Inspiring People - Watershed
A three-day immersive leadership programme that gave 30 managers, from chefs to cinema technicians, a shared foundation for leading diverse teams with confidence.
The brief: A common leadership foundation
Watershed is Bristol's independent home for cinema, creative technology and ideas. It strives to cultivate a culture of line management that matches the organisation’s passionately-held progressive values, and in practice this is complex: around 30 managers, at every level and across every department, had arrived at management through very different routes and with very different training.
Watershed asked us for a programme that would give all of them a common foundation, practical enough to use the following Monday and memorable enough to stick. It had to work equally well for a production lead, a finance manager and a head chef.
What we did: A personal and unapologetically creative approach
We designed Inspiring People as an inside-out process. Rather than starting with management theory, the programme began with each participant's own values, pressures and ambitions, so that the tools we later introduced later attached to something truly personal.
Two consecutive days of immersive work were followed by a consolidation day three months later, once people had tested the ideas in practice. Throughout, our approach was unapologetically creative: freewriting to surface professional values, roleplay to rehearse conflict, a game of blackjack to sharpen situational decision-making, and physical representations of leadership styles that showed people something about themselves that a slide never could.
Day 1: Know yourself, be yourself
Building the foundation: who you are as a leader, and where you might grow.
Personal leadership styles and values: where do you default, where might you stretch?
The 'P' word: healthy forms of power and how they show up in your management
Structures that support growth: creative approaches to performance reviews and meetings
Day 2: Clear is kind
Putting it into practice: communicating, deciding and navigating conflict.
Radical candour in your communication as a manager
Skilfully handling difficult conversations and conflict in teams
Situational decision-making: meeting your inner autocrat
Day 3: Letting go, letting in
Consolidating: what's shifted, what's stuck, and where to put your energy next.
Circles of control, influence and concern
Upholding creativity in your day-to-day work
Co-coaching: what's changed, what's still stuck, what's budding?
After delivery we produced a set of on-demand resources covering the full learning arc, so the programme continues to live inside Watershed rather than ending with our facilitation.
What people said
"One of the most engaging training sessions I've ever had! The facilitators were brilliant and the pacing was excellent."
"So useful, brilliantly facilitated and engaging. The content is exactly what we've needed and have been lacking for a long time."
"A beautifully held two day session on leadership that was creative, deep, careful, fun and really engaging. I really enjoyed the opportunity to spend all this time with so many of my colleagues."
Want to work together?
Say hello, and let's have an chat about how we can work together to spark creativity in your space.
Contact: [email protected]