The Brilliant Minds Programme is aimed at Leadership Teams, Technical Professionals and specialist Business Partners and uses a combination of individual and group learning methods.

The value of this approach comes from the combination of activities.  The workshop provides a group experience, which creates closer working relationships, a common language and shared reference points.  The coaching provides an opportunity to address individual agendas which may include items too personal or politically sensitive for discussion in open forum.  The coaching also ensures practice of what has been learned in the workshop.  The whole process is informed by a competency framework that guides the development in line with the organisation’s strategy and goals.

Overall, participants gain new skills, solutions to their individual concerns and closer bonds with co-workers and they contribute greater and more relevant results to the business.

In terms of the content, the main areas of development this programme offers are in leadership, change, influencing and personal effectiveness.  These are always put in the context of your organisation’s current situation and needs so that the learning translates back easily into everyday working life.

The programme step-by-step

Before we begin, we agree measures of success and specific outcomes with senior stakeholders and will also work with you to position the programme to participants and other interested parties so that the whole process gains the maximum opportunity of success.

In overview this how the programme progresses:

1. Select competency model/framework
2. Initial meetings, personality profiles and assessments
3. Intensive 4-day workshop
4. Assignment of coaches
5. Interim assessment and meeting with coach
6. Individual coaching
7. Revisit profile and assessment
8. Review Day

The competency model

Because this programme is designed to deliver behavioural change, it’s essential to have a clear description of preferred behaviour to work with. This may be your organisation’s own leadership competence model or it may be an industry-specific model.

We also have our own Leadership framework and a model of IT Business Partner competences created using the SFIA standards, David Ulrich’s model (for HR Business Partnering) and other relevant material.

The important thing is to have a framework of skills and competencies that are used throughout the development process as a guide for individuals to identify needs and progress.

Initial meetings and assessment

Particularly with Leadership teams, who tend to like to work at a fairly quick pace, we prefer to meet participants individually before running the workshop.  This is also an opportunity to do personality profiling and establish a baseline of competence that can be used to measure the effectiveness of the programme later.

Profiling tools we use include MBTI and the Language and Behaviour (LAB) profile.

Intensive Workshop

The 4-day intensive programme focuses on developing the skills specified in the competency model and behaviour required to fulfil the organisation’s objectives.  It includes essential NLP skills, exploration of the personality profiles and methods for efficient learning and behavioural change. The workshop is practically oriented and is full of ready-to-apply ideas. Specific content includes:

• Results focus
• Impact and influence
• Communications
• Understanding others
• Negotiation
• Managing energy and motivation
• Facilitating decision-making

The style of delivery involves practical, hands-on experience of trying out new techniques, feedback and coaching from trainer(s) and testing of models as well as input from the trainer(s) and group discussions.  All of the techniques learned are applied to the participants’ development agenda in relation to the competency model.

Many of the exercises are conducted as co-coaching experiences so that participants not only gain the benefit of the interventions but also acquire coaching skills that are relevant to their role. There are reflective exercises to do between days of the programme to ensure that learning is used and applied.

At the end of the workshop we match each participant with one of our team of experienced Executive Coaches.

Interim assessment

After the workshop we ask participants to self-assess in relation to the competency model and bring their findings to an initial meeting with their coach.  Each coach also provides feedback and observations from the workshop to help create a development agenda for coaching.

Coaching

Each participant has 3 coaching sessions of 2-3 hours, scheduled to suit their individual agenda during the 3 months after the workshop. The sessions are completely confidential, no reports are made of the discussions or the issues addressed. The experience of the 4-day workshop is a big part of the success of the coaching because the participants have already begun to have a different view of their own potential and what is possible in their business relationships.

Review Day

Three months after the workshop participants are invited to complete the personality profile again and to re-visit the competency model. On the Review Day where the group come back together and share their experiences of applying the skills, the results they have achieved and the personal benefits they had discovered. This way everyone profits from everyone else’s experiences.

Results

When people participate in this programme we always see behavioural change, an increased confidence in dealing with change and greater skill in managing professional relationships. In addition, there are specific achievements relating to each individual’s normal daily workload and the overall purpose of the programme, agreed with the client at the beginning.