The Lansdowne Club
Creating a cohesive management team, embedding company values and implementing exceptional service standards
Background
The Lansdowne Club is a prestigious private members’ club located on the corner of Berkeley Square in Mayfair, London. With a rich history and a broad, inclusive membership of 7,500, the Club welcomes men, women and young people. The Club is much more than a hotel, boasting a packed calendar of social events, state-of-the-art sports and wellbeing facilities, and high-end dining options as well as beautiful accommodation.
Brief
The CEO and Club Secretary had identified a unique opportunity to take the Club forwards and create a buzz about the place following the pandemic. To achieve their strategy, he was seeking a development programme to bring together a new management team and instil a culture of service excellence across the wider team. An essential element of the strategy was to bring back the welcoming, family atmosphere that The Lansdowne Club was renowned for.
The Club’s people development objectives were to:
Bring together 7 new-to-role senior managers and 15 heads of department and get them working together cohesively, aligned in terms of culture and strategic direction.
Ensure all people managers understand the Club’s vision and how they will achieve it. Manage teams so that everyone buys in to the strategy.
Energise the whole team to deliver the best possible service to all members.
Ensure all members feel welcomed and cared for in the family atmosphere they enjoy.
Define the organisational culture and roll out new company core values to all staff to embed them in their ways of working.
Solution
Sally met with CEO David Herbert and Head of HR, Julia Fowler for an in-depth discussion about their objectives. The team had completed work to develop a set of core values. They needed help to educate the team on what the core values are, how they deliver them and what that means for excellence. what they should look like internally and what they mean to us in our roles.
Following their discussion, Sally designed the programme content using elements of traditional learning with a strong Lansdowne slant. Individual workbooks were provided for each session.
Programmes delivered included:
1. Exceptional Leadership Makes Sense and Leading Service - six full days with the management team
2. Exceptional Service Makes Sense - a series of half-day workshops with the wider team of 120, including a high proportion of new recruits.
3. Culture and Values workshops - to create belief in the vision and strategy, cement service delivery standards and create the behaviours to deliver this.
Outcomes
The leadership team noticed a big difference at supervisory level as managers were more able to advise and guide junior staff to do the right thing.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) has been implemented to take the temperature of member views. Members regularly give high scores and leave positive feedback about the team and their service levels. Since the training was embedded, the Club has seen an uptick in scores. Member comments are being used to directly improve service levels.
Members consistently comment on the warm welcome they receive from the team, saying they feel cared for and appreciate this. Direct result of training.
The management team are much closer and enjoying working more cohesively. This has enabled them to have frank conversations and tackle complex issues in a positive way. Managers are more confident in leading service.
The team is delivering a more personal level of service and can better anticipate member needs.
The Club has recognised a need to embed the training at a deeper level and intend to revisit the programme as they onboard new team members.
Client testimonial
Sally came recommended by several trusted colleagues. We considered other training providers, but once we met Sally her energy and enthusiasm made up our minds. She is determined and always so positive and upbeat - exactly what you need in a room of potential sceptics.
I like the way she designs her courses to draw on different influences, adding her own flavour and examples to make them relevant for our audience. Her programmes are logical with fun ice-breaker activities and group exercises.
Her delivery style is professional and positive. She pitches at exactly the right level for her audience, cements the learning with follow up, and does it with so much enthusiasm. She is a breath of fresh air and one of the best trainers I’ve seen in action.
Sally is so approachable, people really warm to her and trust her instinctively. I’ve seen her captivate and completely disarm a room, turning them from sceptics to energetic believers in the space of a few hours! Everyone leaves her sessions feeling upbeat.
Our members are the owners of this business. The Lansdowne Club is their home when they are here. Sally brought our teams together to understand what this means to individual roles, what exceptional service looks like, and why that is so positive for our future growth.
David Herbert, CEO and Club Secretary