Background

Yeovil College, located in the Southwest of England, has been serving its community for more than 135 years. Unlike many colleges in the UK that are facing challenges and even closing, Yeovil College has experienced significant growth. Today, it provides education to over 5,000 Further Education students and employs 400 staff members. The college is also undertaking an ambitious £60+ million project to develop a modern and inspiring campus.

When Quiver Management was awarded the contract for a multi-year leadership development program, the college’s management culture was primarily reactive, with insufficient emphasis on team member development or long-term planning. Most of the managers had been promoted from within the college, and prior to this initiative, there had not been a comprehensive leadership development programme offered across the institution.

Comprehensive development programme

Quiver Management’s bid covered leadership development for 41 leaders at the college including:

1. Team development for the senior management team (SMT), with the SMT also being the first group to receive individual coaching alongside a programme of team development activities.
2. Individual coaching for all managers supporting them to grow in their current role and become leaders of the future.
3. Leadership skills training sessions for 41 senior and middle managers in the College Management Team (CMT), with 6 leadership training workshops across an academic year based on themes agreed with the principalship. 
4. Programme support to design the programme, get buy-in to the development activities, and evaluate the programme on an ongoing basis.

The programme is a multi-year development activity over 3 or more years.

Team development for the Senior Management Team

To support this, Quiver Management facilitated quarterly team development workshops with the SMT. During the first workshop, the objective was to identify areas for the team’s development. This involved exploring each team member’s personality, style, and preferences using psychometric assessments. We also conducted an online Quiver Team Assessment (QTA) to gauge how the SMT members rated their collective performance.

The QTA is a proprietary tool based on the widely known Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing model. It is specifically designed for senior leadership teams and outlines the characteristics and behaviours of teams at various stages of development, including high-performing teams. The QTA questionnaire increases the team’s awareness of their current stage of development and outlines the steps needed to reach high performance. This tool is invaluable for helping the team evaluate their performance and focus on their development efforts.

From the first workshop, the SMT gained several key insights:

• A shared vocabulary concerning personalities, styles, and behaviours within the team.
• Improved relationships and more effective interactions through greater understanding and empathy for one another.
• Recognition of the team’s effectiveness and clarity on what the journey to a higher-performing team will entail.
• Consensus on key focus areas for the team’s development.
• A personalised DISC profile report that they can use for their personal development and further exploration in coaching sessions.

Following the initial SMT workshop, Quiver Management coaches continued to support the team’s development by offering quarterly group sessions and individual coaching for each SMT member. The content of these tailored team sessions included:

• Team development activities based on the focus areas identified in the first workshop.
• Team coaching to enhance self-awareness and interactions.
• Facilitation of learning reviews and themed activities.
• Discussions on real strategic and operational challenges faced by the team.

Together, these team and individual coaching sessions quickly built momentum, leading to a stronger leadership team and enhanced leadership capabilities, impact, and role modelling.

Individual coaching

To aid in the development of each leader, all participants in the program receive six monthly coaching sessions with one of Quiver Management’s four experienced coaches. In the initial six months, the coaching primarily focused on the nine members of the SMT. After this period, the coaching will be extended to the next tier of leaders.

Group Leadership Skills Training

The goal of the leadership training is to improve the quality and impact of leadership throughout the college. All 41 middle and senior leaders participate in these sessions together. The training is highly practical and interactive, allowing managers to leave with tools they can immediately apply in their work environment to create a positive impact.

The leadership training covers three main areas, including topics such as:

For many of these courses, Quiver Management already has generic materials ready and customizes the content and workshops specifically for Yeovil College. The workshops are conducted in person, and participants also have access to online study materials before and after the sessions through Quiver Management’s online Academy platform. This pre-work includes relevant self-assessments, such as DISC profiles and leadership style evaluations.

Coaching Programme Support

To ensure the successful delivery of the coaching and training programme, the Quiver Management programme lead provides consultancy support, which includes:

• Designing and delivering a kick-off session to secure management buy-in and foster anticipation for the development initiative.
• Offering advice on establishing a suitable process for selecting leaders for coaching and ensuring a good match with coaches.
• Providing guidance on how coachees and their line managers can agree on development areas before their coaching sessions.
• Supporting the selection of topics to cover in group leadership training sessions.
• Setting up robust evaluation and feedback processes.
• Offering recommendations based on insights gathered from these feedback processes.

Results so far

The programme is currently in its ninth month, and the college has already seen significant improvements:

• There has been a marked improvement in the performance of the Senior Management Team (SMT), as indicated by a re-assessment using the QTA, which showed enhancements across all six areas, moving the team firmly into the Performing stage. The SMT is now more cohesive, self-aware, proactive, and strategically focused.
• The CEO has noticed a genuine shift in his trust towards the SMT, feeling confident to leave them to manage significant incidents, reassured by their capabilities.
• The SMT provided 100% positive feedback regarding the quality of the workshops, the trainers, and the value of their learning. They particularly appreciated the fun, engaging, and interactive formats of the team workshops.
• Even after just a few training sessions, the leadership training has received high feedback scores. It is recognised as well-organised and engaging, with managers valuing the emphasis on practical application, knowledge sharing, and the positive impact it is having on their leadership approach and effectiveness.

Testimonials:

Clare Hammond-Sayer, HR Director

“Anybody using Quiver Management will be lucky to have them as they have made a huge difference to the college management team already. From experience the most effective leadership training should be aimed at developing a powerful leadership mindset, which far exceeds the standard leadership training strategies. Quiver Management deliver just that through their practical applications as well as one to one coaching sessions which further develops individual managers within a leadership setting. Thank you QM”

Mark Bolton, CEO

We have enjoyed very positive progress at Yeovil College over recent years, a strong sense of purpose, shared values and relative stability in the leadership team. We’ve been hungry for development for some time, but stuff had got in the way of embarking on the next phase of our development. We were committed to making this happen in 2024 and to continuing with support for at least 3 years. We were initially focused on practical tools that could be quickly utilised and building common language. Jan and the team have utilised their skills and experience to develop a programme of activity that delivers rapid impact to ensure engagement and commitment. The programme is building impact and positivity, Quiver Management continues to listen and is curious about how we can adapt and improve, it’s just what we wanted and the continued rapid positive direction of our college in terms of growth and quality of our curriculum would not have been the same without the development we have enjoyed with Jan and the team. It’s been great and we will continue to work with Quiver Management in the coming years – thanks Jan, Karen, Nick and Dave.