Elevating Leadership Capability to Lead Culture and Performance

Case Study - NFP

Elevating Leadership Capability to Lead Culture and Performance

Our client is a global children’s charity with c.300 employees. In order to achieve their strategic ambitions for the organisation and develop a more resilient, innovative and agile culture, they wished to strengthen and elevate the leadership team, role modelling and leading the desired shift in culture.

2.5x

more likely to recommend MAB as a place to work

83%

improvement to communication (internal NPS)

94%

of employees feel they fully understand the Mission, Vision and DNA

Winner

at the Business Culture Leadership Award

The challenge

It had been determined that not only a strong Leadership team was vital to achieve this strategy, but also that the layer of leadership below needed to play a much more active and effective role in leading the organisation, as they were the key interface with employees.

Their key challenges and motivations were:

Feedback from the annual employee engagement surveys consistently showed dissatisfaction with staff in senior leadership; only 43% of those who completed the survey responded positively to questions about senior leadership.
Pressure on the organisation to improve financial sustainability required leadership to be more empowered and enabled to lead in a fair and inclusive way.
The organisation needed to retain their strong values-based approach, whilst also strengthening their ability to manage performance and ensure leadership were holding themselves and their teams accountable for their performance.
Leaders also needed to be more confident about managing the difficult aspects of being a leader, including managing change; they needed to build capability to manage uncertainty and ambiguity, and to use their judgement to make decisions with commercial awareness.

The client was not looking for a traditional leadership training programme, but a more experiential ‘action learning’ approach of coaching the leadership teams through collective learning experiences and real-life work-based challenges.

The solution

Working in partnership with the CEO and Director of People and Culture over two years, we shaped and facilitated a series of bespoke interventions to strengthen the overall senior leadership capability of the organisation.

The process

Specifically for each leadership group (LT and LF) the work covered the following areas:

Insight

Leadership Team Programme

Diagnosing the current Leadership Team (LT) capability through interviewing the six team members, observation in meetings, an online team diagnostic and analysing survey data;
Articulating what effectiveness means for the Leadership Team and creating a shared vision for how the team operates and shows up to each other but also in the organisation; and
Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the LT and how it works.

Leadership Forum Programme

Diagnosing the current Leadership Forum (LF) role and capability through interviewing all twelve members, observing the LF in action and analysing survey data; and
Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the LF in terms of knowledge, skills and ways of working using a team diagnostic framework.

Design

Leadership Team Programme

Based on the LT diagnostic findings, a series of bespoke interventions were designed to build on LT strengths and address areas for development.

This included:

Creating a LT Vision and clarifying how LT bring values to life and show up in the organisation;
Articulating LT identity – ensuring alignment with Purpose, Values and Beliefs;
Raising LT awareness (both self-awareness and understanding each other’s preferences / styles);
Improving LT relatedness particularly how they communicate and collaborate;
Building the foundations of LT transformation capability (strengthening agile and innovative capabilities); and
Providing individual coaching to all team members to enhance their contribution to the LT and to improve their individual effectiveness as senior leaders.

Leadership Forum Programme

Based on the LF insights, a series of bespoke interventions were shaped to build on LF strengths and address areas of concern.

These included:

Building on the work already done to define the role of the LF and supporting the group to clearly define their role, purpose and accountability;
Supporting LF to successfully shift their role and agreeing how the LF ‘live the values’ and show up as a cohesive group aligned with LT;
Providing individual coaching to all LF members to raise their self-awareness and to improve their effectiveness as senior leaders;
Identifying untapped potential and agreeing how to more fully leverage LF strengths – embracing full diversity;
Pinpointing potential LF ‘watch outs’ (e.g. gaos, weaker areas, overextensions) and planning how to address these – creating a common language to explore issues; and
Improving effectiveness of LF communications and collaboration – identifying specific improvements to strengthen readiness.

The programme ended with a joint Leadership Team and Leadership Forum event which reinforced the importance of aligned leadership to shift, role model and embed cultural change (linked to the new Strategy). This included identifying how LT & LF could be more innovative and agile and agreeing the role of LT & LF in leading through turbulent and uncertain times in a positive, consistent and cohesive way.

Embed

Historically this organisation had struggled with effective implementation of strategy. Collaborative Action Network (CAN) Sprint Teams were set up to spearhead and accelerate areas of the new Strategy which were agreed to be highest priority by leadership. Sprint 1 focused on ‘Scaling up Humanitarian’ and Sprint 2 on ‘Impact, Evidence and Learning’.

Both Sprints started with a Sprint Launch kick off day which included a team psychometric snapshot exercise, agreeing team Sprint ground rules, creating a Sprint Vision and developing a Sprint Team Charter. At the end of Sprint 1, there were a series of highly engaging Roadshows explaining the story of the Sprint and exploring what implementation might look like for each team across the organisation. These roadshows were really successful in engaging the rest of the organisation with the Sprint and encouraging them to think through ‘What does this mean for our team?’ and ‘What does this mean for me?’

The result

Success measures for the leadership programmes were all achieved according to the CEO and Head of People & Culture including:

A high performing Leadership Team which works well together, focussed on a shared purpose and working collectively to make decisions and provide stronger leadership to the organisation;
A Leadership Forum with a clear role and with members who are empowered with the confidence and capability to carry out their role effectively;
Clearer lines of accountability with a less hierarchical approach to decision-making with fewer decisions escalated to Leadership Team for decision;
Highly positive feedback for Sprint 1 Roadshow from the rest of the organisation; and
A marked improvement in satisfaction with Senior Leadership in annual employee engagement survey.

It has been a pleasure to work with Jemma on strengthening our senior leadership team. As a result of the work we have a stronger senior leadership team which is much better equipped to navigate the uncertainty and challenges faced by our sector and deliver on our strategic objectives.

CEO & Head of People & Culture

Not for Profit

Strategy & Leadership

Leadership & top team performance

Fractional CPO & strategic support

Post-M&A integration

Navigating scale & complexity

People & Performance

Team performance & productivity

Advancing DEIB

Talent retention & EVP

Behavioural change & culture embedding

Culture & Innovation

Tech & AI enablement

Unlocking innovation

Conduct, risk & regulatory compliance

Events

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Research & Guides