Background:
AMA had been providing certificated training when an opportunity to provide coaching skills to the senior team, across the whole council came up. Over seventy senior managers including CEOs had already attended a one-day coaching master-class and so had a real understanding of the power of coaching.
Challenge:
A mix of senior staff including CEOs would be involved across several cohorts timed to co-incide with available funding streams. Different Councils would be hosting each cohort. The programme to run for a minimum of four years.
Solution:
A three-day course was developed providing managers with coaching-skills to apply immediately in their work. The days of training were separated by 4-6 week intervals. These intervals provided a learning journey and using co-coaching between training-days. Elsewhere, this had been shown unequivocally to accelerate learning AND final competences.
The design was based upon immediately-practical learning that delegates would take back to work and use effectively. Each training day, rather than each cohort, were to be hosted at different locations.
Outcomes:
The course continued to be successful and to roll out for over four years. Working with the Council we also developed the AMA ‘training effectiveness tool’ (based upon 360 survey data) to monitor the genuine change in manager’s skills, behaviours and performance in the workplace. This data was published in The Training Journal, July, 2010.