Jisc.

The Challenge

Jisc wanted to support their managers to become more self-aware and effective leaders.

The Approach

Following consultation with staff, we decided to adopt The Institute’s leadership competency framework to support our Institute Approved leadership programme. We felt the competencies aligned well with our in-house values (which we call Guiding Principles) and we liked the evidence-based approach The Institute had taken in developing the competencies.

An integral part of our programme was the creation of a bespoke 360 tool based on The Institute’s competencies which aligned to our Guiding Principles. All participants who attended the programme completed their 360 profile and received feedback from their colleagues in relation to their leadership competencies.

As part of the programme, we gave all members access to The Institute of Leadership and associated resources. This complemented the 360 tools so participants could take a deeper dive into a few of the competencies based on the feedback in their report. For example, if they appeared to have a blind spot in the area of ‘collaboration’ they could easily access a whole range of resources and articles to support their learning and development in that particular area.

We also used the leadership competencies to help participants interpret their personality profiles (we used the Insights Discovery model). This showed how the leadership competencies mapped to the colour energies as part of Insights so participants could understand where there may be common themes, areas of strength and development across both diagnostic tools.

The Results

In the first leadership programme, 88 participants completed the 360 reports and received a feedback session with one of our trained, internal facilitators. Following their feedback session, participants were invited to describe the impact of the 360 report on their development as a leader, and for the organisation as a whole. Our leadership programme is open to both our existing leaders and managers as well as some aspiring leaders and is formed of mixed hierarchy cohorts.

The following quotes demonstrate the value of using The Institute’s leadership competencies as part of the 360 report:

• "The actions I will take forward from the 360 report will benefit initiatives I lead, my team and my manager.’"
• "Taken in conjunction with Insights from the colour energies analysis, I will use the feedback to inform the ways in which I liaise with colleagues, depending on the context and the objectives of the engagement."
• "I’ll make more use of my soft leadership skills, listen more, and be braver in challenging colleagues and standard ways of thinking. "
• "I intend to strive to be more original and creative, and work harder to see the bigger picture."
• "My biggest takeaway is that I still let my internal critic hamper my confidence and desire to develop/progress. A key action from the meeting is to look at coaching to help overcome something that has been an issue for me throughout my career."
• "It was a huge confidence boost and has reignited my ambitions to develop further."
• "A complete blind spot was the communication of our social impact. Over the years, I’ve become so embroiled in just getting on with the work I’ve forgotten that I need to make time to reinforce the wider impact individuals, and the team have on Jisc but also our customers and beyond."
• (Following the 360 feedback) "I now continually seek feedback from others in positive and negative situations, looking to increase my self-awareness and develop my leadership practice."
• "The most significant impact has been that the feedback in key areas is very consistent, from all participants, providing some reliable information for me to take action/change, and advises on where I should keep doing what I’m doing."
• "Combined with Action Learning Sets and Jisc’s Mentoring Programme this 360 feedback was incredibly valuable in helping me improve my communication and influencing skills, especially in the context of a challenging professional relationship"

See below for an extract of how we used The Institute’s leadership competencies to create our 360 tool:

Through this visual, which forms part of their 360 report, participants on the programme can clearly see how their self-rating against the competencies aligns with the combined feedback from their selected colleagues.

The extract below shows how we built out the behaviours for one of the leadership competencies ‘achievement’ and aligned them to our Guiding Principles.

The link to our personality profile, ‘Insights’ can be seen below in how we have mapped the leadership behaviours for the competency of ‘achievement’ across to the Insights model:

We will offer participants on the leadership programme the opportunity to re-complete their 360 report 6 months after completion so that they can see how their approach to leadership has progressed.

We have found that The Institute’s leadership framework has provided a really solid foundation for our programme that aligns with our Guiding Principles and creates a springboard for further personal development via the online resources.

Solutions Deployed:

• Institute Approved - our programme accreditation scheme.

• Leadership development pathway - our tailored programme built on our award-winning MyLeadership platform with digital credentials issued on completion

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