from production line meetings
• A link to framework for managerial and executive competencies already in use
• Increased efficiency and maintained focus on health and safety in production process
• Coaching system for Team Coaches