contact wide awake leadership training07974 141150
UHCW Board Development Programme
The organisation was due to welcome a new Chairman into post and to recruit new Non Executives at around the same time. The prior Board had been a difficult place for the Executive to operate effectively – the style of leadership from the Chair and Non-Execs had been directive and at times blaming leading to a predominant style of defence and a lack of openness in the Executive.

Having experienced the power of team coaching as a Chief Officers group, the CEO and other CO’s wanted to use this as a fresh start to create a Board which encouraged the Executive to be open, were focused on the success of the organisation and provided appropriate and developmental challenge.

The Chair on arrival supported the development of the Board dynamic and the ‘new start’.  


The outcomes

  • The Board has a jointly agreed and understood Strategy for the organisation and the organisation is delivering against this
  • Board members make genuinely open contributions to the conversations the Board needs to have to add value to the organisation
  • Executives bring items to the Board that are appropriate for a Board agenda and seek to inquire of the Board and support open debate
  • Board members feel like equals who are ‘standing shoulder to shoulder’ towards the Organisations’ strategy
  • We have ‘Best in Class’ Governance structure and processes to support the Board and the organisation


Our approach

We contracted the work initially with the CEO, Chairman and Company Secretary – understanding their views and needs and creating a set of outcomes for the programme. 

These outcomes were then tested with the Board by interviewing the Non-Executive Directors individually and meeting with the Chief Officers group to both score the outcomes and provide qualitative feedback on each.
 
  • The themes from the feedback were used to design an initial session that started to build a new contract for this fresh start in terms of:
  • What Board members wanted to bring to the Board in terms of their experience and skills
  • What they needed from each other to create a generative Board
  • How they learn – what makes it possible for each person to learn easily and well

We then jointly reviewed the feedback vs. outcomes. This provided a platform for all to understand the previous Board dynamic and the legacy of that.

The Board left with actions to improve the quality of interactions between them formally and informally. 

We also agreed a series of session coaching the CEO and Chair on their working relationship as the key leadership relationship of the Board and the organisation.  

We worked in a closely with the Company Secretary on the governance implications of the Board development, weaving the governance through the development work to create an aligned governance and Board process. 


Interventions

Board observations
 
  • Gave team and individual feedback against their outcomes – where aligned or not
  • Helped to establish themes for Board development and individual coaching sessions

Board Team development sessions worked on:
 
  • Aligning the Board to its purpose, the organisational values and regulatory requirements and looking at how to role model these to the organisation
  • How the Board can work with giving and receiving feedback to each other as the life-blood of learning about our impact and developing our understanding of each other
  • The role of Non-Executives and a ‘code of conduct’ for the Board as a whole

The Chair / CEO coaching:
 
  • How to role model their outcome of the Board being ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ – using feedback elicited from Exec and Non-Exec Board members
  • Feedback to each other, what their interactions needed to be to create this, recognising their different working styles and motivations

The individual coaching:
 
  • Understanding the motivations of other Board members and how to tap into these
  • How as a Non-Executives to be appropriately ‘involved’ and ‘informed’
  • How to influence different working styles in Board members and understand where their feedback/questions come from 
 


Outcomes

Significant progress on all the intended outcomes:
 
  • Open and honest debate at Board
  • Trust between Non-Executives and Executives enabling appropriate challenge and support
  • Full Board commitment to the strategy of the organisation
  • Improved agendas and governance flows 
 


Quotes from the CEO and Chairman:

Chairman

‘Having external facilitation of this kind helped us to surface early on the reality of the legacy from the previous Board dynamic – it made us ‘Wide Awake’ to the scale of the issue if left un-tackled. This was essential for us to become a Board that truly work together’
‘As an experienced businessman and Chairman I know how I operate, however as a new Chairman others don’t know me and it reminded me that I needed to show them.’

‘Jointly creating five deliverable objectives for the Board development guided us through the sessions and is useful after the work as a reference point for all we are doing.’

Chief Executive

‘Starting the team work as soon as we could once the new Chairman and Non-executives had joined set us off on the right foot as a new Board‘

‘Shaping the work between myself and the Chairman jointly – doing a ‘mini-diagnostic’ with us, not telling us what we needed – helped us to create clear objectives for the work which we met.’

‘How you prepared us for the first session and set it up meant the Executive team were able to be open and honest in a way that proved really key for the Board dynamic going forward.’
 


What made the biggest difference?

‘The preparation and facilitation of that first session where we were exposed to the reality of how the Board had operated before. We wouldn’t have got there naturally and wouldn’t be where we are now as a Board.’



How did THOTM act that enabled this?

‘Imaginative and creative in the start to each session with us enabled full participation.’

‘Helpful to us in an appropriate manner to the challenges we faced’ 
 


We particularly appreciated:

‘How you gained the commitment from the whole board up-front to the work’

‘Your personal styles and the wealth of techniques at your disposal to support us’

‘The mix of your styles so that everyone had a coach who they could truly relate to’

‘Having the two coaches clearly gave us all benefits as one was able to watch the team while the other worked with them, feeding back to us and giving a different perspective.’

‘The structure of the sessions which built up our capability to be open and trust one another’

‘By the close of the contract we all knew we had done the work that we needed for now’
 


Secondary gains of the coaching were:

 Chairman

‘The Board was probed by Virginia Mason about its willingness and desire to develop under their guidance. Being selected to work with them would not have happened if the Board had not been ‘Shoulder-to-shoulder’.’   

(UHCW have been selected as one of the NHS Trusts to work with Virginia Mason Institute from Seattle to assist in transforming care and taking the Trust Towards Worldclass.)

CEO

‘The work brought the Executives closer through getting us to reflect on the past and present. We focused even more on improving how we work together – with cross benefits from the Board work’

’I was freed up by the work to be more myself, more open as I realised how much of a protector of the Executive team I’d been in the previous Board dynamic. This has brought benefits to me and the team.’
 
...Continue
City Link North East Region
The North East Regional Director wanted to work with his team of 11 leaders to maximise their results.  In a loss making business, he was looking for the difference that could make the difference in their regional scorecard.  With numerous organisational priorities, he did not know exactly what team coaching was, however he did believe through his own leadership development that his team performance could develop greater synergies and collaborative working.
 
Sharon and her team facilitated a series of modules designed to address the key areas for development identified by the team. Qualitative and quantitative data was collected by observing the team and through interviews with each team member, the directors and representative operatives in their stakeholder groups.  From the feedback the team identified the lack of trust between each other and the stronger connections to their regional and local business units than to this leadership team as the core areas to work on.
 
The programme consisted of:
 
  • An exploration in to the type of team they aspired to be
  • What it could give them if they worked as a team and their collective purpose
  • The foundations for trust, including a deeper understanding of each other, what was important to each person and their motivations
  • How give each other appreciative and developmental feedback
  • How to work as a team when they were together in meetings with healthy debate and clear next step agreements
  • How to work as a team when they were working apart
  • A collective review process
  • Listening in to a number of regular team conference calls, also enabled Sharon to give the team leader ‘in real time’, feedback on what she had heard in relation to the way the team was working together 

The outcomes
 
The North East Regional Team became and remained the highest performing of all the regions at City Link. They became a team where the team members mentored each other, asking and giving help to resolve operational challenges in service of the overall team result. 
 
What the Regional Director said:
 
“The key thing is that you mould yourself around the client, you challenge, you don’t give in, you stick with them.  You absolutely work closely with a client to understand what their needs are even when that’s difficult.  You’re bespoke rather than a package and have shown you don’t use an off-the-shelf approach.
 
It’s been a good news story. The team members really came together as a well-oiled machine. It’s been of complete value.  Team coaching enhanced the team’s performance.  I think the team have come out as better people and better managers for what they’ve gone through. It’s been important, if not more important, doing this in a loss making business to unite the team.
 
I believe you can work with small and large companies and at different levels. You are making a big difference.

AR, North East Regional Director, City Link
 
...Continue
Large Acute NHS Trust East Midlands – Executive Team Coaching
The CEO wanted to recruit the best possible Executive team and enable them to work at their best as a team to deliver the complex, challenging and demanding agenda of a large, acute, teaching Trust in an NHS system under constant scrutiny and change.

The CFO had witnessed team coaching deliver well in other settings and was keen to re-create this success. She wanted to see the sum of the parts be greater than their individual contributions – to observe the team’s effectiveness with each other and deliver collectively where it mattered. And for that benefit to reach into the wider system – “How the team engages with itself will stand us in good staid for how we engage with our key stakeholders such as the Board, our staff and our patients”.

We took the initial commission of the CEO and interviewed the Executive team members about the outcomes for the coaching and their views on the team’s current effectiveness.

The team then co-created the outcomes and programme design with us.
  • This led to a number of team sessions to work with them on including:
  • Mapping and understanding their stakeholders and what they need from the team
  • Creating the team’s purpose and aims
  • Understanding each other and creating new ways to work collaboratively
  • How to engage each other and stakeholders to meet their purpose

The key types of intervention were:
  • Interviews
  • All team members undertook the MBTI Stage 2 assessment as an initial assessment of their different styles
  • Team coaching sessions
  • Team in action observations and feedback
  • Individual coaching and observation and feedback

The team changed through the group coaching contract as people left and new members were recruited, so re-contracting was needed as this progressed. A number of members were taking on their first full Executive role so some extra support was identified as important for more and less experienced Execs to work well and learn together.
 

The outcomes – quotes from the CEO and CFO

“The best Chief Officers Group I’ve worked in”
 

This was achieved through:

  • Recognising that we don’t think in the same way and therefore we need different ways of getting everyone’s contributions
  • A bumpy ride, but each improvement we’ve made has built on the previous one
  • We are really starting to benefit from thinking about how we think. This is becoming a coping mechanism for us; as we see problems arising we are starting to deal with them differently
  • We have a greater appreciation for what each other needs/wants and can contribute
  • We are seeking to understand each other’s assumptions and get to the heart of issues through this
  • Exploring our relationships with our NEDs is leading to better Board relationships
 


What has made the biggest difference?

  • Seeing how our body language and voices impact on each other and in key meetings such as with the Board
  • Discussions around how we feedback to each other - uncovering the assumptions behind our opinions and actions has helped us with potential splits in the team
  • Using Time to Think concepts and rounds to help us turn sensitive discussions into a generative exchange of views.
 


How did we act that enabled this?

“By being patient with us and sticking with it.  The team has not always been easy to work with and it can be hard work to enable team change in the environment we’re in and you have gone way beyond a commercial relationship with us in working with that. You are committed to helping each individual get to a stage where we are confident and empowered to deal with the situation at hand without consulting you. It feels as though you are looking for ways to help us to be exceptional!”

You have been:
  • Thoughtful about what we can most benefit from
  • Provocative; you could come across as soft and fluffy, but you challenge us with intelligence and an appreciation of the emotions that are present and need surfacing
  • Personable without being intrusive
  • Challenging for us to think for ourselves and not giving us ‘stock’ answers that may not work for us
  • Objective, informed and professional, even when tested by the scale of challenge we face as a team.

We particularly appreciated:
  • Your ability to pull on and adapt a substantial range of models and techniques ‘in the moment’ in order to help us to meet the purpose of the coaching.  You don’t just follow one track and we either come with you or not.
  • Authenticity – you say how it is for you and reflect back to us the challenge that the team gives you. You walk your talk, clearly using the same techniques you teach us to aide your own thinking.  And I can see you learning as you work with us.
 


The secondary gains of the coaching

“We have now engaged with our NEDs in a more generative way and have moved forward our desire to develop the Board to work as a more effective team.”

“Using the learning with my own team, I have applied much of what we’ve learnt at an Exec level.  Most specifically I’ve helped them to see situations from other’s perspectives and how to look to what I can change about myself in order to have a better impact.”

“In the tough moments of this job, thinking about the way I think has really helped me build resilience and allows me to cope with myself and others so much better.”

“The learning has helped me across my workplace as well as with my family and friends.”
 
...Continue
Social Enterprise CIC Hospice Central England
Helen designed and delivered a team coaching programme for the top team of a newly formed Social Enterprise, Community Interest Company. The Senior Management Team (SMT) were new to their roles, filled with energy, enthusiasm and innovative ideas.  They were facing the huge challenge of establishing the organization as a going concern in a very short timescale and it was important they all worked together as an effective team with everyone working to their full potential.

The programme was delivered in 6 modules focusing the team on their key outcomes, how to work together and with their system of diverse stakeholders effectively to achieve these outcomes. Each individual had 3 1:1 coaching sessions in support of individual learning.

The programme helped to reinforce the SMT is a team and enabled them to work as a unit, challenge each other, have different ways of understanding, come closer to one another and reinforce the importance of being whole people. The organisation performed really well in its first year as a CIC, with the Chief Executive making a direct link to the programme as a significant input to this success.
 
...Continue