Beyond coaching: how one team kept growing together

Intro

A recurring nightmare for any leadership developer like myself goes something like this: we run a programme, everyone learns some stuff and has fun, feedback scores are great, and then... nothing changes.

Face plant emoji.

The change challenge

Last week, the results of a collaboration survey came through about a long-term repeat client - NHS England's Data and Analytics leadership team, led by Ming Tang. They're responsible for around 1,500 people, they're being transitioned into the Department of Health and Social Care, and they have responsibility for driving A.I. and all the great expectations associated with it. This is a team with broad shoulders, doing work that will materially change the productivity and capability of the 5th largest organisation on the planet. They're also operating in a complex environment and with an uncertain future. So whilst collaboration isn't everything to this team, it's pretty close.

The process

We constructed the collaboration survey from criteria selected by the D&A leadership team themselves. We ran the survey in 2023 when they were in the midst of merging three large organisations into one. Two years later, they've just achieved a 31% improvement, across areas like 'openness', 'trust' and 'constructive conflict'. And I can tell you from some of the challenging days they 'stormed' their way through, this is not a team inclined to over-inflate its abilities.

The result

But the icing on the cake of this stellar result is that I haven't worked with this team for over a year. I didn't run this latest iteration of the survey, and it wasn’t my idea. This team is arguably under even more pressure now than they were when I left them, but that pressure has evidently helped strengthen their bonds, not break them. They've continued the work we started together, and it's substantially changed how they work together.

And I reckon if they can change that, there's a good chance they can change anything.