Thinking beyond your team
Do you think you know yourself well? Understand your attributes and how you come across?
Like most, doctor and chief revenue officer Hiba Khan thought she did. Until she completed CMI’s management diagnostic test as part of her Senior Leadership Apprenticeship.
Hiba was stunned that not only did the Diagnostic tool point out strengths she didn’t realise she had, but also weaknesses she’d never noticed.
The assessment highlighted that she needed to work on her interdepartmental collaboration skills. She’d never had to think about it before - she admits her focus had always been on her team and getting them to where they needed to be. But now her CMI Senior Leadership Apprenticeship was making her consider the bigger picture.
Far from being unsettled, Hiba took that learning into the workplace at Medics Academy straight away, organising check-ins across all departments every six weeks to foster collaboration.
“I thought it would have just stayed at that level,” she says. “But what ended up happening was that the elements of cross-departmental work which we’d find tricky in our past were suddenly a breeze because we understood each other better.
We were able to break down barriers just because we talked to different departments, listened to them and engaged with them.
Immediate results
The improvements didn’t stop here. Hiba’s first apprenticeship assignment was to carry out a leadership audit, which highlighted issues and areas for improvement which everyone in the organisation had been blind to.
Just three months into the programme, Hiba was already strengthening the organisational structure and future-proofing the business.
The benefit of the CMI apprenticeship is you actually get to take what you’ve learned on the theoretical part of the course and apply it in real-time in the workplace.
Hiba found the free CMI’s learning support materials invaluable.
I am someone who really likes to organise and plan. And so I used a number of CMI resources to support me towards the End-Point assessment (EPA) and with my studies.
“I looked at the Management Diagnostic tool in preparation for the EPA, I also attended quite a few webinars on the EPA itself, and the strategic business proposal. I used the CMI resource portal which includes checklists about the EPA. I found them really really helpful.”
“Two years later, I have gone through changing the whole project management system in our organisation. Taking papers up to our senior management team to actually get whole company strategies changed, all based on what I have learnt throughout the apprenticeship”.
Creating future leaders
Hiba, who completed her apprenticeship and MBA with the University of Exeter in June 2024, has since been shortlisted for the CMI Apprentice Of The Year Award.
She’s now teaching what she’s learnt to others in her team to grow the pipeline of leadership across her organisation.
Her advice for anyone considering a CMI management apprenticeship?
“Do it”, she says.
It will be something incredibly worthwhile, not just for you, but for your team and your organisation. The management apprenticeship helped me to develop my leadership skills and teach some of my team to follow in my footsteps as leaders.
“But more than that, it helped me actually understand myself and what I needed to do to get the most out of other people, helping them to become future leaders.”