PROGRAMME leaders who took senior Wiltshire College & University Centre staff through 12 months of personal development say it has left them more confident, communicative and open.
The college invited 26 members of its leadership team to take part in the programme, which was aimed at challenging them to think differently, fostering a common managerial language and helping them to understand colleagues better.
HR Director Gail Larkin said the programme was inspired by one of the aims of the college’s People Strategy. “Theme four of the strategy is about leading, inspiring people and managing performance,” she said. “We made a commitment to having clear development pathways for our leaders so the programme was designed to help us achieve that.”
Principal & CEO Iain Hatt and consultant Kim Newton-Woof launched the programme with an awayday and then brought staff together regularly in smaller groups for coaching and open discussions.
Kim said the key to the success of the process was ensuring managers felt comfortable being away from their day jobs. “How do you get people to do their best quality thinking? You do it by creating time and space for people to actually think without interruption and with ease,” she said.
“I started the sessions by checking in on everyone and people would say they felt excited to be there but also mindful they had a whole load of other things going on. I checked in on them again at the end and they’d say ‘I’m feeling so relieved I came, it was absolutely what I needed’.”
Some smaller group sessions utilised members’ different skills and experience to brainstorm issues they were facing. “All of the sessions were really good, they were very interactive and covered different aspects, like coaching and listening skills – all the things that are really important,” said Gail. “It was really about getting our leaders into that space and them understanding what we want from a leader,” said Gail.
She said the feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive. “What was interesting about the closing session was we talked about what our takeaways were and everybody appreciated something different about it, which I thought was really good,” she said.
“I think they all appreciated that time away from the day job, just to think about their staff as a leader, their impact on their team and what they could do differently.”
Kim said staff talked about how much more connected and self-aware they are as a result of the sessions.
“They’ve been able to look at themselves in a different way through a number of different lenses,” she said. “They’ve looked at where their preferences lie and what skills and strengths they have. They’ve also had feedback from colleagues so they’ve got a sense of who they are through the eyes of other people.
“I was really blown away by the energy and effort they put into it and the fact they showed up for themselves and each other. Even to the last minute of the last day they were committed.”
Gail said the impact of the programme could be felt by the college for a while to come. “We have a really stable leadership team that has come together and we work much more closely now,” she said.
“Now we need to make sure we’re embedding those skills and one of the things we want to look at is coaching and whether we move to having people who are actually trained as coaches.
“We also need to think about how we filter down what we’ve learned as well. We’ve got layers of managers underneath the senior leaders and we have to consider how we make sure they’re developed and they learn what we’ve learned so they have the same opportunities.”
Wiltshire College & University Centre is committed to supporting staff at every stage of their career.
