Bespoke Leadership Development - Managing and Developing Staff Performance

The Client

Senior officers with responsibility for performance and development practices at a corporate level, and senior executives with responsibility for managing business units. 

We have worked with clients from large corporate organisations, government organisations of all sizes in Commonwealth, State and Local Government, Universities and medium sized privately owned businesses to provide bespoke leadership development programs in performance management and development.

The Brief

HR Advantage has been engaged by multiple clients to design and directly deliver targeted training for leaders at executive, management and team leader levels in performance and development.

Briefs we have undertaken in this area have variously included skills development in:

• Aligning staff performance and development practices with the organisation and the role of the leader
• Undertaking effective performance and development discussions
• Understanding and avoiding pitfalls including unconscious bias to ensure valid processes
• Skills to engage in feedback discussions – imparting and eliciting performance feedback, providing goal based and behavioural feedback
• Articulating, communicating and documenting performance expectations and objectives
• Developing effective professional development plans
• Coaching skills
• Having difficult conversations / resolving concerns
• Having career development discussions
• Talent management
• Disciplinary matters.

HR Advantage has also been engaged by multiple clients to develop training materials to build leaders performance and development skills for delivery by in-house trainers.

We have worked with clients at whole of organisational and at business unit levels including large geographically dispersed organisations.

We have developed various practical support and ‘how to’ tools for leaders to use in performance and development processes and as references.

Our Response

We followed similar key steps for these assignments working closely with clients to develop and tailor programs to their specific needs and context:

1. Research the learning and development needs, background and requirements for the specific leaders/target groups.
2. Become familiar with the relevant performance and development processes, practices and materials used by the client.  This includes how the performance and development process connects with other key business and people management processes and organisational values.
3. Work with the client to tailor a program that address their needs, including the learning objectives, program format, and content.  In doing so we consider and address with you leading practices in performance and development.
4. Design engaging and interactive methods of learning to address identified needs and requirements.  We embed proven leading learning practices for adults in our design.
5. Develop learning materials including practical and relevant case studies and activities contextualised to your needs.
6. Deliver the learning program.  This is directly to participants in most instances.  In some instances, we have conducted ‘train the trainer’ for internal trainers undertaking direct delivery rather than consultant facilitated delivery and developed supporting facilitator materials.
7. Undertake an evaluation and feedback process during and following the delivery of learning programs in line with requirements agreed with the client.

HR Advantage has successfully delivered programs to thousands of managers comprised of executives, middle managers and team leaders across different organisations and industry sectors.

The Results

Participant feedback has been highly complimentary about the:

• Relevance of our programs to the leaders’ roles and circumstances
• Seamless ability to relate the learning to how the organisation undertakes its performance and development and related people and business processes
• Real world appreciation of challenges in managing and developing people due to the seniority and leadership experience of our trainers and their ability to offer insight
• Empathy, relatability and responsiveness of our trainers to the needs of leaders
• Practical nature of the training provided – able to be applied immediately
• Participants feel highly engaged due to the interactive and practical delivery of our workshops; also learning from peers and co-participants
• Practical materials able to be taken away from the program and used in the workplace
• Logic, relevance and meaning in the content covered – easy to follow and applicable.

We have a breadth and depth of experience developing the skills, capability and confidence of leaders at all levels in performance and development.  Contact us to discuss your leadership development needs and how we can assist you in this area.