Improving the leadership skills of support staff team managers

Overview

The Holgate Academy contacted Formation to design a programme for their support staff managers – all of whom had very different strengths and training needs. We delivered a training programme of full day sessions across five months.

What the client asked for

We interviewed all participating managers to make sure we understand their roles, strengths and weaknesses, and identified any issues they wanted to address. We designed a bespoke programme covering content such as:

The results

As well as increasing skills, participants said that the programme improved their relationships. It gave them an increased sense of how they could contribute to school improvement.The client told us:

“The majority of our team leaders had never received management training and therefore lacked some basic techniques to enable them to get the best from their teams…The sessions were perfectly balanced with theory, practical exercises and most importantly for us, time for reflection. Amanda recognised the need for our team leaders to reflect honestly and openly with each other and consequently they have a greater level of trust and day-to-day communication between them has dramatically improved. A relatively short programme of training has really helped to transform our team leaders. They are more confident, focused and determined to ensure that their teams are the best they can be.”

Associate Support Services Leader, The Holgate Academy

Thanks to the success of this project, the client asked us to develop a further programme for aspiring managers. Evaluation of this second programme showed that the aspiring managers, as well as gaining new skills themselves, had also noticed improvements in leadership from their own managers whom had attended the earlier programme.

The Academy subsequently asked our lead trainer to become a Governor at the Academy.