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Posts from the ‘People & Organisational Development’ Category

Welcome to my new website

May 3rd, 2012

Heather Johnston

Thankyou for visiting my new website and blog. I will be updating it with various thoughts, book reviews, articles and links that I think would be useful for you to know about. If you would like to get occasional updates and newsletters then please do sign up on this page. Please be rest assured that your email address will not be sold on to others and you will have the option to unsubscribe at any time.

In my services page I have also highlighted the range of services that I now offer, however if there is a piece of work that you would be interested in exploring and it is not detailed there then please do get in touch as I may be able to help or know someone who can!

If you prefer facebook as a way of connecting, I am now also linked with a mindtrip facebook page By ‘liking’ this page you will get updates into your newsfeed from my blog.

Finally, any feedback on my new website or comments on my blogs are very welcome!

With best wishes

Heather

 

Introversion and Leadership

April 13th, 2012

Heather Johnston

This is a topic close to my heart and also that of Susan Cain who has just been in the UK doing a book tour of her new book: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. As a coach, I coach a large number of clients who are Introverts in the increasingly more Extroverted world of work. The book talks about what Introverts can bring to the party, how introverts can help themselves and how they and Extroverts can capitalise on their strengths.

To find out more about what she has to say have a look at the following TED talk:

or have a listen to an audience interactive talk a few weeks ago at the RSA Susan Cain at the RSA

or have a look at the book which just launched in the UK.

Behavioural Change & Transitions Management

Services

Are you Implementing digital solutions?Restructuring? Outsourcing? Going through a merger? Reorganising and instigating a redundancy programme? Something else?

Mindtrip has experience of helping both leaders and staff to capitalise, adapt and survive through change and transitions. We will work with you to build and deliver effective behavioural change strategies that complement and enhance your business change. We can also deliver facilitated workshops along with individual and team coaching sessions that enhances understanding and the impact of behavioural change and transitions.

We use evidence based approaches, models and techniques that are embedded in the behavioural sciences including social and cognitive psychology and behavioural sciences as well as latest thinking from neuroscience and psychological coaching.

We help organisations plan for and for people to understand the emotional and social impact of transitions, help them re-assert control and open up 2 way communication and design.

For those leaving an organisation we can offer tailored careers transitions coaching and transitions workshops that focus on helping people ‘get back onto their feet’, process and understand the emotions of the transition that they are going through and support them on finding the best next step for them in their career.

Case Study

ltw-logoWe worked with London TravelWatch at a time of large change helping both the staff and managers process and deal with the impact of a large downsize. We worked with them to deliver two all staff workshops around understanding and dealing with change and ensuring consistency of approach in the new organisation going forward. This latter piece of work focusing on developing the organisations values and understanding how they are lived day to day.

Thanks for delivering such a light touch but powerful workshop yesterday. It did just what I hoped

Chief Executive London TravelWatch

Herbert smithlogoOver a 12-18 month month period I designed and assembled a team of 5 consultants, to deliver a large cross departmental change programme “Good to Excellent’  across support services with the focus on building a sense of community and customer service for internal and external clients. The design had 4 phases including workshops and skills boosters.

To read more about the programme and its design please click :  Herbert Smith Good to excellent Programme This was written by the OD department at Herbert Smith for an award submission.

OD- happy, healthy and productive workplaces

Services

Research shows that developing a supportive organisational culture is as important if more than important than just focusing on individual employee interventions e.g. health and wellbeing days and training.

As part of our Organisational Development offering we will work with you to think about the wider culture that your Leadership, Management and people policies and practices create within your organisation. Through a consultancy approach, informed by wellbeing and staff survey metrics, we will look to help inform your wider people, health and wellbeing strategies, considering the lifecycle of where you are as an organisation; the natural lifecycle of employees within the organisation and the different evidence based elements that combine to create flourishing organisations.

Consideration will be taken of how ‘joined up’ your approach is, its sustainability, employee happiness, organisational culture, structure, policies and context and the impact of external influences and growth. Through taking a stock check of current practices we can work together to think about how this influences employee engagement within the organisation and work with you to build on best practices to support your organisation’s and individual’s positive future growth and wellbeing. Some of the work that I provide includes

  • Top team strategy workshops and team awaydays/retreats tailored to team needs
  • Review and/or writing people strategy
  • Writing a tailored wellbeing strategy
  • Working closely with your inhouse or other consultants to provide joined up people practices that are aligned to company values and culture and have staff wellbeing at their heart
  • Tailored workshops and facilitated sessions around eliciting company values and business strategy
  • Tailored workshops and online learning focused around healthy management and employee wellbeing
  • Team wellbeing reviews and specialist people reviews to provide objective feedback to inform your action planning and strategies
  • One to one coaching
  • Strengths based learning interventions
  • Mindfulness

Case studies

Perrywood-LogoI have been working for 18 months with Perrywood and award winning family run garden centre based in Essex and Suffolk . They have grown considerably with their success and needed help in crystallising their people strategy, finalising their values and implementing an approach to support staff wellbeing. The work started with running a happiness at work survey to establish key areas of focus and then writing and implementing a people strategy as well as a wellbeing strategy. We have taken an iterative holistic approach that looks at both the structure, policies and processes as well as culture, L&D, staff feedback and involvement as well as establishing partnerships with occupational health and EAP providers.

mind.logo.blueI have worked with two branches of mind on looking at their own staff happiness at work through an all staff  evidence based happiness survey. After completing the survey I then debriefed the results to the top teams and also to staff. Both organisations then used the results of these surveys to inform their people strategy going forward.

 

pmi-logoI worked with the Pensions Management Institute to design and facilitate a whole organisation business planning and values day ahead of the introduction of auto enrolment. These types of days are a great way of bringing teams together, to gather views of everyone on organisational strategy and values so that people feel included and heard. My approach is to add a bit of creativity in the mix so you won’t see hours of powerpoint slides!

Team Coaching & Development

Services

I bring a strategic consultancy approach to team development, designing tailored events for 5-100 people focusing on where you are now, where you want to be and what you need to do to move forward. Focus will be both on the task, process and people aspects of the team’s development be it development within an intact senior leadership team or getting teams to work effectively together across an organisation.

Mindtrip delivers a variety of approaches to team development using coaching and creative techniques, analysis from instruments and surveys as well as the latest academic research and thinking from business schools.

Case Study

Herbert smithlogoPrior to Herbert Smith’s merger, I worked over a period of Ten years with the Information and Systems department. During that time I worked with them to build a sense of team within the Leadership team, each sub team within the department, across the overall department and also inter relationships between the department and other departments they worked closely with. Work included

  • Consulting, designing and facilitating tailored nine yearly top team  leadership offsites and 1:1 coaching
  • Designing and facilitating intra departmental team events
  • Designing and facilitating a series of tailored department wide team leader management development 
  • Designing and facilitating an all department conference

We needed a facilitator to help us in the critical task of coalescing the senior management team. Heather did exactly that and lived up to out high expectations.

Group Chief Information Officer, Herbert Smith LLP (now retired)