Pivotal Performance

Success Stories

Weatherbys Thoroughbred Ltd

Objective

Weatherbys is a highly successful organisation with its origins in the eighteenth century. The business serves the racing industry and is a multi-disciplined company, focused on service and built on strong values.
Changes in the legislation governing the racing industry and an internal restructure intensified the demands made by the company on the senior management team. This in turn lead HR manager Jane Olds to look for a training provider able to understand and work within the company’s unique culture to grow the ability of the senior team to think more commercially and get the best from their people, and from themselves.
Jane Gillham and Tim French from Pivotal Performance were delighted to take up the challenge of working with Weatherbys to grow leadership performance from good to excellent. The overall objective was to work together to assist the senior team in their understanding of the future strategy for the continued success of the business and the part that they can play within it.

The project had four elements

• Research
• Bespoke training delivery
• In-company mentoring and project work
• Ongoing support

Research

Recognising the unique nature of Weatherbys business, Jane and Tim first held informal interviews with the target audience. This proved invaluable in learning about the business, and shaping the programme. The team had a wide variety of experience and leadership style, but all had an open mind towards the programme and were interested to learn more about the content. Following the interviews, Jane, Tim and Jane together with Weatherbys CEO Paul Greeves discussed what needed to be done on both sides to make the programme successful. Pivotal undertook to write a series of three training modules covering leadership, change management, team working, coaching and managing performance.

Bespoke Training

The module content was designed at two levels. The first was to promote strategic thinking and challenge to the status quo. The second level was to reinforce and refresh some practical key skills, such as motivation, time management and delegation. A key objective was to promote cross-functional working, and each module featured a high degree of discussion and debate which broke down barriers.

Some of the key themes addressed included:

• Influence  - how to manage upwards and recognise what is within the individual managers’ control
• Prioritisation – many managers knew what they should be doing to motivate staff but struggled due to perceived restraints on their time.
• Delegation – many managers were happy to admit that they kept too much work to themselves and recognised the need to change the way in which they work involving their teams.
• Coaching – one perceived barrier to delegation was the ability of staff to undertake tasks when delegated to. Many have the common belief of “I can do it better and faster.”  Coaching was incorporated into the programme to help managers to challenge their own attitude towards delegation and reduce the risk by ensuring that they are able to coach others to success.
• Self Awareness – MBTI was used to give managers greater awareness of their personal impact, communication style and ability to influence others communication style and choice of medium, such as email. In summary, this programme is about developing leadership style, increasing basic skills and changing attitudes. The latter will be the most challenging. Weatherbys is a highly successful commercial organisation, and this can often reduce the management team’s focus and drive for change. We helped them to understand the future strategy for the continued success of the business and the part that they can play within it.

In-company mentoring and project work

Commitment from Weatherbys played a vital role in the success of the project. Jane Olds secured senior level support and agreed sponsorship at director level for four work based projects. These projects formed a core part of the programme. Delegates from across the many disciplines in the company worked in groups, relating the learning from the course to live opportunites designed to develop the business. Their work and recommendations was presented to the Directors at the end of the final training module, and a commitment gained to further discuss the ideas generated. Each manager also left with a personal action plan, linked to their role and effectiveness in the business.

Ongoing Support

Throughout the programme, Jane and Tim were on hand to coach and offer advice by telephone, email and in person. Following on from the final module, a series of email prompts have been sent to delegates, reminding them of the key points learnt and asking how they have been implemented so far! A follow up workshop was also run two months on from the end of the workshop to assess progress and implementation of action points.

The success of this programme hinged on a true working partnership between Pivotal and Weatherbys. Pivotal’s approach was built around Weatherbys and included both training and support. Weatherbys, in return, gave 100% commitment, energy and a practical focus to the learning in the form of the project work undertaken.  
Jane Olds commented.