A change in ownership in 2017 stepped up PureGym’s expansion schedule and brought about an operations reorganisation mid-2018 to facilitate delivery of ambitious growth plans alongside investment to develop a newly created Central Operations Team.
PureGym is the UK’s largest private gym operator and Rebecca Passmore is its Chief Operating Officer. After supporting Rebecca with many L&D programmes while at Wickes, Leading Edge were asked to create a stimulating programme for senior operations colleagues that would match their energy, focus and commitment.
We kicked off a tailored development programme supported by one-to-one coaching in November 2018 focussed on enabling effective change to support the senior colleagues to ‘inspire a healthy nation’ – the business vision. The programme completed in October 2019.
At Leading Edge, we love working closely with clients to make sure that what we design and create is absolutely spot on and what’s needed to achieve the outcome. It’s one of our great beliefs that great partnerships start with great relationships, and we know our client relationship is great when they feel comfortable to bring ideas to the programme and we can work together to integrate these while keeping true to our values.
PureGym identified two themes as being significant (Founder’s Mentality and Extreme Ownership – read on for more) and their desire to explore these through the development programme. Being flexible and adaptable meant we could tweak the programme until we all had confidence that these themes fitted in without diluting the Leading Edge Points of View. Nothing is off the shelf and we always make sure clients are as involved as they wish to be in developing a programme.
Across four business-focussed but informal and interactive workshops, followed by one-to-one coaching journeys for the 11 Regional Managers and four Heads of Support functions, we explored the business plan, their role within it, the need to step up, and the support being provided to facilitate this.
We explored two themes – Founder’s Mentality and Extreme Ownership – within various activities during the workshops. Founder’s Mentality* has strong relevance to PureGym because it focusses on how organisations at a similar stage of maturity are at risk of losing their essence as they grow. This theme provided a useful and pertinent framework for understanding the business plan and direction of PureGym.
With Extreme Ownership** as the second theme, we worked to create a common understanding of/language around performance standards and a consistent approach to growing the business.
The Leading Edge Coaching Pathway followed the workshops to wrap up and embed a year of focussed development for senior managers and help with developing their personal style. Coaching conversations were had around managing team members, personal career development and prioritisation of personal workloads, all towards delivering laser focussed performance.
"The flexibility and style of the programme helped each manager to take something positive away that was unique to their needs."”
- Rebecca Passmore, Chief Operating Officer, PureGym
