Questions?: What is a core competency of excellent leadership?
Do your managers have problems communicating at different levels or situations?
How does this impact on the success of an organisation?
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Background: The Retail Division of HBOS, who employ over 40,000 employees identified that they didn’t have sufficient leaders coming through the ranks, specifically in terms of ability and skill to take on more
senior director positions. To address this issue, their Learning & Development team were asked to research and put together a Leadership Academy for Retail that included a competency framework articulating ‘what good leadership looks like’. As part of the research they found that great communication is a core competency of leaders and therefore included ‘communication’ as one of the 15 core segments of a leadership competency framework .
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The Solution/Process: Q. Learning worked with the head of the Retail Leadership Academy to deliver a programme that would demonstrate strategies to communicate effectively and successfully. The programme would not just focus on skill sets but would look at behaviour, values and beliefs. A two-day dynamic and highly interactive ‘Communicate with Impact’ programme was offered to senior middle managers with the objective to increase their impact, confidence and charisma in their communication. The managers were able to explore some of their own barriers to being charismatic and having impact. They were supported in taking risks and pushing the boundaries. The programme offered a mixture of input, discussion, coaching, feedback and performance.
All the managers benefited from the following;

• Review of the different levels at which communication can take place and how to operate to be an effective and credible communicator.
• Understanding the key language patterns, which may explain why communication is easier with some people than others.
• Learned how to gain information which can help to understand another person's world, and how it can be used to influence them.
• How to build rapport and establishing credibility with even the most challenging of people.
• Know how to ensure that the messages communicated are the ones you want to communicate.
• Being more aware of the power of the voice.
• Received feedback to help them have even more impact and presence so that they can be an influential communicator.
• Had the opportunity to put their learning into practice in a variety of situations and know that they can transfer their learning back into the workplace.

“An excellent course – I really enjoyed it and it was really well delivered and put together.” Manager, Customer Management.
Communicating with Impact

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Outcome: Since the programme has been rolled out many of the senior managers within HBOS Retail have improved their communication leadership competency, giving them the skills and ability to go on to achieve a board level position with the business.

Using the practical skills gained from the programme, the managers feel that they can now develop strategies to communicate successfully to people at all levels. Their confidences have been given a major boost.

HBOS Retail have seen the impact this programme has made on their managers and believe that their leadership structure is developing and they can now identify managers who will be appointed to senior director positions in the future.

Trevor Wheatly, Manager, Leadership & Development, “Due to the demand and success of this course, we have had to increase the number of courses we are offering in the second year.”

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