Leadership Forum

What is a Leadership Forum?

The meetings structure in an organisation is usually based on departmental teams. Typically the Executive Team hold meetings as a group and then individually hold Team Meetings with their next tier managers along functional lines. Many organisations have some form of meeting or conference for the top three tiers as a whole at less frequent intervals. Experience suggests the effectiveness of this can be variable.

Leadership Forum is UIMPROVE terminology for putting some structure to this meeting and setting up an annual programme of regular, as opposed to random, activity. This provides the opportunity to hear and develop common messages, do work together, prevent silo working and to develop a consistent approach to leading and running the organisation.

Who should attend?

•	The Corporate Brain - Managing Director or Chief Executive + Direct Reports
•	The Next Tier Down - all Direct Reports to the above
•	Any other leaders of large teams or key organisational players but no hangers on

The thinking behind and purpose of a Leadership Forum

•	It gives the Chief Executive direct access to the Next Tier Down - a level they would normally only have limited direct access to
•	It allows the Corporate Brain to collectively interact with the Next Tier Down
•	It is an opportunity to develop alignment and consistency of an organisation's leaders - it brings together the senior leaders in one group so that everybody hears and participates in the development of one message and approach
•	It is a structural way of living the message of inter-departmental cooperation
•	It is not about departmental presentations, nor is it a roadshow, it is a participative way to explore key issues for the organisation
•	Responsibility for the quality of leadership in an organisation lies at the top. A Leadership Forum is a means of reinforcing this.

Typical topics

An effective Leadership Forum has an annual programme of activity.

•	Leader Speaks
•	Strategy Development
•	Briefing in of and contribution at a high level to key developments and corporate projects
•	Project Steering Grid share What projects are being worked on at corporate, departmental and team level.
•	Team Perspectives and Interchange exercises This is UIMPROVE jargon for exercises where each team shares key facts including what it is working on followed by the opportunity for other teams to ask questions.
•	Briefings on corporate and major projects
•	Topics of organisational importance
•	Customer Survey planning and review
•	Staff Survey planning and review
•	Briefings on reorganisations and key people changes

The role of the UIC

The UIC has extensive experience of helping to set up and run the Leadership Forum in a wide variety of organisations, both large and small.

Firstly we meet with the leader of the organisation to identify current issues and priorities and then plan the structure of the day. We design each session and suggest suitable tools and techniques. On the day itself, we will facilitate, working closely with the leader. Afterwards, we'll sit down again and review the day.

Download

Click here for the Leadership Forum Briefing Note.