SLaM Partners
SLaM Partners are a team of improvement experts, experienced organisational consultants and coaches. The team work both internally and externally with individuals, teams and services, within and across organisations to help get the results needed to develop and deliver quality care.
The work of the team is underpinned by evidence-based practice, theories and principles. One key element is the construct of Psychological Safety (Edmondson, 1999), which has been recognised as being fundamental to enabling teams to work at their best to deliver safe and effective care and outcomes that matter to service users, families and carers.
The team works within the Quality Centre with other functions and provides organisational development services and interventions, which include:
- consultancy
- coaching
- leadership and development
- conflict resolution and mediation
Consultancy
We work with individuals, teams, and services to help design and deliver organisational change programmes and engage staff to implement strategic and operational changes.
Coaching
Everyone is working in increasingly complex environments, with a greater emphasis on delivering results and holding ourselves and others to account. Coaching can provide a confidential and psychologically safe space that enables individuals, groups and teams to focus on their own performance, development and well-being. We provide coaching to staff in the following formats:
Individual (one to one) coaching
A coach works with an individual (coachee) to support their thinking and work towards achieving their goals. This is either through a one-off session (e.g., pre-interview coaching) or a full programme of typically 6 sessions spread over several months. The latter will usually involve a three-way contracting conversation with the line manager/sponsor to agree the purpose and goals for the coaching.
Duo Coaching
When effective joint working is key, a coach works with two coachees to support the pair to identify, agree and work towards shared goals. A typical example is a co-leadership pairing of a Consultant and Team Leader.
Team/Group coaching
A coach works simultaneously with several coachees. This may be a team that share a common purpose and goals or a group of independent individuals working together in pursuit of individual goals that may or may not be shared. With team coaching, the focus typically might be on team performance, achieving targets as well as personal and interpersonal aspects of team functioning. Examples of group coaching include:
A service user carer support group
A group for BME staff aspiring to senior roles where there is current underrepresentation
A group for participants on a leadership course to explore the application of their learning to experiences in the workplace (this is sometimes referred to as coaching learning sets).
All Slam Partners coaches are trained and qualified professionals. Our coaching approach is underpinned by the REACH© framework which enables people to work at their best through:
- Reflecting on their behaviour and actions
- Exploring and experimenting with different ways of being and working
- Agreeing stretching goals and outcomes
- Committing to specific actions to make changes and improvements
- Holding themselves and others to account to ensure follow through on commitments
Coaching holds people accountable and aims to draw on their strengths in order to achieve meaningful goals. It is not psychotherapy, counselling or a substitute for appropriate line management supervision. It is also not an alternative to performance management.
Coaching Skills development
We deliver a range of coaching skills development programmes which include an introduction to coaching, as well as accredited programmes from foundation to practitioner level.
Coaching for improvement
We bring together implementation science approaches (e.g., Deming’s (1982) System of Profound Knowledge) with the REACH coaching approach to support individuals, teams and services to thoroughly explore different lenses that contribute to understanding and making changes within a complex system.
Leadership and Development
We design and deliver bespoke programmes for aspiring and existing leaders/ managers to help equip them with the skills and knowledge to perform at their best.
Conflict resolution and mediation
We provide a specialist service which facilitates the resolution of conflict between individuals and within small groups/ teams. We tailor our interventions to each circumstance.
