Insight, Impact & Influence: Leadership Development in a VUCA World
The Challenge: Develop an internal pipeline of agile leaders
Driven by the CIO’s succession strategy, IHG sought to prepare 150 mid-level people managers to embrace and embody critical skills for next-level leadership within the technology organization. In this highly matrixed organization, which had focused heavily on technical expertise in the past, teams had become used to functioning in siloes. The organization recognized the importance of developing these established and emerging leaders’ people-centered capabilities to foster the collaborative culture necessary to meet business objectives.
Specific goals included team performance improvement, increased leadership agility, and building more trust and collaboration between functions to improve effectiveness, accountability and overall business performance.
Our Approach: Integrate cross-functional cohort-based leadership development training with learning pods
Clearwater Consulting designed and facilitated a 5-month interactive and experiential leadership development program focused on leading with agility, adapting to team needs as they evolved, supporting and navigating change, and influencing for impact. Cohort learning pods enabled participants to practice and integrate learning for sustained impact between sessions and after program completion.
Core frameworks included:
- DiSC and Birkman assessments for self- and other-awareness
- 360° feedback
- Situational Leadership
- The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team
The Impact: Shift in leadership culture from traditional silos to engaged collaboration
- Shared language and frameworks created greater consistency in leadership practices, positively impacting workplace culture
- Greater levels of trust, willingness to engage in healthy conflict, and accountability resulted in improved team effectiveness
- Embracing healthy conflict and the value it brings
- Cross-functional collaborating improved significantly leading to better business results