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Partnerships are enshrined in the BBC charter as fundamental to delivering on the key strategic objectives of the organisation. The challenge is in how to enable staff members to effectively lead partnerships when they’re not part of their day-to-day focus or role. This lack of partnership focus has led to a lack of consistent partnership skills across the organisation and has therefore limited the benefits that partnerships can bring to the BBC. Feedback from partners themselves confirmed this, with some highlighting an inconsistency in their experience of working with the BBC.
Thrive conducted a full audit of the BBC partnership process including speaking with external partners, internal BBC partnership managers and in addition, cross-industry partnership leaders. All existing partnership resources were reviewed, and a discovery questionnaire was distributed to the wider BBC partnership network to gauge skills gaps and appetite for learning. The subsequent modular Partnership Development Programme was designed in response to this audit, covering topics such as Building Trusted Relationships through to Partnership Negotiation Skills. Thrive produced digital learning resources housed on the BBC intranet and distributed to all programme delegates. In addition, Thrive trained selected delegates in facilitation skills to enable BBC personnel to facilitate dedicated Action Learning Sets in between modules to ensure learnings from the programme were embedded into day-to-day partnership working practices.
The programme has been live for over two years, enabling five cohorts to develop their partnership skills. The impact on partnership skills has been significant with delegates across all cohorts rating their partnership competences higher after the programme compared to before it – with some competences increasing by as much as 50%.
“Charlotte & Dan’s background in partnerships, combined with their training and facilitation experience, meant they were the perfect choice of partner and fit for this project. The work we are doing with Thrive with the Partnership Development Programme has been a huge success for partnerships as a whole at the BBC and Thrive’s proactive and flexible approach has ensured we work well together evolving the programme over time to meet the needs of the delegates and the business.”
BBC Group Partnership Director
“Hugely beneficial programme, developing my thinking and learning in many areas. The best BBC course I’ve ever been on.”
Programme delegate
The newly formed executive team at Boden were hugely committed and hardworking. The fast-paced online retail environment provided a backdrop for the team to excel when working at speed, taking decisive action and focusing on the product. The challenge was how to move the team to the next stage of their development including building their strategic and long-term planning capabilities, instilling a greater sense of accountability and boosting cross company collaboration.
Thrive spent time understanding the team and their challenges with an in-depth discovery phase. This started with one-to-one interviews with all exec members. From those conversations, themes emerged and Thrive worked in collaboration with Boden’s Head of People to design a 9-month team coaching programme identifying key areas of development – from building trust through to strategic thinking. Facilitation based coaching sessions based on real life ‘of the moment’ challenges ensured the exec were engaged with the programme and found time to prioritise their team development alongside their key business goals.
“The feedback I’ve heard has been hugely positive and I can really sense that in the room at the time – It’s great to have you on this journey with us. There is a real shift in the team, and these sessions have definitely played a part in that. Thanks again both.”
Kat Hayes, Boden Head of People
Growing the companies’ capabilities through acquisition has generated much success for TAIT Technologies and cemented their place as a leading international, live entertainment and brand experience partner. Incorporating acquired businesses across multiple regional centres (Americas, Europe, The Middle East and Asia) has posed the challenge of aligning many legacy businesses into one organisation that can work together effectively.
Since 2021 Thrive has supplied intensive one-to-one executive coaching support for key TAIT leaders to embed a healthy and dynamic working culture. Each coaching programme runs weekly for six months, and coaching objectives are aligned to the ‘One Team’ vision for the company. The coaching is designed to focus on leadership capabilities and mindset and incorporates 360 degree questionnaires and an extensive coaching plan monitoring progress and actions throughout.
The coaching has achieved proven progress for all TAIT leadership coachees with demonstrable improvements in leadership skills and mindset enabling them to help bring together the business as a ‘One TAIT Team’ and lift performance levels across the board.
“Thrive are experienced leaders and have ‘been there and done that’. In addition to that, Charlotte & Dan really care about our people and our business and we see them as true partners not just suppliers. Thank you for your continued hard work and support.”
TAIT Head of People & Culture
“The Thrive coaching was honestly life changing for me. Having the weekly time and space to prioritise me, and my development got me through an extremely intense period at work. I don’t know how I would have kept my head above water over the last six months without it!”
TAIT Head of Revenue
Working in a dynamic and fast changing media environment, Global were looking for a training partner that was able to work with them on an ongoing people development programme for the commercial teams.
Thrive built a learning framework that incorporated a range of workshops. Learning ranged from presentation and negotiation skills through to personal effectiveness and people management. Thrive were also instrumental in consulting on a new creative process within the business offering training on idea generation, brainstorming and faciliation.
“Our people have always enjoyed working with Thrive on a variety of training programmes. What has kept us engaged is that they have driven positive change in areas including client relations, solutions development, personal effectiveness, networking skills, people management and business development. Ultimately this has helped our people deliver greater results.”
Commercial Director, Global Media Group
As part of Sony Music’s ongoing internal management training inititaive, Sony wanted to support and reward the rising stars within the organisation with a programme of one on one coaching.
Thrive supplied coaches that were matched with specific individuals via chemistry sessions. The coaching programme started with feedback from a 360 questionnaire and lasted for six months. There was a combination of both face to face sessions as well as follow up phone calls with a personal development plan that drove tangible change and progress.
“The coaching sessions really focused me on planning for the future and triggered a fundamental shift that has driven both personal and professional change. I found that my coach very professional, friendly and challenged me when needed. I would highly recommend them to anyone.”
Marketing Manager, Sony Music
Nivea were making big changes to their marketing process. They wanted to work with a training provider that could turn this new process into an invigorating and impactful training programme for both the global and regional marketing teams – over 250 people worldwide.
Thrive designed a dynamic and experiential workshop for the Nivea marketeers to ensure that they learn the new process and also feel motivated and confident to apply it.
“At Beiersdorf we needed to introduce a new and innovative way of developing our creative communication process for our Nivea branded products. We worked with Thrive to help design and deliver a ground-breaking training programme to ensure our global and regional marketing teams had the right knowledge, skills and motivation to help take us to the Next Level of Communication.”
Manager Global Nivea Advertising
Bauer were launching a week of ‘wellbeing’ across their different sites for all members of staff. The week was extremely varied to ensure there was something for everyone available. There were group discussion with leading experts on mindfulness, resilience and stress management, yoga sessions and the opportunity to hear talks from inspirational public speakers.
To compliment the group workshops, talks and yoga, Thrive held two days of coaching clinics open to all staff. The clinics were one to one hour sessions that were solutions focused and practical. Coachees were encouraged to select a key objection for the session in advance to ensure the hour was productive and focused.
The challenge at Centaur was to support people who were in ‘middle management’ across the business. Some were new to management and some were more experienced but all needed a deeper understanding of management fundamentals in order to manage themselves and their teams more effectively.
We designed a six-part Management Training Programme that was delivered over three months. The workshops covered themes such as coaching skills, managing performance, understanding different preferences, motivating and inspiring others and dealing with conflict.
“We wanted to support our management team who had never had any formal management training. The Thrive management development training covered all the main principles of management and was executed as a six module programme over a three-month period. The Thrive team understand our industry well and the feedback has been extremely positive in terms of how engaging and energetic the workshops were as well as how valuable the content was. We will look to repeat the workshops for new managers in the future and are keen to work with Thrive on other people development areas.”
Head of Learning & Development, Centaur Media
The agency was going through a period of structural and organisational change. They were keen to keep morale and motivation high and wanted to offer support for their staff during this phase.
Thrive recommended and built a series of group workshops in addition to an individual coaching programme. The group workshops focused on personal resilience and effectiveness covering themes such as stress management, resourceful thinking and time management. A sixty minute individual coaching session was offered to all staff members who wanted one – allowing people to talk freely about their specific work challenges and pressures.
“I have worked with Thrive for many years and they have delivered fantastic group training and individual coaching programmes for us. Time and time again we receive amazing feedback from our people after they been in a Thrive session, stating that its really made a difference to their growth and development. I’ve found that they’re expert at not only delivering valuable insights but also enabling others to improve both their skills and mind-set, which is why we will continue to do more great work with them.”
HR director, FCB Inferno (Interpublic Group Company)
ANZ is a global bank with Head Quarters in Australia. The UK and European operations are satellite offices and often encounter challenges working with a complex and ever-changing matrix organisation. The UK CEO and head of People were looking for a flexible partner to support individuals at all levels of the bank with a range of development needs.
Since 2017 Thrive have been working with ANZ on a variety of people programmes. Resilience and effectiveness workshops ran for the first few years until covid hit. At this point we pivoted to work with managers across the business on core management capabilities for leading remote and hybrid teams. More latterly Thrive brought the European Exec team together for a team building session to focus on what high performance looks like in a matrix organisation.
“I really valued the time to step back from the day to day and see the bigger picture.”
Participant, ANZ
“The course was wonderful and Charlotte and Dan were great facilitators.”
Exec. Team, ANZ
“I found the sessions really insightful.”
Participant, ANZ
Hello! is a Spanish owned royalist weekly magazine, website, events and podcast brand specialising in celebrity news and human-interest stories. Sitting within an ever-changing media sector the brand has experienced many changes in recent years with the migration of audiences to digital and social content channels. With a nimble and entrepreneurial spirit, Hello! were looking for support at a senior level to help navigate the ongoing change within the market and the strategic changes in the organisation itself.
Thrive partnered with Hello! during a particularly intense year to provide one-to-one support for a selection of senior leaders across the organisation. The coaching focused on topics such as leading through change, leadership communication, strategic decision making and coaching skills. In-depth personality profiling was used to kick start the coaching programmes ensuring the coached individuals had time to self-reflect and raise awareness of their working styles.
“Thrive worked as a leadership coaching partner to senior leaders across our business during a period of intense change. Their support, partnership approach and empathy for our people and business made them the ideal partner for this programme and we hope to continue working together going forward.”
People Director, Hello! Magazine
The consumer and B2B commercial teams regularly present and pitch to clients. The challenge they faced was how to do this with confidence and impact in a tough commercial climate and with greater competition than ever before.
A series of interactive group workshops covering presentation skills, developing personal presence and creative pitching. Topics covered included communication skills, engaging an audience, building rapport, managing questions and brainstorming techniques. The workshops allowed time for presentation practice and constructive feedback from Thrive facillitators as well as fellow participants and peers.
“The workshops really helped me look at things differently and gave me a confidence boost…they were really inspiring and challenged to me to think in a new way…the sessions were incredibly insightful and I learned a lot.”
CBS, Participant Feedback
With a new CEO at the helm of the business, Contagious wanted to bring the commercial department together more effectively as a team.
Thrive designed an engaging team development programme that enabled the commercial department to start building the blocks of a dynamic and effective team. Covering topics such as trusted relationships, understanding others preferences, dealing with conflict and working to shared goals the programme was both informative and energising.
“I asked Thrive to come in and help me fast forward the evolution of the commercial teams. The two-day programme was intense, invigorating and ultimately a resounding success. I could not be happier with the progress we made.”
CEO, Contagious Communications
Ipso wanted to support key staff members develop core skills as part of their transition into more senior and influential roles within the organisation.
Thrive undertook a programme of one to one performance coaching to identify and improve key development areas for selected members of the senior management teams.
“The coaching engagements for IPSOS MORI have been highly impactful for both the individuals involved and the wider organisation. The business continues to use their services as a catalyst for positive change and trigger for unleashing potential.”
HR Director, IPSOS MORI
There had been a lot of interest in the company for training that focused on personal resilience, time management and overcoming stress. Merlin Entertainment were keen to explore different learning options in this area.
Thrive designed a ‘Resilience & Effectiveness’ workshop that introduced frameworks to working more effectively as well as techniques to becoming more resilient. This included understanding personal stress triggers, time management tips, the importance of mindfulness and overcoming challenges.
“A really engaging session that helped to define and order the way my mind works and enable me to do it with better focus and purpose. I learned a lot!”
Participant Feedback, Merlin Entertainment
Stylist has a start up mentality, despite the fact that the company was growing quickly and had recently been bought out by a large publishing business. Training had not been seen as a priority during the early years but now the senior leadership team believed it was. The first people development task was for all managers across the business to be equiped with the core management skills to enable their teams to succeed in a challenging and competitive market.
Thrive designed an interactive and practical training programme covering the key skills for effective 21st century leaders. Tailored to Stylist’s specific industry and competitive challenges, the workshop covered topics such as managing performance, coaching skills, understanding the different preferences of your team and leading with gravitas and conviction.
“The Thrive training was insightful and really educational. It was thought provoking and useful when putting newly learned skills into a ‘real –life’ situation. I am genuinely feeling more confident about approaching management now.”
Participant Feedback, The Stylist Group
Production Park had a vision to place the UK at the heart of the live experience industry through the curation of studios, technology and talent. With an ambitious growth strategy in place, it was crucial the exec team were supported to develop as a high performing team, cultivate their individual leadership skills and be able to steward the organisation to achieve its full potential.
We worked in partnership with Production Park over an eight-month period. The partnership started with a process of defining key company values and behaviours which involved extensive internal and external stakeholder interviews and a staff questionnaire, ensuring that company culture was created from the bottom up. Each exec member was allocated a leadership coach allowing the individual leaders to address their specific leadership needs directly on a one-to-one basis. Finally, a series of team coaching sessions were designed to ensure the exec team worked together effectively. These included comprehensive personality profiling and mapping, a strategic goal setting session and an overhaul of the team meeting structure and process.
The exec was keen to engage in the programme with a key output being a new team agreement covering team communication, conflict, behaviours, resources and meetings. This has become a foundational element for the team going forward and enabled them to go to the next level of growth for the business.
Talon is the world’s leading independent, global Out of Home media agency. Thrive have been working in partnership with Talon for over eight years and have seen it grow in size and creativity over this time – acquiring businesses and expanding its footprint. Finding a flexible training partner who could adapt to Talon’s changing needs was paramount, and that partner was Thrive.
Our partnership has been multi-faceted over the years starting with a long form programme for all account managers covering key competencies such as growth planning, networking and presenting skills. Thrive have since run personal effectiveness and wellbeing sessions, negotiation and client relationships skills workshops, lunch and learn drop-ins, and are currently designing a management and leadership programme to be rolled out globally, that is soon to launch.
“Over the years we have really liked working with Thrive. Charlotte and Dan are easy to work with, flexible & knowledgeable. Our employees give great feedback about their sessions. From recent feedback we have received comments that Charlotte is a formidable trainer, Dan a fantastic coach and their training is fun, useful and engaging.”
Sylvia Aggrey, Head of People UK
As covid hit, the Henry Ford Academy (HFA) and the Ford customer service and sales divisions were both in search of a wellbeing training partner. (The HFA is the state-of-the-art national training and conference facility for the Ford Dealer Network.) Both divisions of Ford faced challenges during lockdown – the HFA were unable to use their facility to train effectively as they had once been able to and the customer service and sales teams were for the first time working remotely and finding this hugely challenging.
Thrive became the wellbeing partner to both teams during the first six months of 2022. A wellbeing in-person team day was scheduled bringing together the entire training faculty at the HFA site and online webinars were delivered on topics such as ‘leading with uncertainty’ and ‘kick start your mental health’ to the customer service and sales divisions. The webinars were recorded and licensed to Ford for a six month period, allowing the wider Ford community to benefit from the content.
“Fantastic sessions – so useful as well as fun and enjoyable.”
Participant Feedback, Ford
“I’ve taken so much from the day and learnt a lot about myself.”
Participant Feedback, Ford
“Such a valuable session – would be great to do more of this.”
Participant Feedback, Ford
“So helpful and practical right now to remember how to look after yourself and others at work.”
Participant Feedback, Ford
Bark.com is an international online business that helps consumers connect with professionals across a broad range of services. The company was growing at a fast pace and had established a healthy culture based on strong company values. To support a shift in business strategy however, the organisation was looking to boost leadership skills to ensure teams were able to adapt and keep pace with the speed of organisational and market change.
Thrive designed and delivered a comprehensive leadership programme across a global population of 60 people managers. The programme covered topics ranging from feedback and coaching through to unconscious bias and managing change. The managers were placed in cohorts according to region, which allowed for sessions to be scheduled in the appropriate time zone and to allow for peer-to-peer learning. Online workshops ran in Australia, India and Europe and in-person workshops in the UK.
“Thrive worked in close partnership with us to deliver a targeted management programme for leaders across varying levels at Bark. They were easy to work with, flexible and took the time to understand our needs. The workshops were practical, engaging and equipped managers across the business with key capabilities to lead effectively through a period of strategic change as we continue to scale.”
Senior HR Business Partner
Hearst UK is a major multimedia publisher that creates content for print, digital, social media, and experiential events across lifestyle, luxury, health, and entertainment. The company publishes some of the country’s most iconic titles, including Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Women’s Health, and Men’s Health. With a large team of managers across the business, with differing levels of experience and competency, the organisation needed consistent managerial capability in order to stay competitive in an ever-changing media marketplace.
Thrive partnered with Hearst UK to design and deliver two comprehensive programmes – one for junior and first-time managers and one for more senior and experienced leaders. The entire population totally over 80 leaders. The two-tiered programme ensured each audience received bespoke and relevant content and encouraged peer-to-peer networking within their cohorts. Alongside the group training – which covered topics such as coaching skills, difficult conversations, inspiring communication, team dynamics and building trust – coaching clinic days were scheduled for individuals to book a one-to-one coaching session. Additional learning collateral was designed which included a digital learning journal for individuals to capture their learning and track progress.
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