Overview
This is a comprehensive, structured programme comprising a series of mainly half-day modules focused on the professional and personal development of public service managers.
It equips managers with the practical skills, knowledge and behaviours necessary to excel in their roles and foster a culture of continuous improvement.
The modules use a variety of expert input, coaching support and peer-to-peer learning to generate and share new ideas and approaches, further supplemented by resources and virtual learning using Padlet.
There are some ‘must do’ threads that run through the whole programme – accountability, responsibility, personal impact, better communication, better engagement. The focus is on what makes a difference, often through incremental gains, being effective with time and decision making, and holding people accountable through positive feedback conversations, including in remote and hybrid situations.
Every module offers practical tools and approaches to take away and use in the day job. Managers are equipped with the confidence to manage performance of their reports and align objectives and performance conversations with relevant capabilities, values and performance requirements that impact on the service.
The modules can be supplemented and enhanced by a range of virtual and face-to-face workshops and bite-sized learning opportunities, either bespoke or ‘tried-and-tested’. All workshop sessions and materials can be tailored to accommodate an organisation’s values, policies, and areas of focus or challenge.
- To develop and practice the core professional skills and behaviours a great manager needs that will enhance leadership and decision-making skills
- To build confidence in managing, engaging and empowering others through an inclusive and supportive environment that promotes excellence
- To strengthen the range of interpersonal capabilities needed to manage performance effectively
- To develop self-awareness and understanding for communicating with others within the political environment of their organisation
- To be able to align with organisational values in holding honest conversations and communicating with others
- To empower team members by promoting collaboration, teamworking and supporting wellbeing and resilience
- To have a personal action plan
Day One: Managing and Leading Day-to- Day
1. Your personal impact and creating a personal development plan
- Welcome and introductions
- Setting the scene and creating expectations – introducing the programme
- Your personal impact from the feedback exercise
- Drawing up a development plan
- Peer-to-peer discussion
2. Your style and the VUCA environment in which you manage
- What’s my management style?
- What is VUCA?
- VUCA insights and tools
- Action planning and peer review
DAY TWO: IMPROVING PERFORMANCE
3. Influencing skills
- Exemplar influencing and awareness of your impact
- Building the skills and values set
- Power bases and their impact on team dynamics and behaviours
- An influencing model
- Actions for influencing
4. Holding great performance conversations that work
- What’s the challenge?
- Transforming 1-2-1s and skills practice
- Accountability: using ‘Reframing’ and the ‘Ladder of Accountability’ tools
- Learning review and action planning
DAY THREE: POSITIVE AND EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
5. Skills and tools for communication excellence
- Communication skills, tools and approaches for excellence
- Active listening self-assessment and exercise
- Asking effective questions using TED
- Neurodiversity
- Communication channels and how language impacts
- Peer review and action planning
6. Assertiveness and confidence tools
- What’s your challenge?
- Assertiveness hotspots to solve: assessment checklist
- Kicking negative language into touch: Try to Convert too
- DEAL – a structured approach for holding an assertive conversation
- Review and action planning
DAY FOUR: HONEST CONVERSATIONS
7. Holding honest conversations
- Your honest conversation challenges
- Making every conversation count and how to do it
- Providing and receiving feedback skills: feedback model
- Practicing feedback
- Listening relationally and holding rapport
- The Emotional Bank Account model
- ‘Fierce conversations’ and dealing with conflict in a performance conversation, followed by skills practice
- Review and action planning
DAY FIVE: MOTIVATION AND ENGAGEMENT
8. Better motivation at work
- Defining motivation
- Exploring some motivation thinking
- Skill or will? A model to understand the varied motivations in your team
- Review and action planning
9. Managing for engagement and wellbeing
- What’s your engagement and wellbeing challenge?
- Engagement and fostering an inclusive culture
- Commitment vs. compliance model
- Activities that support wellbeing of others, including wellbeing planning – try them together before you use them with your team
- Review and action planning
DAY SIX: DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING A VALUES-BASED CULTURE AND MIND SET
10. Developing a growth mindset for performance excellence
- What is a growth mindset? Cultivating a growth mind set with those I manage: the LEARNS model
- Understanding excellence: identifying what it looks, feels and sounds like: getting from good to great: the nine things leaders of excellence do
- The steps required to grow your team/service from ‘Good to Great’: create a charter
- Setting BHAGS for excellence for me and my team in relation to my ‘why’: the flywheel
- Utilise the language of excellence and embed in service delivery and BAU: using an OKR to focus on outcomes
- A final perspective: manager and leadership excellence in a nutshell from Rosa Beth Moss Kanter
11. Creating a culture that fosters our values
- How to facilitate conversations about values and behaviours
- Using a ‘values and identity’ toolkit to explore and create a plan that helps with your vision for the team and ways of working that align with your organisation's culture and values
- Review and action planning
DAY SEVEN: THE POLITICAL DIMENSION AND WRAPPING IT ALL UP
12. Working in a political environment
- Communicating with Elected Members
- The political structure where you work, the main political roles and decision making structures
- Understanding the motivations for being an elected member and how this helps you in your day to day communication
- The importance of keeping Councillors informed and options on how to make it effective
- The Member Officer Relationship Protocol
13. Wrapping it all up – reflection, review and action
- Reviewing activities
- Personal, group and peer-led review of all the modules and personal learning
- Your personal ‘Call to action’
- Action planning
