What we do

Frances Storr Associates helps companies, groups and individuals to achieve more of what they want to achieve, become aware of how they inadvertently get results they don’t want, and learn how to have the conversations that matter so that obstacles to performance, quality and outcomes can be cleared. Alongside these challenges, we also believe that all of us want to feel that our work is of meaning, that we are getting somewhere in our endeavours, and that we are part of something bigger with the capacity to make a difference.

 

We work with individual team members, teams and groups, leaders, leadership teams, and whole organisations, with a range of tools, frameworks, and interventions that are informed by a ‘whole system’ approach.

 

Tools and interventions

 

Individuals

Some examples of our work at individual level include:

• Coaching to overcome personal barriers
• Support in achieving clarity of purpose
• Developing influencing skills
• Acting as a thinking partner for you
• The Well – 4D feedback

 

Teams

Some examples of our work at team and group level include:

• How to (re)build a team
• Decision-making processes
• Giving and receiving feedback skills
• Shifting a team culture
• Improving relationships for better-quality conversations
• Facilitating meetings to make decisions and create learning
• Clarifying commitments and mutual expectations
• Inspiring a team by creating a shared vision
• The Well – 4D feedback

 

For more detail about how we can help with team development click here.

 

Whole organisations

Some examples of our work at organisational level include:

• Characterising the current culture, and moving towards a new culture
• Dealing with the impact of restructures, mergers and other changes to the shape of the organisation
• Whole-organisation planning events
• Conference design and facilitation
• Engaging the whole-organisation with a vision
• Whole-organisation diagnosis of future needs
• Influencing skills, coaching skills, consulting skills, internal business partnering, and facilitation skills
• Designing processes to address key questions: eg what kind of an organisation do we need to become?
• Designing processes to draw on the collective intelligence of the organisation
• The Well – 4D feedback

 

For more detail about how we can help with whole-organisation development click here.

 

Leadership teams

Some examples of our work at leadership team level include:

• Clarifying purpose of the team
• Creating collective leadership rather than several individuals leading their own silos
• Building trust for conversations about the undiscussable
• Facilitation team meetings, modelling effective ways of clarifying, challenging and deepening the conversation
• Obtaining feedback on the impact of current leadership style on the organisation
• Developing decision-making processes and avoiding the ping pong of either/or debates
• Implementing processes for engaging commitment, not just agreement
• Feedback and coaching on engaging with staff and stakeholders
• The Well – 4D feedback

 

For more detail about how we can help with leadership team development click here.

 

Leaders

Some examples of our work with leaders includes:

• One-to-one coaching to clarify personal vision and values
• Authentic leadership – personal development programme
• Tailored leadership development programmes
• Support in achieving greater congruence, for example between personal values and the brand
• Strategies for implementing cultural change
• Giving leaders feedback from ‘the system’ to better understand how they are impacting on the organisation
• Tackling the intangibles in the organisation, eg how to create accountability
• Modelling types of leadership and influence
• Bringing new models, frameworks and theories to challenge outworn ways of thinking
• Help them make the transition to the next level of leadership
• The Well – 4D feedback

 

For more detail about how we can help with developing leaders click here.

 

The Well

 

There are many tools and processes on the market that can help generate feedback on your performance – from the simple, traditional Personal Development Planning in which boss and direct report discuss progress against personal objectives, to the more sophisticated 360-degree appraisals based on multiple perspectives. But such processes can only go so far, because they boil down to one person receiving feedback that they are then supposed to do something about, regardless of how everyone else continues to behave. For this reason, for many people, getting feedback on their performance is an annual chore, just another hoop to jump through, with limited impact.

 

By contrast, in over 15 years of delivering The Well and as its original architect,we can honestly say that clients have found it invigorating, game-changing and above all meaningful. Participants have consistently described it as ‘powerful’, ‘enriching’, ‘big impact’, ‘a watershed’, and ‘profound’. So what makes it such a powerful experience?

 

The Well is designed on the premise that our performance does not happen or evolve in a vacuum, but rather it is interdependent with other factors such as how other people are delivering, the kind of organisational culture we have to operate in, and the ‘under the table’ forces that are at play in our working lives. So The Well is based on gathering people together to have a face-to-face conversation about an individual’s performance (usually from different levels in the organisation) that then builds into a wider conversation about the context of that performance. We facilitate the conversation to support people in saying what needs to be said, help them get under the surface to understand the nature of the feedback, and draw out themes and insights that are valuable to all those participating.

 

This means that people have the opportunity to voice things that have perhaps been stuck, ‘say the unsayable’, and clear the way to a renewed sense of awareness and commitment. The process itself is very natural and low-tech (ostensibly just a group of people sitting round a table, with no forms or online questionnaires to fill in), yet there is a robust technology behind its design that ensures people feel safe enough to participate fully. We provide pre-support not only to the person requesting the feedback but also to all those invited to take part, and during the conversation itself I ensure the process is safely held so that people can just focus on what is being shared and explored.

 

We sometimes refer to The Well as providing 4D feedback: what starts as an observation about one person’s skill or behaviour often evolves into insights for other people about themselves and insights about aspects of the whole organisation that need attention. The Well in itself starts to create culture change by changing the conversations.

 

So if you are looking for a performance assessment process that can take you to a whole other level based on truly meaningful feedback, do get in touch and we will be delighted to explain how it works in more detail.