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Corporate Training Case Study

Client: Employment placement firm with multiple locations throughout New England

Client Type: Corporate

Overview: Developed and implemented a leadership development training program for a multi-site regional firm, to build a corporate culture, and inculcate effective communications skills. Managers who experienced the leadership curriculum were more responsive to customers and also were better able to manage and lead their staffs.

Services: Leadership Training, Communication and Presentation Skills Training, Executive Coaching, Outdoor Learning Experience

Challenge: Our client, was a well-established player in the employment placement field with decentralized branches. Each branch was run by a middle manager who was responsible for local marketing, recruiting, and staff supervision for their respective offices. The middle managers enjoyed considerable autonomy, but felt disconnected from the organization as a whole, and from their peer group.

The firm's leadership wanted the middle manager to effectively develop, lead, manage, and maintain self-directed teams. However, the leadership group also recognized that the various middle managers' team-building skills varied widely. The leadership hoped to develop these leadership skills while simultaneously achieving a well-defined set of business objectives. In addition, the firm's leadership wished to identify "rising stars" in the organization, who might be groomed to take on senior management positions.

RDA's Role: RDA was brought in to help the various branch managers develop a common leadership skill set. We built a team of trainers to help develop and implement a broad-based leadership development curriculum -- with an emphasis on developing interpersonal skills.

RDA associates began by conducting interviews with key members of the leadership team, as well as a sampling of the middle managers, and their direct reports. During the interviews, we were able to provide some immediate, pragmatic feedback to some of the middle management interviewees, and subsequently we developed a series of leadership training seminars tailored to our client's critical needs.

Following an initial kick-off introducing the leadership curriculum to the middle managers, RDA delivered a curriculum consisting of:

• An Outdoor Learning Experience. RDA facilitated a management-oriented Outward Bound-like experience, helping to integrate the personal experiences and learnings from this session with the more formal communications and leadership curriculum. This experience generated a bond and enthusiasm that carried into the subsequent skills training.
• Management Skills training. A one-day session incorporating the practical skills of meeting management and listening skills, with the broader ability to understand communication style differences.
• Presentation Skills training. A one-day session combining videotaped roleplays and activities, individual coaching, and direct feedback sessions focused on rapidly and tangibly improving presentation skills.
• Leadership Models training. A half-day session to help managers recognize and apply each of four fundamental leadership models with an emphasis on process-oriented leadership.

The training sessions each began with brief presentations/workshops followed by a combination of group discussion, breakout sessions for peer or small group practice, role playing, returning to the full-group to share experiences gained from the interactive activities throughout the day. RDA facilitated all sessions to help the group distill the essence of their own learnings for the day, and to help develop personal action steps for how to apply learnings to their day-to-day jobs.

Results: After completing the leadership curriculum, the middle managers were able to apply their listening and presentation skills to respond to client needs. By improving the managers' ability to manage their staffs, our client saw increased productivity, and stronger financial performance.

The client leadership was able to see the clear value of the direct, face-to-face interactions amongst the middle managers during the RDA training sessions and subsequently implemented a series of regular, cross-site interactions (including conference calls, social and ongoing training events) to help build an overall team identity.

By making the middle managers feel more connected, the client found that they were also more motivated, felt higher job satisfaction. Instead of feeling isolated, as the top branch of their individual office trees, the middle managers developed a peer group, and so felt less isolated. As a result, the middle managers were better able to share with each other, and to help develop more junior staff throughout the organization, and to share sales skills and strategies across the various offices.

Through our interactions with the middle managers in a variety of training experiences, we were able to identify two "rising stars" who were emerging leaders. More importantly, however, we were able to help our client to expand the way they thought about leadership potential beyond a middle manager's historical "numbers." We were able to instill a new framework for thinking about potential senior managers, incorporating an understanding of personality types, and skills gaps, as well as key competencies (technical, human relations, and conceptual).

We then worked with the President and CEO to help clarify their personal priorities, one of which turned out to be mentoring potential senior managers. RDA then coached the President, helping him to develop mentoring skills, to be a role model for more junior staff, and to enrich the mentoring culture at all levels of the organization.

Finally, RDA was able to identify several priorities for future organizational development:

• ongoing individual coaching for each middle manager to reinforce the concepts learned in training,
• a comprehensive technical and strategic sales training program,
• sophisticated application of databases and strategic information in the sales process.