Taxi Studio – Leadership Development Programme
Background and Objectives
Phoenix was approached by award winning creative agency, Taxi Studio, to develop the leadership capability of their three Design Directors. They recognised the need to individually equip them with some critical people management tools, as well providing the wider organisation with a strong and consistent approach to leadership that would enhance overall performance and accountability.
Following some initial consultancy, we identified the following four key areas of focus:
- The challenges of leadership
- The importance of adopting a flexible approach
- Developing their teams
Planning, prioritisation and delegation
Programme Format
We opted to run the programme over 4 monthly half day face to face modules which not only fitted well with their demanding schedules but also reflected our preferred approach. We strongly believe that learning is more effective when delivered in this format, as it will provide the participants plenty of opportunity to put into practice their newly learnt skills, as well as regular opportunities to review what’s worked and what hasn’t.
In keeping with their ‘fearless’ philosophy, Taxi was also very happy to use our highly innovative, learning transfer platform – PROMOTE® which would take the programme to another level. PROMOTE not only provides the participants with a range of activities and tasks that help embed the learning, but most importantly it enables all those involved to monitor progress and see how and when the learning has actually been applied – giving everyone a real chance to demonstrate some clear ROI.
The Results
The impact of this initial programme has been profound throughout Taxi Studio. From a participant perspective we can see from the quote below that the experience has had far reaching effects.
‘It has been noted by all the directors how we have stepped up and taken leadership of the studio, enabling the owners to take a back seat. It has also been acknowledged many times by other departments that they are envious of how we work and the response we now get from the studio.
The training and our new roles, combined with how we put the learning into practice, has also provided more support around us to do the leadership and creative director roles before anything else which has been thoroughly enjoyable and a place we all wanted to be in. Thanks again for taking us on this journey – it surely has changed my working role forever’.
Jonathan Turner Rogers, Associate Creative Director
Perhaps even more importantly, this programme acted as a catalyst for several more management and leadership programmes that have helped embed the learning even more deeply. We are now about to start our fourth MDP, which is testimony to the success of previous programmes, as well as Taxi’s commitment to ongoing development.
We have also worked with the founders of the business to ensure that they could fully support and contribute to all the wide-ranging initiatives that were taking place.
“Phoenix Training, and Bill in particular, have had a huge impact on our creative business, Taxi Studio. The Agency world isn’t renowned for giving structured “people” training and we saw an opportunity to strengthen our culture and increase the impact of our leaders so we engaged with Phoenix to design a programme for that was aimed at individuals as leaders and also to boost their self-awareness and communications skills. To a person, all of the four cohorts who have been through the programmes with Phoenix, have raved about what they have learnt; the skills they have put into immediate practice and the way the training was delivered. Bill lives what he teaches, which is a powerful lesson in itself, and his emotional intelligence and ability to tailor sessions to different groups has made the core material even more powerful for us. If you believe in enabling future leaders and boosting personal growth then Phoenix is the way to go!”
Brian Mansfield, Managing Partner
