MOL, Manchester College Group - building team effectiveness

Context 

The senior leadership of this on-line learning and professional qualifications business within the Manchester College Group was changing from having a business leader to having 3 leaders that would  collectively be responsible for the business. That would then report into a main board director, who was responsible for other businesses across the college. 

The business at the time was also under preforming against the targets and expectations  of the group. 

The 3 leaders that were taking on this joint leadership were still relatively new to the organisation and had been brought in from the outside the business and not that experienced within the FE area. 

Approach 

We took a team coaching approach to the sessions and had an initial set of 4 sessions with the 3 new leaders and then a further set of 3 which also included the board member responsible for this area of the business. 

The initial set of team coaching focused on;

• Clarity of the business, looking at purpose, vision, value-based behaviour (linking into the group values) and strategic objectives. 
• Alongside this a strengths inventory and individual feedback and team exploration around strengths to best match roles and responsibilities 

The secondary set of team coaching needed to take an assessment against where they were as a team to help focus the team coaching areas to focus on. We used the Lencioni model – 5 Dysfunctions of a Team and completed a team diagnostic which did include the board member. After this the team identified the areas they wished to focus their attention on:

• Building trust and how to shift their mindset from a team of 3 to a team of 4 and to have deeper more meaningful conversations 
• Being able to have difficult conversations between them to enhance the decisions that were made 
• To improve their ability to challenge each other for true collective responsibility. 

Impact / feedback 

We have been back in to see the team 18 months after the coaching finished and are delighted to hear that the business has exceeded a number of their performance targets, that they are recognised as being one of the top performers in the Manchester College group, their engagement score although not where they aspire to be are in the top % of the group and the leadership team won two awards within the college recognising their collective leadership journey and results. 

As usual Julie, you made us think about the difficult things and work together through supported conversations to get to a stronger place as a collective team”