A Commonwealth public sector agency engaged Kirribilli Partners to deliver the United Leadership program to their entire leadership team (sixty people) across several sites in Australia. The senior executive had identified the leadership team mostly worked in ‘silo’s’, projecting a ‘blame’ culture, negatively impacting the teams they were leading and the overall performance of the organisation. There were leadership skill gaps that needed improving, particularly in the areas of fostering peer relationships and trust, supporting the work of others and role modelling productive leadership behaviours.
Our co-design tailored approach
Kirribilli Partners worked closely with the senior executive, along with the HR team to design an engaging experience for their leadership team, informed by best practice. We engaged with a cross section of senior and front line managers, to ensure the program incorporated the organisation’s context and objectives. The finalised program design included:
- DISC for all participants. DISC is a world class psychometric diagnostic tool that helps teams improve performance. Walking each leader through their results in a 1:1 session helps each individual better understand their strengths, along with their communication and behavioural preferences with their colleagues.
- A two day ‘united leadership’ workshop for each leader. This enables everyone to be on the same page and includes strategic insights to align ‘what success looks like for the organisation’ with ‘how’ to achieve it together.
- Ongoing monthly coaching sessions with targeted members of the leadership team to support their day-to-day leadership role modelling.
- Bi-monthly United Leadership health check and reminder session to embed the united leadership behaviours into the day-to-day work.
Successful delivery
The partnership approach to changing culture within the leadership team (which included a mix of senior executives, middle managers and front-line team leaders) resulted in the creation of an environment where collaboration thrives.
Participants consistently rated the co-designed program as excellent. Because of the partnership approach, United Leadership is now the foundation for their culture, positively influencing recruitment, performance and development across the organisation.
Several participants have indicated it was the most practical and useful leadership program they had attended. They feel far more connected with their colleagues; have greater confidence to engage at the peer level; performance of the leadership team has improved, as has their own leadership behaviour towards more junior staff. This feedback has also been supported in the ongoing coaching conversations and feedback from the senior executive. Kirribilli Partners continues to support this organisation via coaching and a dedicated program to foster United Leadership throughout their entire team.
