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Timaru District Council
Manager Development Programme
Background
Timaru District Council (Tim DC) consists of 330 staff across four areas – Community Services, Infrastructure, Environmental Services and Corporate Services – and includes the management of everything from swimming pools, roading, the airport, waste minimisation, building control to the art gallery, cemeteries, economic development, libraries … and more besides.
The Programme
Tim DC engaged us to design, develop and deliver its Manager Development Programme for Tier 3s and Team Leaders. From the programme, it was looking to achieve improved operational efficiency, quality of service to customers (internal and external), quality of work, and employee satisfaction. Two programme occurrences commenced in September 2016 and concluded in April 2017.
There was an expectation that all Team Leaders and Tier 3s would participate in the programme, ie participants did not self-select. Participant work experience was predominantly operational, with limited experience, if any, with the tools and methods of people leadership.
Programme Components
- A pre-programme 360o review against Tim DC’s behavioural competency framework, with individual debriefs with one of our OD consultants
- An Induction and Closing event for participants and their line managers
- Development of individual Leadership Development Plans
- A series of five time-spaced experiential workshops (each prefaced by light preparatory work), facilitated by different specialist facilitators
- Use of our workplace application tool to ensure new learning was applied at work
- 30-minute sessions with SMT and each workshop facilitator at the conclusion of each workshop to debrief them about the content covered and any issues that might have arisen
- Coaching support between workshops by line managers who attended their own half-day Coaching Skills workshop to provide them with the skills necessary to coach effectively
- Two facilitated video conferences during the programme
- Mid and end-of-programme on-line surveys of participants and line managers to evaluate application of learning, contribution to targeted business outcomes, and workplace support
Workshops
- Personal Leadership (Teresa Callow)
- Communication and Conversation Skills (Linzi Ebbage-Thomas)
- Coaching for Performance (Kathryn Jackson)
- Team Development (Alison Hood)
- Attention Management (Roger Lewis)
The Outcomes
The following are results from Kirkpatrick evaluation of programme participants and their line managers undertaken during the programme. Quantitative scores are compared with our research-based benchmarks.
Line managers of programme participants reported their observations of application of learning and contributions to targeted business outcomes, some of which are provided below:
- “He is providing clear briefs on projects for direct reports, outlining outcomes sought. This has allowed greater focus on the task and improved productivity.”
- “She has implemented brief stand-up meetings with the team and has worked with each staff member on their position descriptions.”
- “We have just changed our software provider which has been a big project that she has headed up - she has remained on top of a big workload as well as keeping everyone informed of progress, arranging training, etc.”
- “He has implemented a programme of regular formal and informal discussions with direct reports - these are coaching sessions and communication sessions.”
- “She critically analyses and reflects on own performance, recognises the impact on others, seeks feedback and acts on it. She has now accepted the impact on her retaining some of her routine work on her performance and the need to delegate some of it so that she can accept some higher level work. We have worked on a plan to do so.”
- “She is communicating potential issues with me in a more proactive way.”
- “He seems calmer and less reactive to situations that he doesn't agree with. I can only hope that this maturing level of political savvy is permanent.”
- “Better working relationships between staff has resulted in improvements across the board.”
- “He is focusing on a number of aspects. Clear and concise communication with his staff is a big one. He has worked hard and now has a team that are in a very focused and positive space.”
Postscript
Since the programme concluded, a new staff member has been appointed to one of the management roles. Tim DC has engaged one of our leadership coaches to work with him on a one-to-one basis to develop his leadership capability.
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