“We engaged Dr Stephen Holmes to guide us through a process of renewing our core statements and to help the community to speak with one voice about coming to terms with a preferred mission and vision of the school and then the strategic plan. Stephen used a data based that helped us to assure all members of our community that their voices were heard. The analysis of the data was thorough and rigorous and yielded us an excellent starting point from which to derive a new vision, mission and core values for the school.

Stephen engaged voices from across the community including students, parents, teachers, staff, alumni and board members. As an international school in Asia, our community is diverse and Stephen was sensitive and responsive to the many cultural differences he encountered. It was important for our participants to feel heard in this process, and seeing their voices reflected in the data Stephen collected gave them the assurance that allowed them to support the final outcomes of the research.

Stephen took the time and interest to build relationships and trust with many members in our community and that helped considerably by not only being able to mine good data from interviews and focus groups, but also helping us as a community to unpack the information we gathered in ways that created “buy in” amongst out teachers and parents when it came time to agree on final statements.”