South Lanarkshire Council invests in Leadership - 400 joined 50 participants at Conference of Learning to culminate Leadership Programme **See Video Clip on Downloads page**

South Lanarkshire Executive Director of Social Work Resources, Harry Stevenson understands how investment in leadership pays dividends. At a time of threats and complexity, when it is needed most (unlike organisations who cut development first) Willie McAllen, Development Manager, enabled the design and implementation of OLPD's Robin Burgess. This programme provided cutting edge concepts which have been rolled out in a follow up programme in 2010 with a further 50 managers. Challenging complacent beliefs in the status quo, and working with those who need to provide sustainable services in Scotland, these programmes bring enhanced engagement, satisfaction and influence to both formal and informal leadership. Participants from the first programme joined new entrants on the 2010 programme to share their enthusiasm for the individual and organisational changes their leadership journey had evidenced. External Evaluation by IRISS confirms this high impact.

Each participant in the original programme identified their own real time Project to apply their learning from the five Input days. They explored creative solutions with colleagues in six Action Learning Sets and then brought their research and learning to a celebratory Conference of Learning on 25th March 2009. Nearly 400 stakeholders, colleagues and partners joined them in the Almada Banqueting Suite in Hamilton to explore their projects, learn with them and strengthen the effective collaboration that makes a difference to service users. 

This comprehensive leadership development programme has combined:  

• Input Days to challenge assumptions and stimulate new thinking
• Action Learning Sets to build sustainable, breakthrough problem solving capacity for the organisation
• 360 Leadership Styles Psychometric feedback that builds on strengths and sustains valuing of diversity and teamwork
• Mentoring that assists capacity building, developing a learning culture within the organisation
• Individual Projects to focus leadership learning and apply it in organisational and service development in the real world
• A Conference of Learning to celebrate and disseminate innovation from Programme Projects

The Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS) has provided an independent evaluation of this programme, which has taken impact data from participants, their managers and colleagues.

Participants have demonstrating enthusiastic commitment, not least by their personal efforts to maximise all elements of the programme, even making personal choices to attend when on annual leave. The energy and quality of their project presentations demonstrated to 380 colleagues and stakeholders at the Conference of Learning (click for Video clip, 1 min download time) on 25th March have been followed by individual sessions with the Resources Management Team to  integrate their innovative projects with core service development.

Like all programmes provides by OLPD, this process combines close work with the Senior Team to ensure that effective organisational development and culture change is integrated with service leadership breakthrough that is in tune with the Council's outcomes and strategies.