My work
I don't just coach; I also support the development of organisations and people. Here are a few random projects from over the years about which I feel particularly proud. My team coaching is not on here for reasons of confidentiality, but I'm happy to talk about it.
Mentoring for Black officers and staff
Mentoring is often introduced as a knee-jerk response to all kinds of organisational ills. Mentoring, while it is a very useful tool for development and career progression, it is not a panacea. As part of the Police Race Action Plan, the College of Policing wanted to ensure that mentoring was used effectively in force, ensuring that Chief Officers had considered the context, and the support needed for those involved in force. These guidelines would then be released nationally. Project deliverables - interviews with a variety of public and private sector organisations to hear lessons from their mentoring programmes developed to support diversity - desk research to develop an initial set of guidelines for introducing mentoring in organisations - interviews with Black officers and staff who had received mentoring while in force - focus groups with key stakeholders including the Black Police Association and College of Policing staff The result was a short, punchy document which offered programme guidance informed by lived experience and asked a set of questions for Chief officers to answer before introducing mentoring.
Equipping employees for change
Westminster Children’s Society (now the London Early Years Foundation) aims to support the children of low-income families and at the time of this project, managed twelve children’s centres providing high-quality, low cost childcare. WCS is a high-energy, committed organisation, whose ninety staff usually take change in their stride – opening new facilities, dealing with new legislation, and taking on new employees and contracts, often for the local authority. However, the new CEO for WCS believed with the amount of change in the organisation at the moment – including the departure of their current CEO – employees needed some additional support. Project deliverables Take ninety people through what is often a very personal, introspective and solitary process, make it fun, encourage teamwork, keep people motivated and enthusiastic and allow them to use their creativity, in one day, with a long lunch break. With just two facilitators. We designed and arranged a briefing meeting with 12 WCS team leaders. At this we presented a detailed document briefing them on their role in guiding and feeding back the team discussions to give us some extra arms and legs on the day. We also identified what kind of issues might come up and added these into the briefing pack. The agenda for the day included: Putting participants on a change barometer to gauge comfort with change Individual survey work and group discussion about personal experience of change Presentation of the Kubler Ross grief curve and group discussion about individuals’ position on it Identification of areas of potential loss in change Working to make personal change – and actions Working to make team change – and action Video exercise to develop group visions of the future Tee-shirt decoration – the back showing what people leave behind, the front showing what people are going to do A fashion parade to complete the day Outcome/testimonial "I felt the exercises were just right. Ours is not an organisation that sits quietly in a classroom setting – they need to be getting involved, doing things. The mixture of elements provided by Karen was completely appropriate for our audience. The feedback has been excellent, with many employees saying that they enjoyed the day, but more importantly, they feel that we went back to our core values and are strengthened because of it. The process was fun to do, expertly and enthusiastically delivered, and the preparation pack for our team leaders was excellent – clear and pragmatic. I recommend fe3 highly." June O’Sullivan, CEO, LEYF
United by values
The leadership of West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) wanted to create one organisation aligned behind a clear vision and mission, underpinned by coherent values and consistent behaviours. Karen was engaged by Proventure Consulting. She developed the project plan, undertook most of the research for the new values, designed interview guides, workshops and focus group processes and wrote the final recommendations for this work. The approach Karen’s view about values is that they are often un-named and stay in the background. What people see is the behaviours – a legitimate concern for the organisation. So rather than begin with the identification of ‘values’, questions to the management team asked: The purpose of the organisation and whether this was uniformly understood To describe the culture What were the strong and weak elements of the organisation What WCYA would need to do to achieve its objectives The idea was to create a process where all members of the organisation had a say in the new behaviours with the values ‘emerging’ from the behaviours. Behaviours can’t be changed unless they go into a welcoming environment where mistakes are tolerated, and learning encouraged – so Karen also asked questions about the changes needed in the system if new behaviours were to ‘stick’. Workshops with the management team presented the information from their sessions and through discussion. Karen developed an initial rough version of the behaviours and the values they implied. This was then tested through employee focus groups. Karen designed the focus group process which WYCA’s HR and marketing teams delivered through the organisation, gathering feedback from more than 70 employees (roughly 25% of the workforce). All of the feedback, from all corners of the organisation, and including feedback from external political and commercial stakeholders, was examined, analysed and incorporated into the development of the final report. Outcome/testimonial "Given the very different organisations in WYCA, we were delighted that the approval rating from employees was so high – nearly 90% of the workforce agreed that the values and behaviours were ‘right’ for WYCA. The recommendations for the behaviours and values within WYCA were accepted and further adopted by the marketing and HR teams giving a sense of being different from the past and reflecting the change wanted and happening within WYCA." “Thank you for conducting a highly useful workshop today, I came away from the session feeling highly motivated to enact the changes which the group discussed. I will be working with my OMT colleagues to follow this through and to make the improvements which WYCA as a whole will benefit from. It was terrific.” (Management Team Member) “It’s a terrific piece of work.” Ben Still, CEO of WYCA
Improving performance through management
Undertaking a Performance Efficiency Programme (PEP), the Ministry of Justice was required by Government to identify £1bn worth of savings. The MoJ addressed this though a performance evaluation programme, and managers requested skills training to support them to improve performance. Performance management had been executed poorly in the MoJ, primarily because individuals wished to avoid confrontation /unpleasantness. There was a large percentage of people routinely awarded “not met” on appraisal objectives, but performance issues remained unaddressed. We designed and delivered a programme on performance management for the Ministry of Justice, specifically the Justice Academy, which ran for six months. Project deliverables The programme developed adopted a blended learning approach and aimed to meet the specific needs of the participants by using individual cases. Participants were supported after the workshop, particularly through Justice Academy, but also through other routes, such as peer support, email and telephone coaching. The programme involved: - Storytelling and narrative analysis for each participant - Scenario development and role play - Video to record role plays for analysis and skills development - Short, specific skills training sessions addressing individual participant needs The design of the programme underlined that: - Storytelling encourages reflection, often producing change on its own - Relevance of training to participant needs is key to retention - Peer involvement aids problem solving Outcome/testimonial: "fe3 has designed and delivered three new innovative and impactful learning interventions for the Justice Academy, the learning function within the Ministry of Justice. Centred around individuals facing leadership, performance or stakeholder challenges, these events involved people writing an account, or story, detailing a difficult relationship they are facing, from which Karen developed practice sessions involving video work, group feedback and skills input (known as skillsbites) – designed specifically for the individuals involved. These events were quite high-risk for a mainly traditional organisation such as MoJ, but were unique in that they offered delegates a chance to get individualised attention and input, rather than a ‘one-size fits all’ generic training event. These have been a great success, with delegates reporting real shifts in their thinking and post-event behaviour back in their ‘day jobs’. For example, “the story board was wonderful, with the support and feedback from the facilitator, the experience was so much better because it was real” and “the role play and video playback was like a road to Damascus”. As well as the positive results for delegates and the organisation, working with Karen has been a real pleasure -she’s creative, yet grounded, highly committed and conscientious and not afraid to challenge. She also brings a wealth of knowledge and skill." Paul Rudd MoJ Director
