Background and objectives
The City of London Corporation is the local authority for the Square Mile. The range of projects that the departments work on have a far-reaching impact for the capital and beyond. So strategic leadership is a vital component of delivering visionary innovative solutions. We worked with the corporation to support the leadership development of the top teams in two key departments
Solution
We created an innovative Level 7 programme called Leading the Future. Designed to help participants explore strategic leadership issues and work collaboratively to identify workable solutions and deliverable action plans.
The programme used the real-life context of organisational growth and change to give participants the opportunity to develop their critical thinking, creative innovation, change management and strategic planning skills.
The programme included:
- a series of workshops
- project activities undertaken as part of an assessed assignment
- one -to-one and group coaching
- access to a mentor
The emphasis was for much of the programme to be “peer led”, so participants were encouraged to challenge themselves and each other by leading complementary learning events and identify and draw on the experience of thought leaders in leadership development.
Outcome
All successful participants achieved an ILM 7 Award in Leadership and Management and took part in a fantastic awards event to recognise their achievement at the end of the programme.
Comments about the impact of the programme from participants included:
- “Opportunities are all around us – we learn by doing”
- “The value of being coached and mentored – and coaching and mentoring others is huge”
- “Building our networks is key to success”
As a result of the programme participants have taken a variety of actions including:
- Taken on a role as a Change champion
- Created an internal ILM network to continue support for each other
- Improved operational decision making
- Volunteered for roles beyond own job and outside of the City, both cross-borough and cross-London
- Widened knowledge base (e.g. budgets/finance) to understand and enable contribution to strategic decisions
- Recognised opportunities to shape their service area going forwards
And a key theme overall was participants had a greater sense of belonging and were far more confident about the future.