Leadership Framework Development

LFB have been doing comprehensive research since 2016 to inform their new Leadership framework, and were looking for assistance in reviewing latest drafts.

Over the course of four weeks and ten versions of the Framework, VCA reviewed the language, meaning, potential interpretations, observability, reliability, distinctiveness and clarity of the three core Leadership Behaviours and defining behaviour statements for each of the nine sub-behaviours.  Reference was made to the NFCC leadership Qualities (and some PQAs), whilst ensuring that all the important factors described by stakeholders throughout the research phase were fully represented.

Once definitions had been checked and, where necessary, amended to ensure simplicity, that there was no repetition of concepts and all behaviours were suitable for behavioural assessment across a range of potential contexts, the challenge was to reduce the framework down to a manageable size. This needed to be accomplished without losing core meanings, over-complicating definitions or making them inaccessible or confusing to a diverse range of users.

The project also involved discussions and extensive work to focus on the progression across organisational levels i.e. from firefighter to commissioner level.

This sort of work is surprisingly pain-staking and detailed, with a great deal of to and fro between client and VCA to hone definitions down to their most valid and reliable version.

LFB were very patient during this process, open to change and suggestions, receptive to feedback, willing to adapt and learn and focused on creating a strong, meaningful and user-friendly set of guiding principles for the people in their organisation.