Taylor Wimpey

‘The Localism Bill would significantly change the way that public consultations would be run’

Challenges

The principle obstacle at the start of the project was changing the audience’s perception of the ‘planning officer’. Introducing guests on to the courses who had been employed in that role gave delegates an insight into the human aspects of their character.

Results

Local planners are much more inclined to do business with Taylor Wimpey. Potentially hostile attendees at the public consultations were being better influenced to remain calmer and actually listen to the ‘truth’ of the message and not continue behaving in the cynical way that was driven by a false perception. The audience, to date, has been the CEO, Senior Management and all managers across the country – over 350 delegates.

The brief

This bill will give local communities a more powerful voice and a means of potentially vetoing proposed construction work.

Engagement & Design

Taylor Wimpey decided to create an initial workshop to determine if the employees organising and running these consultations possessed the key skills and strategies to be able to deal with the resistant behaviour that would be demonstrated by those in the local community of the proposed development i.e. the ability to negotiate whilst building strong commercial relationships.

GBS was asked to work with the Senior Management Team and develop an in-depth understanding of the challenges faced by staff when conducting public consultations where land development is being proposed.

After careful design a pilot workshop was run for the CEO and his team so that they could experience for themselves GBS’s recommended solution. This event culminated in a full discussion on ‘tuning’ detail and an agreed roll-out plan.

As a result it was agreed for all the Senior Management team, from Divisional Managing Directors down, to attend this core module. Further fine tuning was applied in the early stages of roll-out to ensure that the key twin objectives were achieved:

• Building commercial relationships
• Dealing effectively and professionally with members of the public attending a consultation
• Having the appropriate level of negotiation skills
• Changing the public perception of the ‘Greedy Developer’ that tarred all such companies with the same brush

Delivery

We designed and delivered the Commercial Relationships Core Module to all of the organisation’s senior management teams and middle management teams throughout the UK – more than 350 people in the first nine months.

The modules are highly interactive, using techniques such as;

• learning key strategies to influence aggressive behaviour and keep professional control of the consultation
• brainstorming to generate ideas, involvement and energy
• self-assessment inventory that measured each participants current communication and influencing style
• skills practice in small groups to give participants a ‘safe’ opportunity to develop and practise dealing with realistic situations, and to receive feedback to boost learning
• action learning logs to record their personal commitments

To further enhance the participants’ skill sets and confidence a further three relevant modules were designed that covered the crucial skills required for running a successful public consultation, they were:

• Advanced Presentation Skills
• Negotiation Skills
• Business Writing Skills

These three additional modules were initially added as elective learning. However, feedback and experience showed that all three additional modules gave an invaluable insight and support to participants and consequently became mandatory.

Outcomes

As managers worked their way through the programme of four modules it became clearly apparent that the learning was being implemented where it mattered most, in the real world at the public consultations.

This feedback proved that the skills and strategies being learnt were indeed being applied with positive results. Local planners are much more inclined to do business with Taylor Wimpey. Potentially hostile attendees at the public consultations were being better influenced to remain calmer and actually listen to the ‘truth’ of the message and not taking a cynical approach, often driven by false perceptions.