Cherry Childcare approached MGL back in February 2017 with a view to creating a learning & development programme aimed at two distinct groups – the Management and Leadership Teams.
During initial discovery meetings, MGL gained an understanding of the business, its people, what was working well, and what, if the programmes were successful would its CEO Nigel Rolfe be seeing that he wasn’t already experiencing.
Following these meetings, MGL designed two individual 12-month programmes for each team. The goal for the management team was to create a programme that supported them with their challenging and busy roles. So a series of workshops running quarterly over the course of 2017/2018 include a focus on Time Management, Conflict handing & resolution, Leadership, and coaching.
For the Leadership Team, the key aim was to create a better working dynamic, and it was felt that a greater appreciation of each other’s strengths would be a great place to start. So, the 12-month programme has will be underpinned by Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a personality assessment tool. MBTI enables the team and the individuals within that team to explore aspects of their personality that both support and detract from the achievement of personal and business goals.
Its early days as the programme, which runs until November 2018 only kicked off just over a month ago, but its already adding value. Its CEO Nigel Rolfe says: –
“Cherry childcare is a family owned childcare business operating 11 children’s day nurseries. We believe in investing in training to help develop and motivate our people. The majority of our training has been internal so we approached Meryl as we were looking at developing our managers coaching skills, which needed an independent approach. This has been very well received. The next area of focus was the leadership team for the company. This is an area often neglected. We wanted to gain a greater understanding of how we interact with each other so we can be more productive and recognize the strengths that each person can bring. Even after the first session, we have seen a positive seed change in the team. We are all looking forward to the next session.”
Meryl Gilbert, MGL’s founder believes this initial success is due largely to the fact that MGL and Cherry Childcare approached this as a partnership. Investing time and energy upfront to really evaluate what the challenges were, and to ensure that there was clarity in relation to the outcomes.
Additionally, the programmes were well positioned with the teams, who as a consequence were bought into the why and the what, and have approached the programme thus far with enthusiasm and commitment.