Leadership & Management Supervisor Programme - Case Study

A team of people working together to raise the flag

Background

The programme was the outcome of a thorough skill gap analysis within middle management of the international geotechnical and ground engineering contractor Van Elle.

The supervisor role was identified as the linchpin within the organisation. Supervisors were seen as a conduit between all stakeholders involved during a project.

The supervisors communicate with clients, manage their teams and other contractors and work with senior management. With all that in mind, it was identified that the supervisors were currently not required or had not received any training around leadership and management.

The challenges of the Leadership & Management Supervisor Programme

The objectives of the programme were unique in that the programme had to be mapped to the Construction Industry Training Board Leadership and Management Development Fund to access funding, but at the same time meet the unique objectives required of the organisation’s procedures ad weave in the organisation’s culture.

Additionally, the organisation operates across three key sectors, residential, infrastructure and construction. The departments that service these sectors had unique procedures. Due to operational restrictions, supervisors attending the programme were pulled from across the business as opposed to course attendance by department. This in turn meant the programme had to solidify the understanding of Van Elle’s mission, values and safety golden rules.

How was the programme built?

The programme was built from data accumulated from a survey that all the organisation’s supervisors completed. The survey asked questions around their current leadership and management skills, the training they had received regarding leadership and management and what they would like from a leadership and management programme.

This data was then presented to the learning and development team from which programme objectives and lesson plans were created with the input of multiple individuals across the organisation that included directors, contract managers, health and safety advisers, quality managers and commercial managers.

Find Your Mindset was then approached to build the training materials from the lesson plans. Before any development began, Find Your Mindset met the learning and development team and contracts managers to pitch their concept for how the programme should look.

What was Find Your Mindset’s vision for the programme?

Taking into consideration the learner’s needs and learning styles, it was imperative that the programme was built around engagement and interaction. The lesson plans had been built around 3 modules:

Module 1 – Setting up for success.

Module 2 – Essential site and work management.

Module 3 - Effective project closure process.

Find Your Mindset pitched a concept with the backdrop of a construction project from start to finish. However, instead of an emphasis on legislation and procedures, the programme concentrated on how managing human factors are essential to the supervisor role.

This was achieved by building scenarios around the interactions between the supervisors and fictional characters where character traits of all involved would have to be considered to solve problems.

The underlying theme throughout the programme was the relationship between responsibility, accountability and ownership. To support that theme, the following concepts were selected to help the supervisors develop leadership skills, problem solving skills, conflict management skills and culture building skills:

Chaos theory (the butterfly effect).
The cycle of conflict (the betari box).
Leadership styles.
The ABC model.
The SCARF model (manging the threat/reward response of the brain).
Giving and receiving feedback.

How was the programme received?

The following feedback was collated from the 3 cohorts that have currently attended the course:

‘Probably the best course I’ve done in over 20 years, thank you.’ – Glenn.

‘This course was brilliant. Highlighting what we do right and wrong and gave us more tools to better our job roles. Getting more form myself and motivate our crews to do the same. Also, James was engaging, interesting, and very approachable. He was very good at triggering us to learn and enjoy learning.’ – Craig.

‘Learned a lot from this course, very well tutored and engaging, enjoyed it. Well done to all involved.’ – John.