But what about the more subtle advantages? When you have an organisation that has been using the Career Progression Gateway (CPG) over a number of years and at a range of promotional levels, what might the wider performance impacts be?
The CPG assesses the Leadership Behaviours and Values. Assessors are measuring candidates on core FRS specific concepts, and the feedback reports and verbal sessions focus on these criteria. Every candidate completing the CPG learns how closely their behaviours match what the organisation needs from its leaders. Where there are disparities, they are guided on what they need to do to close the gap (and why it is important).
When we have Crew, Watch, Station, Group, Area and even Strategic Managers/ Service Leaders all being assessed on the same concepts and receiving feedback on key behaviours, these behaviours begin to organically filter into practice. This is because:
- 1Candidates know that to be successful next time round, they need to improve their performance in these areas
- 2
The best way to demonstrate specific behaviours in an assessment context is to get familiar with and practice demonstrating them in an everyday, workplace context
- 3
Many candidates are line managed by individuals who have been through the CPG process. The theory is that these leaders are better equipped to role model effective behaviours, through participating in their own assessment and feedback process, and can therefore better support their direct reports to demonstrate them too.
Does this have an impact in reality? Our experience shows us that it does. Here are some examples of how CPG assessments have influenced everyday practice.
How the CPG Translates Theory into Practice
‘Empowering’ is often mentioned in pre-assessment briefings as something candidates know is important to raise. This doesn’t necessarily lead to demonstration of this skill in practice. Through feedback, it will be highlighted that to empower others, tasks need to be allocated, ideally via discussion and collaboration. The focus will be on autonomy and individual responsibility, within a framework of support. This is particularly pertinent to those Watch or Station managers who tend to take on too much and need to start devolving in order manage their workload more successfully. Understanding that this behaviour needs to be role modelled as part of successful performance in a promoted role is important. Practice in the workplace leads to candidates showcasing this skill more effectively within an assessment context. The result? Managers who delegate more, teams who gain experience from these opportunities and effective role modelling of these behaviours in the workplace at all levels.
When you are dealing with a fictious scenario and an unclear path as to how to complete the task effectively, a key step is to make sure you’re clear what your objectives are, and in turn are able to clarify to the others involved what you need from them to make this happen. For candidates who struggle with this, their post assessment feedback may encourage them to consider what they need to achieve, considering a number of angles- thinking ‘individual, team, community and organisation’ can be useful. Applying this to work can be a challenge, but positive habits are built by a) evaluating how clearly managers are establishing their expectations of you and b) asking others to confirm back their understanding of what you need from them. The more candidates pay attention to this in their CPG exercises, the more likely they are to be actually doing it day to day.
This area is gaining traction, and with leaders at all levels gaining feedback sign posting these as useful but under-utilised development tools, they are being raised as viable options in assessments more and more. But are they finding their way into practice? At the moment, the answer is yes and no. Post-CPG candidates return to their role, either in development for promotion or looking for support in order to re-apply, and mentoring or coaching support will be on their minds. Whether this is available is often down to the individual’s line manager. If this individual has been through a CPG process successfully themselves, there’s a good chance they recognise and support these practices, and take steps to apply them. For candidates not in this position, they can proactively seek coaching and mentoring support elsewhere, whilst also embedding the practice from the level they are at, offering it to those they line manage themselves, or as peer to peer support. We are seeing a greater awareness of these areas, but there’s still room for improvement, which could be delivered through greater senior level buy-in and resource provision.
This is another key term which has always come up regularly in assessments, although in the past this often tended to be more of a passing mention than a clear plan. However, now many candidates do demonstrate their understanding of what needs to happen for engagement to be genuine, meaningful and to deliver results. There may not always be a varied range of options described, but there does seem to be a shift towards ‘ask and involve’ rather than ‘describe and tell’. The consistency across candidates from different FRS at different levels lends itself to representing a shift in practice within both team interactions and community engagements.
Fantastic suggestions aimed at using resources more practically and delivering on-the-ground efficiencies can often be generated from assessment activity! A deep well of creative ideas, solutions and plans can be evident, but whether this comes through in the workplace is likely influenced more by norms and role modelling within the team and its leadership than willingness to contribute. There’s a sense that this area could be improved, but again, with more middle managers receiving feedback on the need to encourage this from their teams, and guidance on how to contribute solutions themselves, the more prominent it should become.
‘What’s the impact on service delivery? Is there a community impact? How will this affect wider objectives? What groups are being served? Which ones are not?’ Assessment feedback will draw attention to these questions where candidates have largely overlooked or downplayed the role of service delivery within the scenario. Service delivery ties in well with concepts around establishing expectations, considering resources and engagement, and is something for managers to regularly bring to life for their teams. Linking activities to service delivery impacts can encourage motivation, directing behaviour towards objectives and solutions from those on the ground – e.g. why are we doing this? What are the risks? What are the alternatives? In all honesty, performance in this area has dipped across many services, and across levels. Why this is, is unclear from our perspective, but this trend has been fed back to the relevant FRS’s, and should signal the need for further investigation and potentially a greater emphasis on this topic in development activities.
This is an exciting one because ideas of how to share own examples of best practice and seek opportunities to learn from other teams, stations, partners or agencies rarely used to appear in assessment responses. But now it comes up all the time! It’s such a valuable and useful practice it´s hard to imagine that individuals factor this into fictious assessment scenarios and it doesn’t cross their minds to apply it in the workplace. But with limited time and day-to-day activities having to be prioritised over proactive ones, it’s hard to know for sure if it gets as much of a look in as it should. Common sense suggests that cross team sharing of resources, knowledge and expertise does occur more readily now, and again, with assessment feedback signposting to leaders the relevance of both using this approach themselves and encouraging their team to do so, this is a clear example of how effectively the influence of assessment criteria and clear feedback reporting can be.
What are your thoughts? Does this resonate with what you are seeing in your organisation? Is it something you are able to track and evaluate?
