Haven's Vision for Personalised Leadership Development

Like many hospitality businesses, Haven had been through a bit of a journey during and after the pandemic. Their leadership talent blueprint was designed and implemented around 2019 and extended right across the business. However, the rapid pace of change had since rendered it completely outdated. 

Looking to update the blueprint with one more evidence based, Dean Giles, Haven’s Head of Talent, began working with the team at Zircon BeTalent to focus on their GM (General Manager) population and gain an in-depth understanding of what makes a great leader for each of their 39 parks. 

Haven holiday parks vary hugely in size, but when you look at the makeup of each park, most are like a village or even a small town. Each General Manager runs a business in their own right with challenges unique to their setting. 

What is it about Zircon's approach to leadership development that made you want to work with us?   

What resonated most is the level of experience and expertise along with Zircon’s more scientific approach. It was important to us to build a set of leadership capabilities based on real data rather than just what we felt was right.  

Leveraging the BeTalent Blended 360, we embarked on a study of our parks and our teams to gain insight into what great leadership looks like and make a more informed strategy. This study gave us real detail, a thorough discovery that included various stakeholders, interviews, and group conversations providing perspectives through various iterations. 

What has resonated best with your stakeholders? 

With this insight we were able to land on a great leadership talent blueprint that was unique to our GMs with 12 capabilities clustered under the BeTalent leadership framework of Lead, Think, Interact and Deliver, which was amazing.  

Using the blueprint’s indicators, we then had our GMs complete both the BeTalent 360 and Strengths profiles. The combination of both great tools gave us some rich insight which enabled us to provide detailed feedback and plan personalised development activities for the coming years. 

The tools are truly credible but then you layer that with the expertise that the Zircon team brings. That credibility builds strong bonds and trust. We feel that what we've got this time isn’t just a leadership model, or a set of leadership capabilities, we've now got a set of capabilities with informed recommendations.  

How has this impacted your General Managers?

Our programme of development for our GMs was never a ‘sheep dipping’ exercise for us, we didn’t want to just train a few and expect their learnings to be applicable to other GMs. Our approach is very much around how we can develop the skills, capabilities, and behaviours that are required on an individual basis.  

It's interesting because our general managers are one of the populations that in the past haven't had this level of focus on their development.   

They're very talented and very strong in their own right and that’s why they’re in the roles that they’re in. However, we are all interested in making marginal gains or better. They’re there for everyone to take.  

From the very start there were very high levels of engagement, energy and excitement in the room. This has only gained momentum as the GMs continue on their unique paths of personal development, especially tailored to enhance their strengths as individual leaders.  

The feedback that I’ve seen, especially the coaching Zircon has provided, has been so strong. While you can try to interpret your own profile, having a trained psychologist compile and interpret the report, along with guiding discussions on areas for development, is immensely beneficial. 

What has this meant for your recruitment and succession planning? 

It has been such a positive experience for all and has since become a natural part of our talent cycle. Thinking about where we were before and how so much of this could be subjective with just one person’s view, this approach is much more rounded with various levels and gives us a real depth of insight to guide our development strategy. 

We’ve now embedded the strengths profile into our GM recruitment process, not to profile candidates but to add another layer to the selection process. By aligning the strengths profile with our GM blueprint, we gain insight into what energises candidates and use this to inform interviews. 

Are you measuring the impact? 

In the second year of this programme, we’re now focusing more on key measures. We have band scorecards and team surveys that track park performance and team well-being. Now, we’re integrating that data into how we assess the impact of learning and development. 

But without that data, the excitement has been palpable and we’re extending the blueprint beyond GMs. We’ve now developed a talent blueprint for Heads of Department, using the same model but tailored to their specific challenges and responsibilities. By embedding this language throughout different leadership levels, we’re ensuring continuity across recruitment, performance management, development, and succession planning. 

Why do you think this programme has had so much engagement? 

I think it’s acknowledging that each of the roles are very different. Making those tweaks and amends even to the language that’s used has been so beneficial for us. 

There are 39 parks and along with variables like size and location, for example, many of them are coastal and that brings very specific challenges.  

What this more personalised approach enables us to do is to take the capabilities and help each GM think about their landscape. The micro and macro forces at play, the opportunities and the challenges unique to their own park. How they can dial up and dial down the capabilities.  

 What brought the biggest light bulb moment? 

I think the biggest light bulb moment with the BeTalent Strengths tool especially, is to understand what we are energised by. The things that motivate us and excite us, that we want to do daily and how harnessing these aspects for ourselves can really build up our resilience.  

It helps us to ensure we have the right people with the right capabilities in the right places. Now we've got those leadership capabilities, it's not just a development programme. 

We're not just developing our current teams towards those capabilities. We take those capabilities and we connect them. We make the links through the full talent cycle from the point of how we attract and recruit talent to how we onboard and plan for succession. That becomes the North Star for everything. 

Knowing what to focus on maximises the value, we want our leadership development approach to be highly personalised especially at that level.   Everyone's at different stages with different learning styles and the marginal gains can make a big difference.  

Every GM is having conversations with their line managers. They're sharing their insights, their profiles and having great conversations and developing their personal development areas which then become a focus for the next 6 to 12 months.  

 And we're not going to end it there.  

So, what's next? 

We’re continuing to use the BeTalent 360, Strengths, Resilience, and Decision Styles tools throughout the programme and on an annual basis. By tracking shifts in one area, we can evaluate where to focus next and measure our progress year on year. 

We’re now taking what we’ve built for our GMs and using it as a blueprint to develop other leadership levels within the business. 

Zircon’s suite of development tools is helping us tailor our approach for Exec-1 roles within our support centre functions. We’re now evaluating how to apply the same insights to other leadership spaces. 

And we’ve also started focusing on psychological safety in early 2024. The first phase was about educating our leaders on what it really mean and moving beyond common misconceptions. 

Now, we’re creating a structured approach to build a psychologically safe environment. The programme includes education on psychological safety, exploring psychological triggers, and using BeTalent Psychological Safety questionnaire to assess team climates. We’ve piloted this in several parks, and the exec team is also going through the same process. From April to May, we’ll be rolling it out more widely across functions. 

This allows us to take meaningful action. 

Psychological safety is an ongoing effort and there’s always room to strengthen it. But by making it structured and measurable, we’re ensuring it becomes part of our leadership culture. 

Who or what are you inspired by? 

A big part of my background is aviation and one of the companies that I've always been inspired by is Virgin Atlantic. They lead the way and come away from traditions. I've had the opportunity to be in that business connected with various teams and the culture is truly inclusive. 

You can see that everyone feels that they are on the page, that they belong.  What I admire is not being afraid to break down walls, especially with the industry the way it was. It used to be you had to look and be a certain way. 

I’m so inspired by Richard Branson's journey and the effort he makes to ensure that he connects with every member of his team at least once a year. 

What other projects are you excited by at Haven? 

We like to support local communities and acquire local talent, but some regions are lower on the socioeconomic scale with increased educational disparity.   

To address that disparity, we’re focusing on early careers and how we can support the skills and education landscape nationally. Hospitality should be seen as a career choice, and we’re working to create management career pathways for young people.    

We’ve made a strong start, building partnerships with schools and launching a degree programme for young people. This allows talented individuals who can’t self-fund a degree to gain higher education while working with Haven.    

Additionally, we’re developing a mentoring programme. It’s a challenge to get right, but we’re currently piloting a structured mentoring approach with senior leader cohorts, ensuring knowledge and experience are shared across the business.    

You can discover more about the Haven team's journey by listening to The Chief Psychology Officer Podcast Episode 77 The Blueprint Revolution: Transforming Organisational Success.

And if you're going to the CIPD Festival of Work at London's Excel Centre 11th & 12th June, visit stand L69 to talk about all things Leadership Development.