We support and develop individuals and teams to realise their potential, continuously improve, and achieve targets in a safe and confidential space to allow them to think, plan and develop their ideas. We can help both professional services and academic staff. We also help strengthen your teams by providing tailored leadership development, coaching, and mentoring support.
Our Support
Through expertly delivered coaching and professional development support, you and your staff can be energised to deliver more. Our clients explore their ideas, goals, motivations, and challenges, in a confidential and supportive space.
We offer coaching and mentoring support for individual and team development, career and induction, performance management and improvement and under-represented groups.
Having the right coach or mentor for you is important to ensure long-lasting change and personal development. We have a team of expert trained coaches and facilitators ready and waiting to help you and your team. We also work with partner Oyster Outcomes and Gatenby Sanderson to ensure members and clients have access to the right coach to meet their unique needs.
Coaching
Coaching can improve productivity and performance and delivers a tangible return on investment. It also provides a targeted form of personal and professional development. Coaching is a process that focuses on the here and now rather than the past or future. The coach serves as a facilitator of learning; helping individuals to improve their own performance and helping the individual to unlock their own potential.
Our coaching offer includes Executive Coaching, Individual 1:1 Coaching and Team Coaching.
Mentoring
Mentoring enables you to test your thinking, identify solutions and ‘road test’ ideas against someone else’s insights and experience as you develop your strategies and approach. We will assign you a mentor with considerable experience and expertise in a specific area of business and focuses on broadening your horizons and looking to the future.
Our mentoring offer includes Individual 1:1 Mentoring, Team Mentoring and Action Learning set Facilitation.
Our standard offer is for 5 sessions, exclusive of an introductory discussion where the aims and objectives are agreed upon. Coachees and mentees will be expected to identify their own challenges, and development needs and reflect on what is going well. They will be supported to harness their strengths and capabilities to navigate their unique challenges.
Evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention at the programme end is crucial to our coaching and mentoring offer.
We Will Enable Your People to:
- Build self-awareness and personal effectiveness
- Be equipped and empowered to lead through ambiguity and change
- Create space and time to think and explore ways to amplify the impact of their work
- Anticipate the demands of their external stakeholders, funders and partners
- Improve individual and team performance
What Do Our Clients Say?
“I have found my coaching sessions through SUMS incredibly beneficial during this time of extreme stress. My coach has helped me work through some sensitive issues and has enabled me to move forward with some long-standing and thorny issues within my institution. I have felt very supported throughout the experience and couldn’t recommend the experience or my coach highly enough for those in leadership positions looking to make a positive impact.”
– Julie Kelly, Academic Registrar, University of Hertfordshire
“SUMS has been a crucial partner in staff development for the professional staff in the Oxford Humanities Division. Its tailored service has been highly effective…the individualised but flexible coaching framework has worked well and provided excellent value for money.”
– Lynne Hirsch, Divisional Registrar and Head of Administration, Humanities Division, University of Oxford