Leadership development at the Queensland Building Services Authority

We have been fortunate to start working with a group of high potential leaders who were hand selected for accelerated development at Qld BSA recently. In line with our accelerated development methodology we have spent some time identifying areas for program application and have been encouraged by the high level of thought and commitment provided by the General Manager and his executive team.

This group of ‘emerging’ leaders are in the final stages of completing a five day program involving three separate sessions. We have designed and delivered a series of two two-day workshops ending with a one-day review session. The first two workshops have provided key content and leadership experiences through scenario based exercises, action-research and executive presentations. The final session showcases participants’ learning and how they have applied this directly to a series of real-life workplace challenges.

Participants have been working together in small groups throughout the program to tackle these challenges and develop ongoing peer-learning networks. The three program themes focus on self-leadership, influencing others and organisational politics. Participants have actively contributed to several action-learning projects that have addressed major organisational challenges including implementing a major restructure and dealing with changes to their dispute resolution and client management processes.

The program has involved a strong level of executive sponsorship that has been both active and highly visible. Participants have also benefited through exposure to an EI 360-degree feedback tool (the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire – EIQ). This tool has helped personalise the learning and has helped participants acquire practical knowledge and skills to immediately apply on the job. Each participant undertook a one-to-one debrief session with the program facilitator and used this information, combined with program learnings, to produce an individual leadership development plan. This aspect of the program has been highly successful in gaining individual insight and motivation to acquire new leadership skills and thinking.

Flexible leadership development at the Australian Bureau of Statistics

Following the success of the Achieving Results Through People program at the ABS we were asked to design a suite of short-courses to meet the needs of managers who wanted to target specific capability needs and were ‘time poor’. These short-courses we designed and developed within three weeks and piloted in July and August around Australia.

The four new modularised programs are:

• Implementing and Managing Change – a one day workshop designed to help managers understand the ‘human factors’ underpinning successful change and the tools needed to deliver this within their work groups
• Leading Teams – a one day workshop designed to help managers identify the stages of team development, how lead a team toward high performance and how diversity in team membership impacts this
• Emotional Intelligence for Managers – a one day workshop designed to help managers understand and work with emotions to get the most from others using both transformational and transactional leadership behaviours
• Communicating with Influence - a two day workshop designed to help managers understand the challenges of differing perspectives and how to apply influencing tools and techniques to gain commitment from others

After our initial success with these pilot programs we now have a busy schedule to deliver these over the next few months with the likelihood of further interest into 2008. The demand for these programs has, and continues to be, driven by the business. This has been a major initiative of the ABS as it endeavours to establish a culture change throughout the organisation to support both a change of focus and a subsequent restructure.

As a footnote to this project, over 400 front-line and middle managers have attended one of our programs at the ABS over the last 12 months. While we continue to develop and deliver our suite of programs we are still getting some excellent responses from our existing ones. For example, some feedback from a recent Emerging Leaders program included comments like:

• “Thank you for such a dynamic, challenging course – I have taken away a lot from the five days (including recognising my own tolerance levels) and will (and have) applied these skills to my job”
• “This course has made me think more about my own beliefs and behaviours and how I sometimes let pride get in the way of making the decision that will be the most beneficial – what I got most from the program was not so much about leadership it is more about my want/desire to mend a relationship which I am now not sure why it was ever broken – life is short – this course helped me learn that and helped me grow as a person”
• “Excellently presented. Enjoyed the final day and challenged me and gave me lots to think about in terms of self awareness and my (leadership) behaviours – totally enjoyed. Whilst other courses have made me self aware of my behaviours and weaknesses, this course has inspired me to act on those behavioural weaknesses”
  

Setting performance expectations at nabCapital

Many of the organisations we work with are endeavouring to achieve the ‘holy trilogy’ of motivated, satisfied and effective staff. These needs are common and many of the solutions are not too dissimilar. We are currently working with nabCapital to help provide the fundamental ‘people leader’ skills to achieve this outcome. We are doing this through a one-day action-learning workshop with a two-hour follow-up session.

The program we are delivering at nabCapital is a little unique in that we are applying a scenario-based approach to knowledge and skill acquisition as opposed to the traditional lecture-based ‘chalk and talk’ with the obligatory ‘role play’. So far our programs have received great feedback from a group of participants who, in most cases, are new to setting individual goals and managing performance.

Our program reinforces the nabCapital ‘scorecard’ to set staff performance goals and utilises a realistic scenario that has participants directly apply the nabCapital performance management process throughout the day. Participants then apply a simple performance feedback process to a real-life performance example. We have found that one day of focused content and realistic application has provided just the right amount of development to get even the most time poor people leader focused on this essential responsibility.

We achieve effective skill transfer by following-up a cohort of participants a month post-program to review key concepts, individual experiences and insights gained. This review and reinforcement session has been invaluable in equipping individual participants with the skills and confidence to tackle some of the more challenging performance discussions. This program is just one component of a wider people leader development program currently underway at nabCapital. We are enjoying the experience and will be looking forward to the remaining programs scheduled for 2008.