Case studies
The Project
Strategic challenge
The Faculty Leadership Team operates in a demanding higher education environment, with pressure to think more strategically, improve the student experience, strengthen teaching quality and service delivery, and respond constructively to wider sector challenges.
The Faculty wanted to create the conditions for more effective collective leadership. This meant strengthening trust, clarifying shared priorities, building confidence in strategic planning, and developing the accountability needed to deliver change as one team.
Outcomes
The programme helped the Faculty Leadership Team move beyond day-to-day operational pressures and created space for them to develop a stronger sense of collective ambition, shared purpose and strategic focus.
Through the process, the team got to know themselves and one another better as leaders, strengthened trust-based working relationships, and improved their ability to work as a leadership team. The programme supported the team to generate practical plans for Faculty-level development, while also identifying areas where they wanted to influence change across the wider university.
The work created greater clarity around strategic priorities, strengthened the team’s confidence in managing change, and helped build a stronger foundation for shared delivery and accountability.
H&A’s contribution
Dr Sybille Schiffmann PhD, H&A’s Leadership and Team Development Specialist, designed and facilitated a bespoke six-month development programme for the Faculty Leadership Team.
The programme combined facilitated workshops, reflective leadership work, strategic planning conversations and practical team development activities. It was deliberately adaptive, enabling the work to respond to needs as they emerged while maintaining a coherent focus on strategic change, leadership effectiveness and delivery.
The workshops focused on four connected areas: understanding individual leadership and the Faculty’s collective strengths; developing trust-based working relationships and shared ambition; clarifying strategic planning priorities and approaches to change; and strengthening delivery and accountability as one team.
H&A’s role was to create a structured yet responsive process that enabled senior academic and professional service leaders to step back from immediate pressures, have higher-quality strategic conversations, and build the relationships and disciplines needed to lead change together.
Feedback
“Hardcastle and Associates created a bespoke programme for our Faculty Leadership Team to drive our strategic development in the face of the numerous challenges in the HE sector. In the process, the team got to know themselves and one another much better and improve its effectiveness.
The programme challenged us to be ambitious and innovative in our strategic planning, and we generated workable plans that we can take forward as a faculty as well as highlighting areas where we want to have university-wide influence. The tailored events were agile and able to adapt to our needs without compromising their integrity. They were filled with energy, enthusiasm and optimism – we also had a lot of fun!”
PVC Academic and Business School Dean