Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
How values-led leadership can benefit your team
Professor David Morley | Carnegie School of Sport
We caught up with Professor David Morley, Head of Subject in the Carnegie School of Sport to hear more about shared his experience of using values-led conversations to appreciate current ways of working.
What were the team's aims?
From the outset, David spoke passionately about his desire to recognise the great culture and working practices already present in the School of Sport. Grounding his ideas in research, he turned to the appreciative enquiry approach – recognising where you are already excelling and focusing on the positives.
David and his team committed time for planning purpose-driven values activities for a session at the school away day in July 2022. He wanted to be explicit about the importance of people in the school’s five-year plan and the how – i.e., how colleagues work together being critically important.
“We wanted to shine a spotlight on excellent practice."
What activities were planned?
Led by David, the Heads of Subjects co-created the sessions. As LBU have a clear set of organisational values, strong foundations were already in place. They wanted to build on the six values by enabling colleagues to connect them to their own work. Creating this type of connection felt even more important in today’s complex and hybrid world of work. He kept the presentation short and took care in the introductions to make sure the environment was right, so that people felt comfortable voicing their opinions.
On the day, they split into subject groups, ranging from 18-60 colleagues to discuss three topics in 90-minutes ‘episodes’:
- Appreciating current ways of working that enable a high performing team
- Articulating and amplifying LBU's values
- Using the values to sense the tension in ways of working and propose alternatives.
What has been the impact?
The sessions were very well received by colleagues and David and his team received some fantastic anecdotal feedback. Colleagues said they really appreciated the time to reflect as a collective.
David says he knows the first two episodes were successful because conversations are still alive and informing how they work. For example, the essence of the discussions informed:
- the school’s writing retreat in September
- planning teams’ development
- broader strategic work, such as the colleague survey action planning
- They hope to see the discussions reflected in this year’s colleague survey, as colleagues had space to fully consider what they truly value about LBU as a place of work.
“We’re seeing ripples right across the school. The opportunity to reflect as a collective was brilliant; to say, 'this is us'”.
What learning would David share with others?
The team invested a lot of time planning; preparation began in March/April for the away day in July. It was important to ensure the senior team were on board from the beginning and leaders had the freedom to adapt activities based on what would work best in their teams. The longer lead in time also helped the team think through what might surface in conversations that would need an immediate response.
“The discussions provide a foundation for appreciation of cultural ways of working together."
Finally, on the day whilst the first two episodes were covered in depth, it was agreed to revisit the third episode to follow the flow of conversations. This will be the next stop on their journey - in February 2023 the school plan to set up mini ‘experiments’, using the shared understanding they created to explore sources of tension in ways of working to work even better together.
For more information on values-led team development, please contact the People and OD team at pod@leedsbeckett.ac.uk.
