Empowering future leaders at the University of Bath

Background

The University of Bath is a higher education institution offering 300+ degree courses. Employing 7,000 people, it is a top-10 UK university with a reputation for research and teaching excellence.

Dr Tim Rennie, Director of Taught Postgraduate Programmes (AP3T)—Faculty of Sciences, was keen to run a leadership development programme for postgraduate students in the school of pharmacy. The aim was to inspire, develop, and empower the students to become leaders in their field.

Historically the pharmacy sector has lacked diversity, particularly in leadership positions. With more than half of the students being women and people of colour, Dr Rennie is committed to running interventions that support diversity and inclusion.

Our solution

The University of Bath has been using Strengthscope® for 8+ years, and decided to introduce it as a valuable leadership development tool for postgraduate students.

They used the following tools and solutions:

20x Strengthscope® reports and individual debriefs
Intro to Strengths workshop
Leadership in health workshop

The students each completed a Strengthscope® report and received their individual feedback, whilst the workshops focused on promoting the concept/ethos that anyone can be a leader.

Based on this experience, the leadership in health programme will continue running annually and will include Strengthscope® reports, debriefs and a workshop.

Outcome

Before starting the programme, the students completed a survey to assess baseline understanding of strengths and how to apply them, on a scale from 1-5 (strongly disagree – strongly agree).

94% of those asked rated their awareness of strengths between 1-3
86% of those asked rated their ability to define them and know how to utilise them between 1-3

After completing the programme, survey results show that:

100% of respondents rated their awareness of their own unique strengths between 4 and 5
100% of respondents answered with either 4 or 5, to describe their ability to define their strengths and how to utilise them

“This is a great, practical and positively framed tool that is versatile for use in different settings, including in our experience for developing a working team or in the context of education and learning in leadership.”

Dr Tim Rennie

“The Strengthscope® works very well, and it has given me a good insight about my own strengths and how to develop them further as an individual and as a leader”

Postgraduate student testimonial

University of Bath