How to build skills and confidence in your organisation's future leaders

Here's the latest Travel Alert on your Inclusion Journey:

Brighton and Hove City Council increased confidence by 50% - here's how they did it

One common issue that we come across in a variety of organisations is this:

The organisation as a whole is highly diverse, but the leadership team isn't.

Why does this matter? Well, if your leadership team isn't representative of your staff team, or of the broader communities you serve, then:

• Leaders will have a harder time understanding their diverse staff and won't be able to support or get the best out of them effectively
• Leaders will take decisions that have limited appeal to diverse staff or customers / clients / service users
• Staff from underrepresented groups will assume there is no room for them to progress within an organisation that doesn't have people like them at the top, and you'll have a hard time retaining them
• Your organisation won't appeal to a diverse range of job applicants, as candidates from underrepresented groups will unconsciously assume that your organisation isn't for them
• Diversity within leadership teams drives better decision-making, stronger performance and more successful outcomes

Driving diversity at leadership level is not an overnight job

One member of a leadership team, when we discussed this topic, asked, "Which of us are you going to fire, then?"

Probably you, if that's how you're going to speak to people, but we don't have the power to fire anyone in this situation, and that's not the point anyway. The composition of your leadership team probably isn't going to change anytime soon, but what you can do now is take steps to enable different types of people to rise up to leadership positions.

You can look at ways to mitigate the impact of unconscious bias on the staff development and recruitment processes, and you can look at ways to support and empower staff from groups that are currently underrepresented.

And that's exactly what Brighton and Hove City Council did.

Brighton and Hove City Council: Diverse Talent Programme

Brighton and Hove City Council is the local authority of the city of Brighton & Hove, representing a population of around 290,395 people.

What was the problem?

The council identified from data analysis that staff from Black, minority ethnic and White Other backgrounds were not proportionately represented in senior roles. Their staff survey also shows them that these employees were less likely to believe they had opportunities to develop their careers.

Brighton and Hove City Council therefore asked Watch This Sp_ce to develop and facilitate an evolution of their Diverse Talent Programme.

How did we help?

We developed a bespoke programme specifically for the council, which ran for six months.

The programme included:

• Matching each Participant with a Sponsor in a senior role, who would develop their relationship with the Participant, and meet with them regularly to mentor them?
• Skills and confidence training sessions with Watch This Sp_ce for all Participants
• Individual career coaching sessions with Watch This Sp_ce for all Participants
• Work on career development plans throughout the programme

The Sponsors also had training sessions with the Watch This Sp_ce team on subjects such as Allyship, Unconscious Bias, Inclusive Leadership, and more. This encouraged Sponsors to learn about the experiences of the people they were working with, gain skills that would help them effectively provide support, and to network with other Sponsors.?

We collected feedback from both Sponsors and Participants throughout the programme, to enable us to develop the sessions and adapt as we moved along. People were open about frustrations in progressing to next level roles, which meant that everyone could have open conversations about how to address issues.?

The Participants networked during their sessions and formed strong relationships which have continued beyond the programme.?

How is it going?

Brighton and Hove City Council saw some significant results after the implementation of the Watch This Sp_ce Diverse Talent Programme.

• 27% of participants were promoted within the first year of the programme’s completion
• A further 47% have applied for new, more senior roles
• 40% said they felt more confident to progress to their next role
• 50% said they were more confident in their communication skills for work
• 85% would recommend the programme to others

We’ve received highly positive feedback from Sponsors individually, and from the Sponsor/Participant partnerships, expressing that the partnerships had worked really well to help people, introduce them to and develop new relationships, and to provide them with advice and work shadowing opportunities.

Many of the Sponsors have continued to support Participants after the programme has ended.

The programme has shown the Council leadership that this is an effective way to progress people’s careers. They plan to run more programmes like this for future leaders to address areas of under-representation and create more representative leadership teams.

Hear it from them…

Participant

“The programme was a success for myself and I would encourage everyone to join the Diverse Talent Programme”

Mathew Parr, Programme Participant

Programme Lead

“Year 2 of the Diverse Talent Programme for BME staff has shown us the importance of these programmes and supporting people with their career development. Mo and her team delivered a very inspiring course for us. We are thrilled to see that 3 people have already been promoted, and that several other people have applied for other higher graded roles. We hope to see their progress continue as people said their confidence had really increased. It is vital we work hard to break down barriers to career progression for BME staff in the workplace. This allows us to nurture our talent and better reflect our customers at all levels within the council, and reap the benefits that a diverse workforce brings.”

Elaine Sweetman, Lead Consultant, Learning and Organisational Development Team

Sponsor

“A perfect match with the wonderful colleague I was sponsoring. I found the two Sponsor sessions I attended very interesting and useful for me and to pass on to our team. ”

Katie Cuming, Public Health Consultant

If you want us to deliver a Future Leaders Programme to develop and empower staff in your organisation, email [email protected]

We want to hear your views

In 2024, we heard from many of our clients in the public sector about specific challenges that they were facing when it came to driving inclusion work. We want to do further research into this so that we can provide more support in 2025.

If you work in the public sector, then we would love to hear about your experiences with diversity and inclusion work.

Please take a few minutes to answer some short questions. We'll be sharing a report into our findings in the new year.

Share your views on inclusion in the public sector.

That's it from us for this week!

If you have any questions on your inclusion journey, you can always reach out to us at [email protected], call us on 01273 044834, or head to our website watchthisspace.uk for information on everything we have to offer!

See you next week.