Bespoke programmes for organisations

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Why develop your leaders?

Do you have leaders within your organisation who would benefit from developing:

a deeper awareness of their assumptions, patterns of behaviour and impact on those around them?
greater accountability for how they manage their emotions under pressure?
greater insight into how their personal traits impact on the performance and effectiveness oftheir team?
more recognition of the influence they already have, and confidence to do more with it?
more comfortability leading in complex and uncertain situations?
greater capacity to lead transformation and change?

Do you have significant leadership challenges that could be improved through better leadership and teamwork?

Departments with poor staff morale and high rates of staff sickness, leading to low staff retention?
Services that have grown in response to demand, with larger teams but lower productivity rates?
Overwhelmed departments that are struggling to meet key performance targets?
Concerns about patient safety and harm resulting from current practices?

Our Code of Practice

How Staff College can help

We work in collaboration with organisations and systems to co-design and deliver bespoke leadership development programmes. This enables programmes to be aligned with local and system ambitions and tailored to their specific development needs.

We design and deliver a variety of leadership development programmes open to aspiring and experienced leaders at different stages of their career.

We take the time to build strong relationships with senior leaders within the organisations we work as a critical friend. This enables us to understand the current context and challenges faced by leaders.

A large part of our portfolio is working with system and network leaders who are engaged in working at the interface between different organisations and where the need to use their influence and develop relationships across boundaries is fundamental to their ability to integrate services for the future.

Who we work with

We work with a wide variety of health and social care organisations both here in the UK, and internationally. We keep an open mind to different challenges and regularly work with organisations outside of health and social care who have a strong moral purpose.

The purpose of bespoke programmes

The purpose of a bespoke programme will be unique to the organisation and leaders it is designed for. The below are some common reasons organisations approach us to design and deliver a programme for them:

A desire to develop a pipeline of leaders with the confidence and aptitude to step up into more senior positions.
A change in the context for the organisation with an anticipated increase in the level of challenge or complexity faced by leaders.
A desire to strengthen the leadership skills and behaviours of current leaders within the organisation.
A desire to improve the ways specific services, teams or professional groups are led.
A need to develop leaders capable of leading transformation and improvement.

The impact of bespoke programmes

Our practical and experiential approach enables leaders to develop:

• Greater awareness of their leadership strengths and impact, in order to more effectively influence others.
• Greater resilience and ability to manage their behaviour under pressure and in different situations.
• Deeper ability to review and reflect, in order to learn from their experiences.
• Greater empathy and ability to build effective relationships with others.
• Increased confidence to take on new responsibilities and challenges.
• Greater understanding of the complex nature of the systems they lead in and problems they face, recognising the need to work through and with others in order to improve things.
• Greater recognition of the moral elements of leadership and comfortability making difficult decisions in order to do the ‘right’ thing on a difficult day.

“I have worked with the Staff College for a number of years, and would recommend them very strongly. I have been consistently impressed when commissioning them to support leadership both in NHS hospitals, and across multi-agency programmes for improvement, large-scale change, and patient benefit. I consider Staff College one of the best partners I have ever worked with in terms of their ability to listen, understand and adapt their approach to the real world. Their skill in incorporating real-world work into learning, and showing the impact of their programmes in any setting, often wrapping around busy teams and services, is distinctive.

Colleagues participating in Trust, System and Primary Care development activities with Staff College have consistently reported – directly and through formal evaluation – that the learning was unlike anything they had done before and has remained with them in influencing their leadership style for years to come.”

Charlotte Williams (she/her) | Chief Strategy & Improvement Officer
Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust