Great Places

Leadership Development Programme

Over a three year period we have worked closely with Great Places to develop their Leadership capability. Initially, this included working with the Executive team to define the culture and values for the organisation. We then developed a clear set of behaviours, based around the values, that helped set expectations.

We used the values and behaviours as the basis for carrying out a 360 degree feedback process for the Executive Team and the Directors team. Building on the outputs from the 360 process we developed a Leadership Programme aimed at developing the leadership capability across the organisation. We started with the Executive Directors and then rolled it out to all Leaders. The Programme included workshops such as: Driving high Performance, Coaching, Strategic thinking, Decision Making and Influencing.

In addition, we worked closely with the Senior Leadership team (Exec and Directors) on team development (using Lencioni and SDI as key inputs/models) and supported individuals via 1:1 coaching.

We also worked with the Board to define the overall strategic direction, supporting the formulation of their corporate plan.

Developing Customer Service capability

Great Places found out about our customer service programme with Green Square and were keen to follow a similar approach to enhancing the delivery of customer service across the Group. Initially we worked with a Steering Group to agree a simple model of customer service steps and behaviours, this was followed by a Train the Trainer Workshop to develop a team of in-house customer service trainers to deliver a workshop for staff at all levels across the Group.   In addition, Great Places produced a DVD to illustrate the customer service model and complement the training using a series of typical scenarios involving customers.

Staff training sessions

We worked with Great Places using a coaching approach to support the in-house training team to develop their confidence and competence in delivering the half day customer service workshops to their colleagues across the Group. The half day customer service workshop introduced the customer service model and included sessions around questioning and listening (core customer service skills) as well as building rapport and focussing on positive outcomes.  In addition a group of customer service coaches were identified and trained to develop their skill and confidence as coaches to help to embed the customer service model and to reinforce best practice.