Category Archives: Staff Development Unit

Why become a mentor?

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January sees the launch of NU Mentoring – a revised generic mentoring scheme for all staff. The scheme offers staff the opportunity to be matched with a mentor with whom mentoringthey can explore their career options, discuss particular work-related challenges or simply have a sounding board outside of their line management structure. This is nothing new for the University – we’ve had successful mentoring schemes for many years but we want to make mentoring more widely available to staff at all levels.

For the scheme to be successful, we need to have a pool of good mentors, but we know how busy everyone is. Why should you give up your time to help someone else reach their potential? Being a mentor can be a very rewarding experience for a whole range of reasons:

  • Sharing your experiences and knowledge can confirm their value
  • You learn more from your own experiences by simplifying and distilling key lessons to others
  • You gain a sense of satisfaction from helping others achieve their potential
  • It provides an opportunity to challenge and be challenged in a positive way
  • It is an opportunity to ‘give something back’
  • Developing others is a useful skill and can help you in your own management development
  • You’ll learn something new with each new mentoring relationship – this might be a new skill or knowledge.

Becoming a mentor does require some energy and effort on your part. You will need to undertake training and take your responsibilities seriously. Most of the hard work, however, is undertaken by the mentee. Mentoring therefore is one of those situations where there is gain for both parties, it requires a small amount of time and effort on your behalf, but there can be real and tangible benefits for you and your mentee. Over time this will all add up to improved performance across the University, which is good for all of us.

Find out more about NU Mentoring at go.ncl.ac.uk/mentoring.

Julie Bullimore, Staff Development Adviser

 

Coaching for Improved Leadership Performance

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Coaching has proven to be one of the most powerful ways we can develop our leaders. It is a completely personalised development activity which can deliver increased understanding, improved performance, greater insight and lasting change. It creates a supportive environment that can develop your critical thinking skills, new ideas and approaches and most frequently enhances behaviours.

So how does it work?

Coaching is done in real time, in a one-to-one context with a qualified coach that has been selected for you, the individual leader, taking into account your development needs and preferences for learning.

Chalkboard with coaching concept

Normally we agree a series of 6 one-hour sessions around a series of coaching objectives. Performance improvements are measured at the end of what is typically a 9-12 month coaching programme. It’s not easy. The focus is on you and you are challenged and required at times, to think about things from different perspectives and to try new approaches. It is all done in a confidential environment and leaders should feel safe to share their concerns, fears and of course try out new strategies and approaches.

Broadly we talk about two types of coaching:

  1. Skills Coaching – to help you the leader, to develop a new functional competence e.g. making a presentation to a high profile audience, writing a faculty plan or reading a financial report for the first time.
  2. Transformational Coaching – where the coach helps the individual to find a workable approach to a new challenge e.g. engaging staff to produce a vision for the academic unit, working better with challenging colleagues, pulling away from operational work , stepping into a more strategic arena etc.

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Leaders find they often benefit from coaching when they are making a career transition from one key role to another. They appreciate the objective “sounding board” that coaching can offer.

Read more about leaders’ personal experiences of coaching at

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/staffdev/leadership/coaching/experiences.htm

Lynne Howlett, Assistant Director of HR (Leadership Talent)

Calling all newly appointed Heads of School, Institutes and Faculty Deans…

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If you haven’t done it already, this programme is for you.

The University’s Academic Leaders Programme is designed specifically for newly appointed Heads of School, Directors of Institutes and Deans* who are leading diverse groups of academic staff through complex change within an increasingly competitive environment. It runs jointly with Durham University and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.

The programme aims to develop the strategic thinking skills of its participants and also focuses on the skills of negotiating and influencing. Participants look at challenges facing the sector both nationally and internationally and they work on change management, emotional awareness and people management.

0023 callng all newly appointed heads of school photo

New Heads attend a series of 4 interactive modules, either at Durham or Newcastle Universities. They do a 360-degree feedback exercise and are involved in small problem solving groups.

The programme is highly valued as a collaborative way of supporting our new leaders as they start new roles. Some tell us they couldn’t have done their jobs without it. To find out more about what previous participants have to say about the programme click here.

 

If you are interested to find out more about our Academic Leaders Programme please contact lynne.howlett@newcastle.ac.uk or follow this link to our webpage.

To watch Nigel Harkness, Head of School of Modern Languages talking about his experience of the Academic Leaders Programme click here.

Lynne Howlett, Assistant Director of HR (Leadership Talent)

* Very occasionally spare places are offered, at the discretion of the faculty PVC, to Deputy Heads and/or academics who look likely to be stepping into a formal leadership role in the very near future.

360 degree feedback: What is it? How can it help?

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Why do we use 360 degree feedback?

What do you think makes a good leader? Is it their technical knowledge, their ability, their interpersonal skills? Research continuously shows that it is the emotional and relational aspects of leadership and management (in other words, people skills) that are critical and that the self-awareness is often the one thing that differentiates between an ok leader and an outstanding one. Research also shows that a leader’s knowledge about themselves and the impact they are having on those around them becomes more important the more senior they get. This is where 360 degree feedback is really powerful as it offers leaders a “reality check”. They get to hear how colleagues view their performance and receive feedback on what their colleagues think they could do to improve.

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So, how does it work? 

360 degree feedback involves gathering and comparing feedback on an individual leader’s performance from others who work in more senior roles, equivalent roles and more junior roles around them (hence the “360 degree” in the title). Most typically it is the leader’s line manager, peers and direct reports that are asked to provide feedback but in some cases feedback is sought from colleagues in other areas of the organisation or from outside the organisation.

Often the process is based around an online questionnaire; the leader completes a questionnaire themselves (self rates) and then asks colleagues to do the same (others’ ratings).

It is important to remember that the results are anonymised. Once questionnaires are received a report is generated which allows a comparison between the differences in perception between the leader’s own self-rating and the ratings given by others. A skilled facilitator then takes the leader thorough the report to help them understand the results, identify the impact they are having and where they may need to change their leadership behaviour which then informs development conversations and activities. We use 360 degree feedback here at the university but for some of our senior leaders the feedback is not gained via an online questionnaire, but by highly skilled executive-level coaches who telephone/meet the leaders’ key colleagues and gather the feedback face to face. This summarised feedback, which is often rich in real life examples, is then collated into a report and shared face-to-face with the leader.

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For leaders to develop, honest feedback is essential. Confidentiality throughout the 360 process is paramount and feedback is always themed and fed back anonymously. Many of our executives and leaders have told us that their 360 degree feedback exercises, whilst often not easy to do, have been the single, most powerful way that they have been able to reflect on their performance and develop their leadership impact. You can read some of their comments here

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/staffdev/leadership/tools/feedback/experience.htm

Lynne Howlett

General Wellbeing – from a NU Women Workshop

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I feel Resilient today. Even more than yesterday. Do you? Could this be due to the recent NU Women event on ‘Resilience’?

I have been consistently impressed with the quality of the speakers and workshops that NU Women have provided and again they did not disappoint. The events are open to all (not just women!) and are always very well attended. If you have not been to an event yet – I encourage you to attend. (Although they were operating a reserve list for this last event as they were so oversubscribed.)

What a powerful way to start a workshop. The room was buzzing with positivity! Try it with me now – visualise yourself at your best – imagine waking up tomorrow and being at your peak in terms of well-being, resilience to challenges etc. What would be different, who would notice and what would they say or do? (Note to self: Remember these feelings. File them away for when you need to call on them in challenging circumstances.) This was the discussion topic to share with our fellow diners and participants over a nourishing lunch.

Mandi Sherlock-Storey from Northumbria University, gave us an interesting look at identifying and knowing our strengths, using them daily and cultivating those strengths that enable us to deal with challenges. The examples she gave to illustrate her points were highly relevant and recognisable to many in the room. Giving us practical strategies and sensible advice to help us all to ‘have a word with ourselves’! Focusing on our circle of influence – those things we can influence rather than those that are out with our control was another useful nugget.

Reminding us to be mindful of our self-care and our five a day for well-being, Mandi also encouraged us to become “strengths spotters”. If we see a colleague excelling at using one of their strengths – tell them! I did this today – it made my colleague feel good. It made me feel great. It all contributes to that all important support network that we have at work. Mighty oaks from acorns grow. Why not try it for yourself and contribute to our organisation’s general wellbeing?

Emily Thomas

Footnote: Find out about NU Women’s next event on 29 June 2016 via their blog:

https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/nuwomen/forthcoming-events/improve-your-confidence-workshop-wednesday-june-29th/

 

What is OD?

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Writing this post at the end of my second week as the new Assistant Director of Organisational Development within the HR Service, I can honestly say, hand on heart, that I’m really enjoying it! I’ve already had lots of meetings with people within my own team in Staff Development, as well as people from other teams across the university and my first impressions are great people who are already doing many great things but who are ready to see where an OD approach can take us.  

Now I know many of you will be wondering, “What is OD?”. For me, in its simplest form, OD is about planning interventions in a strategic, holistic, joined-up way to improve organisational performance through people. My initial brief has been to come in with a fresh pair of eyes, being new to the sector, and really look at the way we do things around here in terms of people management and development, and question whether this what the organisation needs. This initial diagnostic work will help me to work with senior leaders to define the university’s  OD agenda to support culture change moving forward.

For the last 2 years I have been in a similar, national role with Ofsted, leading them on their culture change journey and I’m really looking forward to doing the same at the university. Already I can see that there is some great OD practice going on in pockets across the organisation, but at the same time I can see some fantastic opportunities for more inclusive and collaborative working with people at all levels.

I’m really looking forward to the challenge and would love to hear from you if you have any thoughts or suggestions on where we could make improvements to the way we do things here. Just drop me an email, give me a call or even better, let’s arrange to meet. The more informed I am, the better.

Lorraine Masters, Assistant Director of HR (Organisational Development)