Sheffield City Council (SCC) worked with The Leadership Centre to design and deliver a year-long development programme for a specific cohort of senior leaders, at a pivotal moment of organisational, political and system transition. SCC had already defined its ambition of being a high-performing organisation that worked in service of a dynamic, regional and global city – an initiative known as ‘Future Sheffield’. The programme focused on supporting a cohort of Directors and Assistant Directors (a group described as the Corporate Leadership Team (CLT)) to strengthen their personal and group leadership capabilities, build a collective leadership identity and purpose, and play a more confident and connected role in delivering the council’s Future Sheffield ambitions.
What did the work set out to achieve?
We worked with SCC to draw out, make sense of and co-design the most important areas for development. It was clear that creating space away from day-to-day operational delivery and decision-making to allow thinking about the future was a priority. The CLT was facing a multitude of adaptive challenges which required new concepts and practices and there was an opportunity to enable this group to lead its own reinvention – showing up differently to shape the new world which lay ahead.
In particular, the programme was designed to:
- Build individual and group leadership capability in complex, uncertain conditions and develop a network of peer support
- Prevent people from taking refuge in silos and, instead, create a stronger sense of identity and purpose for this cross-directorate group
- Develop skills which allowed leaders to collaborate more effectively across organisational boundaries
- Support participants to contribute more effectively to Future Sheffield and the council’s wider transformation and financial sustainability agenda
Underlying the work was a recognition that this group had experienced little structured leadership development in recent years, and that unlocking their potential was critical to the organisation’s future success.
Who participated?
The programme worked with a cohort of 14 senior leaders, primarily Directors and Assistant Directors. The individuals held significant organisational influence and responsibility but came from across different directorates and had not previously operated as a cohesive leadership group.
Features of the programme
The programme was delivered over a year and comprised six in-person sessions in Sheffield, spaced approximately six to eight weeks apart. We asked participants to bring their work into their learning and their learning into their work and encouraged work between sessions in self-identifying learning sets.
Key features included:
- A strong emphasis on personal leadership in a collective context
- Developing a group identity and learning the value of public narrative
- Building an understanding of the wider system and power dynamics
- Exploration and application of adaptive leadership concepts and how they help when working in complexity and breaking down silos
- Understanding immunity to change and using their adaptive leadership learning to explore how leaders can avoid getting in the way of their own goals
- Space to work on live organisational challenges linked to Future Sheffield
- A deliberately flexible design that adapted to what was emerging in the room rather than following a fixed script
The approach balanced support and challenge, combining conceptual input with reflective and practical exercises that helped participants make sense of their own leadership patterns and experiment with new ways of working.
What impact did the programme have?
As the programme progressed, participants began to describe a growing sense of trust, confidence and shared purpose. Leaders reported being more willing to challenge and support one another, and more able to collaborate across traditional organisational boundaries.
“Mark was a joy to work with; understanding, challenging, inquisitive and supportive… Whilst we had clear success criteria and outcomes for the overall programme and each session, the approach was flexible and adapted to the ‘here and now’ issues in the room. I don’t think any session ran as planned, as both Mark and Debbie were highly perceptive at picking up undercurrents and unsaid issues and adapting the session to tease these out.”
A significant shift occurred when the group chose to formalise itself as a self-sustaining directors’ cohort, arranging its own regular meetings and continuing collective practice beyond the facilitated programme. They described being a lot stronger and more united than they had previously thought. The group was also much more prepared to get hold of knotty challenges and work on them together.
“There is no doubt of the impact the Leadership Centre had on this cohort of senior leaders, and the outputs and deliverables are going way beyond the end of [the] programme. As someone who was part of the programme, I can personally vouch for the personal learning and the impact on the wider team, how we work more collaboratively, being prepared to challenge and support in a way not seen before.”
Reflections
The programme demonstrates how investing in a previously under-supported layer of leadership can unlock significant organisational capacity. By developing individuals, nurturing a collective identity and connecting both to strategic ambition and purpose, the programme helped establish a confident cadre of leaders equipped to play a central role in delivering Future Sheffield.