Green Cross Health needed to create a culture shift towards an aspirational performance culture where commercial and vocational aspects thrive alongside each other. Because the organisation strives to create a genuinely supportive workplace, we were able to start from the perspective that their people wanted to do a good job, there just wasn’t a clear vision of how to achieve that.
Being excellent managers with strong technical skills and can-do attitudes was running them ragged. It wasn’t that they weren’t capable or that they weren’t prepared to work hard, they didn’t know what specific things they needed to do!
In the words of one pharmacy owner / manager:
I was always stressed, time poor and bad tempered (very hard for me to admit). I thought I was doing a good job, but my staff (I realise now) did not.
The business had been using purely classroom-based leadership workshops run by an external supplier. Elements of them had been very well-received and generated occasional local successes, but the learning didn’t stick. When we investigated why, the answer was loud and clear: without tools and context to support real-world implementation and sucked back into the usual hectic pace of their working lives, people remained at a loss to formulate a plan to address their teams’ needs and instead reverted to their usual reactions to ‘staff issues’.
We designed and built the Stellar Leadership Programme for them to change that. It's underpinned by the keen awareness that implementation is everything. It’s action-oriented, and so are we! We trained, supported and resourced their internal leaders and managers to deliver and support the programme which lifted leadership performance from the front line to Support Office across all three business units: retail pharmacy, medical centres and community healthcare.
It takes 12 months to complete and revolves around learners completing one project per quarter. Each project activity builds on the knowledge and experience gained from the ones before, with the final project seeing learners deliver a strategic and operational business plan for their area of responsibility.
The project cycle kicks off with research, analysis and learning online (1), followed by an implementation focussed planning workshop (2). By the end of the face-to-face time, people leaders have developed their own action plans and are supported with our implementation tools. Regional managers, charged with coaching and sign-off duties for this qualification, are embedded in the process from the start, completing all the online materials and being actively involved in the planning workshops.
After people implement their action plans, they record the outcomes and evaluate the success of their initiative (3). Finally, they share their experiences and project notes with their regional manager in one-on-one coaching sessions (4) until they are ready to be formally assessed and signed off for that stage.
The 'stressed, time poor and bad-tempered' manager quoted earlier went on to say:
I had a this ‘lightbulb’ moment very early in the course, where I realized that I was actually a poor leader / manager! That’s all changed, I’m now really enjoying my role as a mentor, coach and team leader, and so are my staff!
Responses and results:
This course has been the best thing I’ve ever done, especially discovering not only my own personality traits, but those of my team online. I’m a ‘Dove': we don’t like confrontation and tend to shy away from conflict. I kind of knew that, but didn’t have any real idea what that actually meant. I do now! By using the skills and insights I’ve learned I have been successful in facing ‘conflict’ and resolving some major issues that I’ve shied away from for more years than I care to remember.
I’ve really enjoyed the whole journey, especially watching, listening and supporting my team of Stellar Leaders. They have become more organized, solution focused team leaders. Also, genuinely happier in their roles. I feel that many more of us now have a far better understanding of not only ourselves, but more importantly of our people, there is a ‘culture shift’ happening and it’s exciting to be a part of it!
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