Building a culture of high-performance leadership in the FE sector
Customer Story: How Barnsley College equiped 50+ leaders with the tools, mindset, and coaching capability to drive improvement across all departments.
The challenge
Barnsley College has long been recognised as a high-performing institution. But for its leadership team, the goal wasn’t just to maintain performance – it was to evolve, adapt, and embed a culture of high performance that could meet new challenges and unlock fresh potential across every department.
The need was clear: develop consistent leadership capability across curriculum and service areas, particularly at Head of Department level – where leaders hold broad responsibilities including financial performance, curriculum design, staffing structures, and student outcomes.
With a mix of experienced and newer managers, the college wanted to provide everyone with a shared language, a practical toolkit, and a proven framework for thinking and acting more effectively.
What changed - The impact
Working with Go M.A.D. Thinking, Barnsley College achieved significant and measurable improvements across the organisation:
- 106 areas of improvement achieved within the first year, with 27 more in progress
- Curriculum innovation: increased employer involvement in curriculum design and delivery
- Student progression: improved achievement rates and internal progression
- Staff development: enhanced staff satisfaction and improved recruitment
- Financial performance: over a third of improvements had direct financial benefit
- Leadership capability: greater consistency and confidence across managers
To date, more than 700 leadership actions have been set, with over 230 already completed, many aligned to goals stretching through 2026 and beyond.
“What we’re really proud of is that the vast majority of this transformation was delivered by our own people. The Go M.A.D. methodology gave us the thinking tools and frameworks – but the change was led from within.”
– Neil Johnson, Director of High Performance, Barnsley College
A shift in performance culture
As momentum grew, Barnsley College moved beyond short-term outcomes to fundamentally rethinking how performance and development were supported.
A traditional appraisal model was replaced with a Five-by-Five continuous development approach. Every staff member now identifies personalised next steps aligned to their role, their development, and who else can help them succeed. It’s a living, learning approach – designed to embed ownership, accountability, and long-term growth.
This thinking-led cultural shift is now embedded across the organisation, giving every individual the confidence and capability to continually improve and contribute.
What's next
Building on the success of its leadership teams, Barnsley College is now:
- Rolling out strategies to all staff, empowering them to support students more effectively
- Embedding tools into student learning, helping learners become proactive, independent thinkers
- Exploring external impact, using Go M.A.D. strategies to support SME partners and stakeholders
This isn’t a one-off programme—it’s a long-term commitment to better thinking at every level.
How we did it - The approach
Beginning in Spring 2022, Go M.A.D. Thinking partnered with Barnsley College to develop internal capability and embed a scalable, sustainable approach to leadership improvement.
Three senior leaders trained with Go M.A.D. Thinking to become internal Continuous Improvement Coaches, enabling them to lead the transformation from within. Their role was to support 25 Heads of Department across curriculum and support services using the Go M.A.D. methodology.
The programme included:
- One-to-one coaching between internal coaches and Heads of Department
- Structured use of Go M.A.D.’s Results Framework and 25+ best practice tools
- Catalyst – a Go M.A.D. team productivity app used to identify hidden performance barriers and generate targeted improvement actions
- 90-day improvement challenges for goal defining, focus, and accountability
- Offsite development days to share success stories, reflect, and strengthen peer learning
The programme later expanded to involve all 56 college managers in a collective improvement initiative. Through a structured process, they identified blockers to excellence, set umbrella goals, and created personal 90-day action plans aligned to college-wide priorities.
Why Go M.A.D. Thinking?
Barnsley College chose Go M.A.D. Thinking because it offered a research-informed, results-focused methodology that could be embedded across the organisation:
- Seven proven principles of success
- A practical Results Framework to link thinking directly to measurable outcomes
- 25+ best practice tools to guide everyday leadership
- Flexible implementation and long-term scalability
Three senior leaders trained with Go M.A.D. to become internal Continuous Improvement Coaches, supporting 25 Heads of Department across both curriculum and support services.
A new role. A new chapter.
Recognising the programme’s success, Barnsley College created a new role: Director of High Performance, responsible for delivering coaching across all 93 managers -including senior leaders, Heads of Department, and programme managers.
This role has accelerated impact across the college through:
- A regular schedule of high-performance coaching sessions
- Introduction workshops on the Go M.A.D. Results Framework and best practice tools
- One-to-one coaching focused on personal goals, team development, and strategic challenges
- A growing culture of shared responsibility for improvement
Leadership impact starts with better thinking
Want to build thinking capability across your organisation – at every level? Let’s explore how our proven approach can help your people solve challenges, innovate, and achieve results that matter.
