Project: Professional Development

The Business

Our client is an internationally renowned independent boarding school. They are committed to providing a transformative education to their students and a first-class workplace for their people. They demonstrate their values in everything they do and take a progressive, forward-thinking approach when it comes to leadership development.

The First Engagement

We were first engaged by our clients to work with their senior administrators and faculty, bringing both groups together to learn more about the fundamentals of leadership. We were asked to provide a series of workshops interspersed throughout the academic year that focused on motivating others, strategic thinking, and self-leadership.

What We Did

Define

We met with senior leaders who had identified a need for leadership training; specifically they wanted a leadership expert to share their knowledge of leadership science and practical expertise in a lecture format. Had time permitted, we would have conducted a needs analysis with individual participants to further clarify their needs.

Design and Facilitate

Our initial brief was to “present” the content, almost lecture-style. However, after discussion and some negotiation, we were able to bring our client along with us, helping them to appreciate that engagement and motivation would be largely improved if we designed the sessions with a much higher level of participation. We therefore designed the workshops to include time for self-reflection, group work, and discussions as appropriate for the learning objectives for each workshop.

One of the Jackson Consulting Groups key design elements for anytime a group comes together, in person or virtually, is to ensure that real work gets done. For example, in the Strategic Thinking workshop, we included time for cross-functional goal setting and alignment with organization’s goals.

Results

The Jackson Consulting Group was selected for this project to share leadership expertise with the senior leadership team – we fulfilled this brief by sharing contemporary leadership science and our in-depth experience of leadership practice; furthermore we provided participants with a safe space to explore these ideas for themselves and with their colleagues. From the immediate participant feedback we knew that the first workshop was considered a great success; this was confirmed when our clients engaged us for a series of workshops with the same group. Nonetheless, a true test of leadership training is whether real development has taken place, and whether that development has resulted in positive business outcomes. We are delighted to report that other employees observed real change in leaders’ behaviour and, as a result, these employees were asking if they could participate in similar training.

This prompted the client to expand components of the training to other levels of employees. Since that time our team has provided on-going leadership training workshops to various groups within the school, helping to ensure that the organization’s values and leadership skills are consistently practiced.

Currently we’re working with our client to develop a comprehensive leadership development program that will include individual assessment, leadership training resources, and coaching.