Taking Ownership of People Development

Business Issue

One organization needed to elevate the role of its leaders in the yearly performance management process. They needed to have greater impact than merely assigning an evaluation and making a compensation recommendation for their reports, a group of people who lead the organization. Instead, the organization now needed these individuals to take ownership of their role as developers of people in addition to evaluating their employees effectively. They now needed to be coaches and mentors to their reports, a role that was largely unfamiliar to them in their careers, and they recognized that they needed help. Duke Corporate Education (Duke CE) partnered with the organization to create a program focused on articulating the role of this group of leaders in people development and on helping them achieve realistic goals for their employees.

Approach

The organization partnered with Duke CE in the design and execution of a program to 1) articulate and convey the role of these leaders in people development and 2) collaborate with them to create and achieve realistic goals for their employees. The team, composed of learning professionals from the organization and Duke CE, approached this issue by designing a two-day learning experience for 150 of the organization’s top 400 people. The learning experience, led by Duke CE educators and coaches, was designed to colorfully illustrate the issue faced by these leaders and provide them with the coaching and tools needed to approach their reporting employees and integrate them into the organization’s strategy.

Coaches played a significant role in this learning experience. Each coach was paired with two to three participants during program delivery, resulting in 12-15 coachees overall. Coaches worked closely with their assigned participant group throughout the program, and also spent time each day coaching individuals face-to-face on their personal goals for the learning experience as well as their goals for their reports back in the workplace.

Execution

The learning experience was delivered to the participants in groups of twenty-five. To introduce the experience, Duke CE educators opened with a convincing argument for the need to understand and develop people in order to effectively execute the organization’s strategy. The group agreed that for the organization to succeed, each participant would need to latch on to a facet of the strategy. In order to get to that point, each of the participants would first need to understand their reporting employees and their profiles to answer the questions: 1) What within our strategy will be a good fit for this individual? and 2) How can I approach this person to have a conversation about this role and his or her goals?

While using the organization’s performance management cycle as a guiding motif, Duke CE created tools to bring relevant characteristics to the forefront in discussing goal setting. Participants discussed their own role within the new compensation and performance management system, practiced setting realistic goals for their reporting employees, and began to think about what information they needed to receive from these employees to make this year’s goals more compelling and appropriate.

At the end of the first day of the program, participants saw vignettes in which actors depicted them in their day-to-day relationship with their reporting employees. In light of the learning from the past day, it was very clear to the participants that they had not been supporting their employees sufficiently. They were given a chance to rewrite the script for the vignettes at the end of the program to depict these relationships as they really should be, given their new knowledge from the learning experience.

On the second day, participants focused on how they could connect with and support their employees better through sessions taught by Duke CE faculty as well as from conversations with their coach and peers in small groups of three to four participants. They also learned about having difficult conversations and practiced through role-play with actors. Coaches observed their participants in role-play and convened with them as a group to discuss their work and set goals for conversations with the reporting employees. In addition, after the program, each participant received up to five hours of additional coaching from their coach back in the workplace.

Outcomes

The post-program coaching insured that the executives had the support needed back in the workplace to execute the plans they made during the program. Several employees mentored by the participating leaders have since reported that their relationships have taken a dramatic turn for the better. The program has been so successful that two other divisions within the same organization are now adapting it in collaboration with Duke CE for use with their employees.

 

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