BMT Tax Depreciation Quantity Surveyors (BMT) provide tax depreciation schedules to maximise the cash return on residential and commercial properties Australia-wide.
The challenges
Aiming to integrate company values and ethos and retain key talent across a large and diverse employee base, in 2023 BMT identified that whilst informal, peer-to-peer learning is part of the daily culture, data and observations indicated that only a handful of BMT’s key leaders had participated in formal leadership training in recent years. In addition to existing leaders, BMT identified a group of emerging leaders with a drive to engage in structured learning to support their growth and readiness for future leadership roles.
Endeavouring to build leadership capability and sustainability into the future, BMT chose to engage Seed People Consulting as specialist leadership trainers to design and deliver a Leadership Development Program to suit both emerging and experienced leaders within their organisation.
While BMT has an internal People & Culture Team, they made a strategic decision to gain support from an external provider to deliver a multi-levelled Leadership Development Program. This allowed BMT’s internal People & Culture Team to remain focused on business-as-usual work and other fabulous People & Culture initiatives alongside this Program.
Starting Point
We love to truly understand our clients to design meaningful, relevant and connected programs that will deliver value and return. This was certainly the case for Seed’s engagement with BMT when we provided multiple options for Programs as a starting point.
Providing multiple structures, timeframes and delivery methods as a starting point allowed the BMT Executive team to visualise the program and make informed decisions regarding the best way forward for their leaders. The tailored recommendations in addition to Seed’s ability to listen to BMT’s paint points and opportunities created clarity for both BMT and Seed in what priority development areas, investment and return looked like for BMT.
Going back and forth with BMT, we finessed, flexed and adapted to ensure the tailored Leadership Development Program was right for BMT and their leaders; both emerging and experienced.
Co-Designed Solution
Given the mix of emerging and experienced leaders, Seed skilfully developed a 7-month Leadership Development Program which provided for 3 ‘whole group’ sessions interspersed with 4 x half-day workshops, divided between the 2 leadership groups; emerging & experienced. Further to the face-to-face learning opportunities, linking resources on a variety of topics were sprinkled throughout the Program encouraging self-reflection and embedment of learnings.
We covered numerous topics to ensure a well-rounded Leadership Development Program for BMT with content that would resonate with all participants, regardless of their level of experience or tenure in leadership roles.
Topics covered included:
- Leadership vs Management
- Leadership styles
- The Employment Lifecycle Overview
- Leader as coach
- Emotional Intelligence
- Building resilience
- Moving from a team member to a team leader
- Effective communication & collaboration
- Introduction to Employment Law
- Leading through change
- Managing our time and energy
- Giving and receiving feedback
- Preparing for and having difficult conversations
- Development planning
- Building effective teams
Positive Outcome
Involving approximately 30 participants, the Program was highly impactful. At the completion of the 7-month Program, improvements in participant self-assessments was seen across all topics including:
- Having the skills to effectively perform their role, increased from an average of 3.8, growing to 2 out of 5;
- Confidence in leading a team effectively increased from an average of 3.7, to 0 out of 5; and
- Clarity of role expectations as a leader moving from an average 3.9 to 0 out of 5.
- In addition to this, when asked if participants would recommend this program to others, participants responded positively with an average of 4.4 out of 5.
Qualitative feedback also includes verbatim comments from participants:
“I enjoyed learning the new models and the way it was paced and how we were able to think about our own team/business and apply the theory to real life examples.”
“Relevant and practical. Good mix of theory and hands on. Jules is a great presenter. Feels like a safe space to try new ideas and ok to make mistakes.”
“Good pace. Lots of practical examples. Ability to work through a real life example was great.”
The Seed team understood what we were hoping to achieve right from the first conversation, it just clicked. We were then able to work closely with Jules, Stacey and Olivia to build out the details of the program to get the right content, tone and approach for our two groups.
Once the program commenced it was clear that Jules and Stacey’s facilitation style aligned with the BMT culture which enabled a series of engaging, informative and collaborative sessions for our team.
Sara Bloxham – HR Manager, BMT Tax Depreciation
