Global Communications Provider

Organizational Challenge:

Supervisors and individual contributors for a global communications company play a critical role in managing people, projects, and providing leadership to their respective departments and functions. Human resources was not sure if the current leadership development program was successfully engaging learning and sustaining development.

Steps Taken:

An Impact Survey was utilized to solicit feedback from alumni of the current leadership program. The program was found to “meet expectations,” however the targeted learning objectives on an individual and organizational level were not being fulfilled. A new program design was proposed to more fully target the organizational learning objectives of “Innovation / Creativity,” and “Valuing Diverse Perspectives.” In addition, the designed maintained focus on individual competencies of “Self-awareness,” “Personal Vision,” “Giving and Receiving Feedback,” and “Communication Skills.”

The program design utilized a business simulation which engaged participants to explore leadership at both the cognitive and emotional levels. Application of real business challenge created understanding of behaviors that impact effective collaboration, communication, problem solving and teamwork. Post simulation, a debrief focused on key learning and peer feedback was designed to understand behavioral impact and “diverse perspectives.” An “Innovation / Creativity” module was “sandwiched” around the core simulation to enable participants to frame and solicit perspective around their business challenges. Behavioral assessments provided insight and self-awareness around leadership preferences.

Leadership Outcomes:

The revised program resulted in an Overall Program Evaluation for 20 classes of 4.7 on a 5.0 scale. There was measured improvement in the knowledge and applied learning for the participants in the following areas:

• Self-awareness of management and leadership skills and style preferences
• Leveraging diversity to become more collaborative and effective as a team
• Utilizing creativity to understand components of a business challenge
• Application of learning to self, work groups and teams