A Fortune 500 Company Invests in Developing and Retaining Future Leaders With The Exemplary Leaders Program
A Fortune 500 Company Invests in Developing and Retaining Future Leaders With The Exemplary Leaders Program
Location: Multinational
Tactic: The Exemplary Leaders Program: A Foundational Leadership Program
Results:
Identified personal leadership strengths and weaknesses
Increased understanding of The Leadership Challenge® concepts by nearly 58%
Left with applicable action steps to improve personal leadership skills
The Challenge
In the years since the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Great Resignation, retaining top talent and investing in high performance have become top of mind for business leaders. Nearly 33% of HR representatives believe there’s a rising need to develop internal talent if companies want to combat attrition, save costs, remain agile, and grow in innovation.
But talent growth, creative innovation, and retention start with effective leaders. A recent study found that if mid-level leaders don’t view their company’s senior leadership as effective, they are 3.5 times more likely to leave within the year. There’s clearly a direct correlation between strong leaders and improved employee engagement, retention, and empowerment. One Fortune 500 company recognized this trend and sought to grow essential talent through intentional leadership development.
To help facilitate the program, they came to Bridge Innovate.
The Solution
ABOUT THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE®
Bridge Innovate understands that leadership is about behavior — it’s a set of skills and abilities that can actually be mastered over time. Bridge Innovate’s The Exemplary Leaders Program, using tools established by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner in The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations, approaches leadership as a measurable and masterable set of behaviors.
Kouzes and Posner, using global data from 100 countries, over 5000 individual case studies, 30+ years of data, 800+ independent research studies, and rigorous testing of reliability and validity, created a survey that identified what happened when a leader performed at their best. From there, they created a 360-degree feedback assessment that has since been taken by more than 5 million users called the Leadership Practices Inventory® (LPI). Then, they detailed five common practices they saw in the highest-performing leaders:
Model the Way: Clarify your values and set an example by aligning actions with values.
Inspire a Shared Vision: Envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities. Enlist others in a common vision and shared aspirations.
Challenge the Process: Search for innovative opportunities to improve and experiment to generate small wins and learnings.
Enable Others to Act: Foster collaboration through trust and strengthen others through self-determination and developing competence.
Encourage the Heart: Recognize contributions by showing appreciation. Celebrate the values and victories by creating a spirit of community.
Bridge Innovate, utilizing these five practices and the LPI® 360 assessment, helps leaders grow in self-awareness and explore possibilities for growth. In The Exemplary Leaders Program, Bridge divides efforts into three primary steps:
Explanation of the content
Reinforcing concepts through activity and with community
Reviewing concepts and establishing commitments and accountability
With this structure, Bridge Innovate helped the client’s team of 41 participants enhance their leadership skills.
>> Download: Check out a sample Lpi 360 assessment report
THE PROCESS
Before the training, the participants completed pre-program work, including the LPI assessment and documenting personal reflections on their leadership challenges and skills.
Then, through five 2-hour sessions, Bridge taught participants about each of The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership®. With each session, participants completed homework prior so they came prepared to reflect and ask questions. Within the training, participants used the data gained from the LPI assessment to identify leadership insights, explore the exemplary practices, and then define personal leadership goals for each of the five practices.
After some instruction on each practice, topics and skills were also reinforced through interactive exercises, discussion, reflections, and case studies. In the final session, participants set their own professional and leadership development goals, outlining plans with their teams and managers to reach their goals.
Sprintbase™ Example
In one breakout activity, participants performed a value sort to clarify their personal values in a personal Sprintbase™ board.
The Result
Through the program, participants enhanced their understanding of the five practices, identified their personal leadership strengths and weaknesses, and left with reflections and actionable steps toward improving their leadership skills.
The Exemplary Leaders Program Learning Results
Overall Satisfaction Score: 8.9 / 10
Average Post-Program Understanding: 9.0 / 10
*self-reported score by participants on 10.10.23
It was clear that the participants grew significantly in their understanding of what it means to be a skilled high-performing leader. Upon completing the program, they each shared their development in a survey, revealing a significant growth in understanding of these five practices, rating their knowledge with an average score of 5.7 out of 10 before the Bridge Innovate program to a 9 out of 10 after. On average, they experienced an increase of nearly 58% in understanding.
Prepare the future leaders of your organization with intentional leadership development training. Contact us to create your custom leadership development workshop.