Success Story – 360 Feedback, Executive Coaching, Facilitated Senior Team Away Days and Management Development for clients in the Education sector

Business Issue

Leaders and managers needed to be assessed for Talent Management and Succession Planning and recently promoted senior managers required Executive Coaching in order to improve key leadership and management skills. Senior Leadership teams were looking to work more closely together to be more effective and address any silo working.

Solution

Talent Assessments, such as online 360 Feedback Reviews, Personality Questionnaires and the Leadership Judgement Indicator were used to assess leaders and managers with feedback delivered face to face. Leaders and senior managers received 1:1 Executive Coaching in order to address key challenges and improve the following:

• levels of assertiveness and emotional intelligence
• communication and negotiation skills
• delegation and empowerment
• planning and organizing and time management
• decision making and leadership judgement
• ability to lead and manage Change
• strategic business awareness, strategic planning, strategy execution and alignment of staff with the strategic goals
• managing workload and stress
• coping with pressure and uncertainty
• managing performance

Facilitated Senior Team Away Days were run in a confidential, safe environment in order to assist in identifying and developing the key behaviors required of more successful teams.  The Team Needs Questionnaire was completed in advance to identify how successful the senior teams were by asking all team members to score the normally observed behaviors; the scores were then benchmarked against high performing teams. Behaviors included: Confronting Issues, Driving for Results, Communication, Planning, Dealing with Strong Personalities, Decision Making, Meetings Management, Creating a Vision, Trusting each other, Openness, Inspiring Others.  The results of the assessments were collated and fed back to the leadership teams with a group discussion around what worked well in the team and what could be improved on. 

Outcome

Executive Coaching resulted in significant behavior change and additional promotions to more senior roles. Improvements were significant in the following areas:

• Leading, implementing and Managing Change
• Managing a high workload and Stress
• Managing Performance
• Delivering effective feedback
• Cross-functional working
• Communicating the vision and strategy
• Motivating teams
• Confronting issues constructively
• Problem-solving, analysis, and decision making
• Leadership Influence and Impact

The outcomes from the facilitated senior team development days were a more open and honest culture, a team contract, signed by all members to improve all interventions and working practices, an increased exchange of constructive feedback, and an agreed SMART Action Plan for ongoing development.

'No matter what the issue, whether an HR or organizational problem, Jill Maidment is the trusted professional whose wisdom and experience will guide you and your organization through the challenges; she creates monumental change and success.'  Head of HR

‘Jill is a confident and inspiring motivational coach, trainer and speaker who engages her audience fully through her effective coaching training style. They interact and participate in order to learn by doing and being challenged with realistic questioning. Many months after her presentation people are still talking about the practical changes she recommended in order to be more successful.’  Senior Lecturer, UWE

‘Thank you for being so adept at delivering my 360 feedback report to me; you obviously do this a lot!  So useful the way you joined up all the comments and rankings and explained the bigger picture.  I can see how my action plan will enable me to track SMART goals and target the key areas I want to improve.’  Head of Marketing