Celebrating Success: Feedback from Our Management Development Programme

Our Management Development Programme is designed to help managers and leaders enhance their personal effectiveness and unlock the full potential of their workforce. The 2-day programme, along with ongoing support, complements previous leadership or management development training and serves as an excellent foundation for new managers.

Programme Overview:

Our ultimate goal is to help organisations fully engage and harness the strengths of every team member. This programme takes managers and their teams on a discovery journey to understand and use their own strengths, and to explore how team strengths can combine to create amazing results.

What the Programme Aims to Achieve:

• Equip managers with the knowledge, skills, and tools to apply a strengths-based approach effectively and consistently.
• Encourage managers to foster a strengths-based culture within their teams.
• Help organisations see improvements in engagement, productivity, and overall success.

Celebrating Success:

We have welcomed three cohorts from across 22 universities so far this year and have three further programmes planned.

After attending the course, the majority of attendees felt :

• They are better equipped to explore strengths within their team.
• They know how to begin building a strengths-based, engagement-focused approach in their area of work.
• They are more confident in how to approach performance conversations with colleagues.
• They are more confident in their management skills.

In terms of management skills attendees reported high levels of confidence in the the following areas:

What was most useful:

Attendees shared the aspects of the programmer they found most useful: 

• Understanding Team Dynamics: “I felt the most useful part of the course for me was delving into the ways of working with different team members depending on them being high will, high skill, low skill, high will etc.”
• Practical Tools and Techniques: One attendee said“I found the structure of the presentation to be very well-organised and engaging. Most valuable were the specific tools provided for workplace application. Having these tools readily available allows me to start putting my learnings into action immediately.” Another shared: “Being provided with practical tools and techniques to structure conversations, the opportunity to talk about the different categories of team and team members and how you’d move them.”
• Actionable Strategies for Feedback and Performance Management: “The focus on performance management and tackling how we view it, using a strengths-based approach was great and the emphasis around regular and good one-to-ones was brilliant as these are bread and butter aspects of good management. The Situational Leadership styles model was a good one to use and linking it performance management and the skill and will matrix. The 3 triggers that block feedback was a great way to reflect on the receiver of the feedback and how you tailor it.”
• Positive and Inclusive Culture: “Reflection on leadership styles and models and what makes a high performing manager. Reflective space with others. Learning how to appreciate and harness talents and have strengths-based conversations, as motivational and performance enhancing experiences using the strengths based approach.”
• Peer Interaction and Real-World Examples: “The opportunity to discuss ideas and scenarios with other participants was most useful.”

Comparative Feedback:

Attendees noted our course was superior to previous training they have attended:

• “Balance between theory and practical.”
• “The positive ethos of what we can achieve when strengths are applied rather than stripping ourselves bare about things we find difficult. Also was fantastic to be around the same industry it was refreshingly open and collaborative from the start.”
• “Other courses I've attended have either focused too much on their own methodology or have been vague in its application. I thought that this programme had a great balance between methodology and practical applications.”

Lastly, a couple of the highlights:

• “A fulfilling informative course that positively questions your management style.”
• “A very engaging and positive management programme as the focus is from a strengths' lens but completely relatable to the day-to-day aspects of people management.”