Leadership Learning and Development - Health Sector

Sector:

Health

Issue:

 Leadership learning and development

Background:

The CEO recruited a talented senior team, hungry for advanced learning in their field and beyond. She sought to engage the team in a new exploration of leadership learning, wanting the group to co-design a "toolkit" built upon a flexible set of individual learning paths that could also contribute to higher levels of collective learning, strategic thinking about the future, and a more trusting, resilient organization culture.

Challenge:

Some of the leadership team were not as actively engaged in new learning, so the group had not reached high performance levels resulting in barriers to innovation, leadership development, and optimal effectiveness-not just for the organization but for the benefit of the region served.

Solution

Among the senior team, create a strong fit of leadership learning practices and a heightened commitment to catalyzing a regional vision of health and well-being fueled by philanthropy.

• Design the architecture and scaffolding of a leadership development model and an initial set of core concepts and learning tools;

• Provide a structure for engaging the leadership team in an assessment of its current individual and collective capacity and learning pathways about leading change and expanding health and wellness for people in the region;

• Develop a collective understanding of the organization's leadership theory and principles and greater commitment to a leadership learning program tied to ongoing coaching from the CEO. This will solidify focus, improve agility, and reduce the level of creative conflict that had bubbled up across the organization; and

• Support the CEO to develop a 5-year organizational vision and leadership development plan. These can help shape a roadmap for eventual CEO succession.

Result:

• Organizational culture moved intentionally toward developing and reinforcing resilience by widening the circle of colleagues engaged in strategic learning about leading change in its region.

• Leaders understood and more clearly articulated the relationship of philanthropy to the emerging collective vision of the region's well-being.

• The CEO had key concepts and tools for expanding and sustaining leadership development internally and enriching external collaborations to increase investments in the region's health.

Regional vision and long-term business scenario development, plus a clearly articulated organizational theory of change, have led to the leadership team's sharper strategic analysis and to opening the board's perception of the need to act bigger and adapt better.