�129,552
Partners: Perth and Kinross Council, Scottish Borders, City of Aberdeen, City of Edinburgh, Dundee City, Falkirk, Fife, Dumfries and Galloway, North Lanarkshire, East Lothian, Renfrewshire and Highland Councils and the University of Glasgow.
This exciting initiative brings together 26 museum staff from 12 local councils and the University of Glasgow each undertaking a leadership development programme in association with the Scottish Leadership Foundation. Participants come from 13 partner organisations from throughout Scotland, with 2 members of staff from each organisation taking part.
This pilot project came in part from one of the 122 recommendations made by SMC to the Scottish Executive's consultation to develop an Action Plan for Scotland's Museums and Galleries.
The leadership development programme was launched in October 2003 and consists of 4 main elements:
All participants have been matched with mentors, from extremely diverse backgrounds and from outwith the cultural sector. These mentors are challenging the mentees' management thinking, helping to develop leadership vision and are working with participants to generate new responses to issues and challenges. One participants said "The experience has been very positive, my mentor has given me useful tools for situations where I need negotiating skills, has raised my confidence, highlighted areas where I've done well and also passed on skills from things they have done in the past.' The option of training as a mentor has also been taken up by 3 of the participants in order for them to roll these skills out across their organisations.
Peer support is an important part of the programme with all 26 participants encouraged to network and share experiences both informally and formally through networking events. These networking events include inspirational speakers and give opportunities to develop the programme further. Mini regional networks and action learning sets have been proposed as a way forward to supplement this networking and a web forum has been set up to encourage discussion. One participant commented that it was this 'opportunity for networking that has made this scheme more appealing than doing an MBA, for example'.
Three organisational raids have been written into the programme, with participants visiting en masse to organisations that e.g. demonstrate excellence or innovation in certain areas or have gone through dramatic change. Then participants have the opportunity to delve into areas of the organisations operation, ask questions, hear from staff etc. In June 2004 participants visited the Famous Grouse Experience in Crieff to focus on marketing and innovation as well as exploring the visitor attraction and events management side of their operations. The next organisational raid will be held early next year.
Nine participants have also been funded to undertake the Fellowship of the Museums Association and this year a session on the programme took place during the MA conference in Edinburgh, giving an insight into participants experience and views.
The people exchange part of the programme involving shadowing, secondments etc is now being focused on with participants aiming to undertake exchanges next year.
Contact: Alan Jones, Alan Jones Associates
E-mail: [email protected]
Last updated 08/11/04
